Tag: Year-of-Dirt

Visiting Uruguay. Went for a ride along / in a shallow lagoon.

As requested, GPS track from the recent Livermore / Del Valle adventure ride.

Taking a “shortcut” back down on an unlabeled rutted path (4x speed). A bit gnarly, especially on our smooth-tired touring bikes… but no one wiped out.

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My third or fourth time doing a variant on a 10-15 mile Dogpatch / Bayview shoreline ride, including old industrial buildings, murals, urban goats, the former site of Pound SF, Tire Beach (where some sort of sci-fi-esque photo shoot was going on?), the Heron’s Head park spit out into the Bay, India Basin, Yosemite Slough, a surprise glittering UFO behind a roll-up garage door, and some more and less official dirt paths between all of these. With the excellent All Good Pizza as a post-ride stop. ...

I’m back from a euphoria-inducing 8-day, 600-mile bike camping tour across Iowa and Wisconsin. The ride combined RAGBRAI (a 15,000-person group ride across Iowa with pork chops, pie, live music, and beer in tiny towns along the way) and a solo ride across beautiful, rural Southwest Wisconsin. The mix of mostly good weather, wildlife (fireflies, startled rabbits, and red-winged blackbirds), friendly strangers, no email, the ability to improvise and change plans on the spot (the flexibility of carrying a tent…), and plenty of time to ride alone and drift between states of present observation and introspection are why I always come back to bike touring… ...

Sunday was a good day: How often do you get to ride all day, along the Bay, and through fragrant fennel fields? Or bike on smooth, paved, separated paths across two major bridges (the Benicia-Martinez Bridge and the Carquinez Bridge)? ...

The BikeMike Copenhagen Evening Zen Tour: “One stop only as we let the passing cityscape and natural environment do the talking. Hard to believe it’s a city bike tour. We bike through rural areas without ever leaving the city of Copenhagen. Come and join this wonderful ride through beautiful mood pictures of Copenhagen when she is stressing down from another busy day and try to do the same yourself. The tour experience embraces the philosophy: “When we bike, the city does all the talking, when we stop, we do the talking”. Treat yourself to the luxury of two hours of total calm. You’ll hear more birds singing than cars racing by… Please understand and respect that no talking at all is accepted during the bike tour. Silence is a big part of the experience.” ...

Another day in Copenhagen, another itch to point the bike in a direction and explore under the wide-open sky. Apparently I lucked out and this was the first sunny week all year. My phone showed a large green area , labeled “Kalvebod Fælled" criss-crossed with car-free paths (thanks, Google maps bike layer) between the city and the airport. But what is it? From Wikipedia: ”[Kalvebod Fælled] consists of reclaimed sea bed, with a number of former islets making up small isolated hills; it was dammed and drained during the 1940s to serve as an artillery training range. […] Most of the area, however, lies as lightly maintained parkland featuring a range of nature types, from young forests to tidal marshes […] After years of preparation the area was finally cleared of unexploded munitions and fully opened to the general public on October 15, 2010.“ ...

While in Copenhagen, I took a few rides farther afield. Riding about 25 miles North was a great way to spend an afternoon (and about the comfort limit on my creaky rented city cruiser, in jeans), and the Louisiana was one of the best modern art museums I’ve been to. Denmark’s bike infrastructure extends far beyond the major cities– even through the countryside I was almost exclusively riding on separated bike paths. ...