The hostel is quite popular (at least during the summer months) and we were only able to get reservations for Sunday night.  It was forecast to be hot in the valley on Sunday so we got up early.  After meeting our friends there were some last minute gear adjustments (mounting extra water bottle cages, for example) before we departed.  After leaving Sunnyvale, we rode out past Steven’s Creek reservoir, then up Montebello road.  By the time we reached the climb the sun was high enough to be warm.  Montebello starts out steep as it leaves the reservoir, then gets a little more gentle once it approaches the top of the ridge.  When we reached the end of the pavement (Piaw likes finding dirt roads to ride on), the sun was hot. The 2-track dirt fire road goes right over the top of Black Mountain and we pedaled along, baking in the heat as we crunched through the dusty gravel.  The rolling hills were covered in dry grass, being bleached by the sun. I had already finished two full bottles of water before we reached the top.  Fortunately, on the other side of the peak, there’s a lonely drinking fountain next to someone’s driveway.  I don’t know who the kind landowner was who provided such an oasis, but we were certainly grateful as we stopped to refill our water bottles.

Having crossed the mountain, we had a long descent ahead of us down Alpine road.  Everything was hot at this point; my brake levers and handlebars felt warm to the touch. The air was hot, and dried out our eyes as we sped down the hill.  The road descended down the spine of the hill, playing with the steep ridge, first on one side of the ridge, then crossing to the other side, occasionally winding around a small hill then back to the ridge.  On either side the grass-covered hill dropped away sharply and riding felt like flying as we banked around corners with the landscape far below. Each turn offered views of broad vistas when we were able to glance away from the road.  It is a curse of biking that on the way up the hill you are too oxygen-starved to enjoy the view, and on the way down you are going too fast to look away from the road.  (Of course, one could always ride slower, but that thought rarely occurs in the moment). About halfway down the hill the road made a sharp right turn and dropped off the ridge, plunging into the trees.  It wound its way down to a creek at the bottom of the steep, wooded valley.  The road here was narrow, without a centerline, and the corners were tight.  After the sweeping vistas above it felt cramped, the riding no longer felt like soaring.  The corners demanded attention and plenty of braking.

We regrouped at the bottom of the hill.  Having already conquered the main climb of the day, we only had a few smaller hills between us and the ocean.  The air was already cooler here, and much of the road was through the forest.  We rode on to the small town of Pescadero where we stopped for lunch. The market sells wonderful garlic artichoke bread fresh from the oven. We bought two big loaves, still warm and moist in the middle, and enjoyed them at the picnic tables on the lawn behind the store.  This close to the ocean, the air was chilly and over the course of the meal we moved out from under the shade of the table’s umbrella to recline in the sun on the grass.  After our meal, we returned to the store for groceries for the evening’s meal.  We picked up pasta, two more loaves of half-baked bread (we would finish baking them at the hostel), and a fresh pie.  All the food was stored away in saddlebags and paniers, except for the pie.  It was delicate, but since Piaw and his girlfriend, Lisa, were on their tandem bike, Lisa was able to hand-carry the pie as we rode.

We left Pescadero via Cloverdale road, a lovely little road that heads south through a small valley, paralleling the coast.  Although we had seen that there was fog closer to the water, Cloverdale road was one hill inland and that was enough to grant us sunshine.  After several miles of rolling past fields, the road got narrower and met up with Gazos Creek road to wind along the creek bottom until it dumped us out on Highway 1 at the ocean.  The weather here was overcast and windy; cold. It seemed a world away from the dusty, dry heat we had been in just a few hours before, only 50 miles away.  We had a brisk headwind as we backtracked a few miles to the lighthouse. After checking into the hostel, I explored the beaches by foot.  North of the lighthouse was a long beach being pounded by the waves and wind, but south of the lighthouse there was a quiet cove, with stairs down to it.  I had brought a swimsuit, so I went in for a very (very) brief swim.  Although I would have enjoyed the freezing water earlier when we were roasting in the sun on top of Black Mountain, it was much too cold now that the sun was gone.  I got my head wet and then stayed out of the water until we hit the hot tub after dinner.




Monday morning we got up early because we had a long ride in to work.  It was cloudy and cold as we rode north along the coast, cutting inland to ride through the rolling hills and farmland.  Our goal was Tunitas Creek road, a beautiful climb up a ravine in a dense redwood forest.  Redwood trees are magnificent in grey overcast weather like this, and the temperature was great for climbing.

Even though we had only been gone one night, I still had an odd feeling of independence as we rode in to work.  It was similar to what I had felt the previous weekend, on our Point Reyes ride.  There’s something about traveling by bicycle: knowing that you’re carrying whatever supplies you need and that you have the freedom to ride wherever your legs can take you.

Friday

After work on Friday I jumped on Caltrain and rode up to San Francisco.  Yana met me at the station and we started our ride at about 5:30 PM, heading along the waterfront towards the Golden Gate bridge.  When I first started road biking a couple years ago, riding in traffic was scary.  It still is sometimes, but as I’ve gotten better at it I’ve started to realize there are different kinds of traffic.  We had the good kind of traffic: polite and slow.  When the cars are driving about the same speed as the bikes, they tend to be more patient when passing and it is easier to take the whole lane when needed.  If there’s a delivery van parked on the shoulder, say, it’s easy to merge into the traffic lane without cutting off any cars.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that there are also a good number of bike lanes and small empty streets between the train station and the bridge.  Quite a bit of the route didn’t have any cars at all.

The bicycle lane on the Golden Gate bridge was mostly empty when we arrived so we didn’t have to worry about colliding with other riders.  Instead we admired the view of the Marin headlands and watched a ship leaving the bay with a small tugboat following.  The wind was steady and cold and we leaned into it as we rode along the span.  At the bridge’s towers, the sidewalk sharply bent around the massive orange columns and the wind changed angles, alternately trying to push us into the tower and then into the fence.  On the lee side of each tower the wind briefly stopped, giving us a moment of quiet warmth before rolling back into the chill crosswind.  After leaving the bridge we went through the tunnel under 101 and descended into Sausalito.

On the first climb in Sausalito, Yana’s chain fell off.  Then it fell off again.  At the top of the hill we stopped to look at the chain but couldn’t figure out what the problem was, so we kept riding.  On the next hill, it fell off a couple more times.  I tried riding her bike, hoping to watch what it was doing, but the chain stubbornly stayed on the bike.  I couldn’t figure out what was causing the problem, so eventually I gave up and just adjusted the front derailleur to rub a little in the lowest gears, hoping the derailleur would physically block the chain from coming off the chainring.  It worked, although Yana had to put up with the rubbing noises this generated for the rest of the trip.

Marin is pretty serious about bicycles and they have a great network of bike paths.  Between Sausalito and Mill Valley, for example, we rode on a wide bike path that cut through the wetlands, far away from the traffic.  It was big and empty and the terrain was open and grassy and beautiful.  We took the path until it ended in Mill Valley, then found a twisty little street called Camino Alto that took us up and over the hill into Larkspur.  After grabbing sandwiches at a grocery store, we continued on through all the small towns along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.  The sun finally went down as we were climbing the hill outside Fairfax.

The other side of the hill is home to the San Geronimo golf course, and the road here is straight with a gentle down grade.  We were flying along this road through the dusk when I got a flat tire.  We sat down in the grass and I had just started fixing it when a friendly sheriff’s officer (or CHP?  I didn’t get a good look in the dim light) pulled up.  He checked to make sure we were ok, then made sure we knew where we were going and didn’t need any help before driving off.  It didn’t take long to fix the flat, but at this point it was getting pretty dark.  We pushed on, getting back up to speed on the slight downhill.

After passing the golf course the road winds through Samuel Taylor State Park.  The road follows a creek at the bottom of a canyon filled with redwoods.  I’ve driven here during the day and it was beautiful, with cool green light everywhere.  At night, though, it was pitch black under the canopy of trees.  We rode side by side to share each other’s headlights, taking up the entire narrow lane as it wound back and forth through the dark.  Nothing was visible outside the small pool of light from our headlights but we could listen out into the night, hearing the creek and occasionally a small waterfall as we raced past.  We pedaled on and on, curve after curve.  Finally the trees came to an end and we were at the base of the final hill.  A short climb got us to the top of Bolinas Ridge, right above the town of Olema.  Nothing but a quick descent between us and bed.

[Stats: 40 miles, 4.5 hours including supper]

Saturday

Saturday morning we were hungry and tired.  After a delicious breakfast we opted for an easy day, starting with a short ride to the farmer’s market in Point Reyes Station.  This was a small-town farmer’s market, with only a couple dozen vendors but great selection and just the right amount of quirkiness.  We were sadly too late to catch the cooking demonstration (wish our farmer’s market had that!), but not too late to eat an early lunch.  We ate some wonderfully unhealthly grilled cheese sandwiches made with local cheese.

After lunch we meandered over to Shell Beach in Inverness.  A short climb up Camino Del Mar brought us to a tiny parking lot on a hill above the beach.  There was a trail snaking down through the forest to the water which was rideable assuming a little mountain biking experience.  The switchbacks descending through the dense foliage reminded me a little of some tropical hikes in Hawaii.  At the bottom of hill the trail hit the beach and turned to sand.  Not wanting sand in our bikes or our biking shoes, we switched to sandals and parked the bikes against a hill. Shell Beach is on a small cove facing Tomales Bay so the water is very calm, not at all like the pounding waves out on Point Reyes Beach. We sat on the sand, watching children wading in the cold water and watching boats go by on the bay.

We normally could have stayed at the beach for hours, but we didn’t have anything to lay down on and our thin biking clothes weren’t enough to protect us against the chilly breeze, so we decided it was time to do more riding and headed for Mt. Vision.  The road up Mt. Vision was steep and rough.  The pavement was not broken or cracked, just rough so the whole bike vibrated as it crawled up the hill.  The road was narrow, too, without even a centerline. We had started in trees but near the top left them behind and rode through rolling hills covered with low bushes.  It was beautiful up here, with small ponds and views of Drake’s Bay down below.  The road ended without ceremony at a small power station for the nearby aircraft navigation beacon.  Weather changes quickly at Point Reyes, and as we turned around we noticed there were already more clouds forming below us; the afternoon fog was starting to form already.  We had a quick descent down through the cold ocean air, the rough pavement rattling us and our bikes.  By the bottom of the hill our hands hurt from squeezing the brakes and tingled from the cold and vibrations.

By the time we got back to Inverness we were hungry again.  Again!  It was amazing how we were continually hungry.  Cycle touring seems to require almost constant eating.  The Busy Bee Bakery was open and we’d been wanting to try their food for several years (somehow they had always been closed when we drove by).  The inside of the bakery was small and cozy, with small tables by the windows.  It would be a wonderful place to wait out a winter storm with a cup of tea and a scone, but since we were still warm and sweaty from riding we enjoyed our pastries on the bench out front.  After finishing our snack, we headed back to the inn for showers before dinner.  We were done with riding for the day, so we walked to the Olema Farmhouse where we enjoyed entirely too much food.

[Stats: 30 miles, 6 or 7 hours including many stops]

Sunday

Sunday morning it was time to get on the bikes and head home.  We opted to ride home via a slightly different route from the one we had arrived on: instead of leaving Olema via Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, we rode through Point Reyes Station then out towards Nicasio.  The road follows the creek through a small canyon and around the base of Black Mountain before wrapping around Nicasio Reservoir.  This is really beautiful country in July, with dry golden grass on all the hills and wonderful blue skies.  The hills by Nicasio were open and empty as we rolled past, then as we joined back up with Sir Francis Drake Boulevard the land started getting more populated and built up as we returned to the city.  Soon we entered Fairfax and were back to city riding, leaving the country riding behind.

While eating pizza in Fairfax, we noticed people kept walking by on the sidewalk with ice cream cones.  They were all coming from the same direction so after we finished eating we headed up the street.  Sure enough, there was a small ice cream shop a few stores down, which we never would have found except for the fact that their ice cream cones were very effective advertisements.

Somewhere between Mill Valley and Sausalito we started seeing tourists on their rented bicycles.  As we rode crowds kept getting thicker and thicker until, by the time we got to the Golden Gate bridge, the bike route was clogged with mobs of tourists swerving all over the place.  If you want to ride over the Golden Gate, I heartily recommend you do not do it on a Sunday afternoon.  The crossing was much more enjoyable Friday evening when we mostly had it to ourselves.  I finally managed to jump on the rear wheel of a faster rider and let him clear a path through the slower cyclists.

The ride from the bridge to Caltrain was much more exciting in this direction.  Because of the layout of the one-way streets, we were one street over from where we rode on Friday, and because of where the hills are we had quite a bit of downhill riding.  This was great because it meant we were as fast as the cars, and faster than the buses (several of which we passed).

Our tiredness caught up with us on the train ride home.  Neither of us had the energy to talk so we both read news and blogs on our phones.  By the time we arrived in Sunnyvale we were both thankful that we lived only a few minutes from the station.

[Stats: 50 miles, I'm not sure how long it took.  Total mileage for the weekend: 120 miles]

Appendix: Gear and Tips

I was very pleased with my Detours Toto Panniers.  I appreciate their simple, clean design.  I also found them very usable.  They are held closed by a simple magnetic clasp so it is very easy to open them to get gear.  I was actually able to fish an energy bar out of my pannier while riding!  (One small caveat: the bags I got had sharp screws protruding too far into the interior of the bag.  Detours has pretty sweet customer service, though, and sent me replacement bags)

Low gearing is great for touring.  I was borrowing a friend’s wheel with a 34-tooth cassette, and it was awesome for climbing up hills with a loaded bike.  I’ve since gone out and bought a 32-tooth cassette for my own wheels.  I’m firmly convinced that road bikes should have mountain bike gearing if they are going to be used for touring.

The Marin County Bicycle Coalition sells a bicycle map that was very helpful both while planning our route and while riding.

A towel would have been nice when we were at the beach.  Cycling clothes are not very comfortable beach attire.  Towels are bulky and heavy though, so I’m not sure there is an easy solution to this.

Putting a pair of flip-flops at the bottom of your Carridice saddlebag can give some support and prevent it from bulging down between the bars of the saddlebag support.

Biking to Work

First, a fairly simple one: Yana and I set a personal goal to ride our bikes to work 40 times this quarter. This works out to a little over 3 days per week, average. I wanted a simple chart of our progress, so I made a table with 6 columns: Mark, Yana, Date, Target, Mark’s Total, and Yana’s Total. The first two columns are for entering data, the last 4 columns calculate the data for the chart. I intentionally didn’t put the Date column first. Google Spreadsheet can only graph contiguous data, so I needed to keep the date column next to the target & totals.

The first two columns track how many days we each rode that week (1 row per week). Each day we rode, we would manually increase the count for the current week. I made their background yellow to make it more obvious where to enter new data.

The target column shows our goal on the chart so we can see how we are doing. The last two columns calculate running totals (simply a matter of adding this weeks values to last week’s totals). I charted the last 4 columns (C1:F14) using a line chart with dots, with both Row 1 and Column C as labels.

You can see that we started the quarter a little bit behind but we caught up 3 weeks ago. You can view the final spreadsheet here.

Training for a Long Hike

Last weekend, Yana and I hiked Half Dome with some friends. It’s a fairly strenuous hike: 18 miles round trip, 5000 feet of climbing at elevation. We’ve done this hike before, but this year we decided we try to semi-seriously train for it, to see if it made it easier. We started training 12 weeks before the hike with a pretty simple training plan: do a long hike on the weekends with 1 or 2 short hikes mid-week, increasing the total mileage by about 3 miles per week.

Again, I set the spreadsheet up with 1 row/week. I entered target mileages and set up an area where we could enter our actual mileages. I set up 2 charts this time: One showing our longest hike every week, and one showing our total mileage every week. Rather than trying to arrange the data I wanted to chart contiguously, I just made a 2nd sheet with formulas to rearrange the data into something more chart-friendly.


I shared this spreadsheet with our friends and updated it after every training hike (you can view it here). As you can see, we didn’t stick very closely to our training plan. It turns out hiking this much eats up a lot of time, and there were some weekends where we just couldn’t fit in a long hike. However, we still got quite a bit of training, and managed to fit a 16 mile hike in 3 weeks before Half Dome. Seeing our actual mileage so far below the target mileage provided good motivation to go for training hikes. The hike up Half Dome went really well: we were faster than last time, and had more energy at the end of the hike.

It was incredible. We started at 3 AM, so the first part of the climb offered views of the moon high over San Jose. The air was cool, a nice temperature for climbing. After gaining the ridge we left the lights of San Jose behind and rode on through the darkness, past grassy hills and scattered oaks. The road twists through two valleys, and as we dropped into each low spot, we sped through the icy cold air that had settled there, before reaching the warmer air on the other side. The black sky slowly gave way to a dark blue, the moon seemed to get larger as it set over the Santa Cruz mountains. Coming around the last corner before the top we could finally see out to the eastern horizon which was glowing the pre-dawn colors. As the sun came up we watched the light flow out over the sleeping hills below. After eating breakfast with Piaw’s friend (who graciously got up to serve us in her house) we rode back down through the bright sunlight and rapidly warming air.

The ride, in a few photos.

The ride, as a GPS track (.gpx format)

The ride, by the numbers:

• Start time: 3 AM
• Number of riders: 5 to 9 (some started later)
• Total Distance: 34.8 miles
• Total climbing: 3814 feet
• Time to the top: 3 hours
• Total time (including breakfast): 6 hours
• Number of flat tires: 4

That’s right: 4 flats between the different riders. After about 15 minutes of climbing I stopped to take a picture and when I got back on my bike to catch up to the group, I had a flat tire. This was rather demoralizing, so early in the ride, in the dark, alone. When I finally caught up with them, they were stopped changing another flat, so I didn’t feel so bad. When a third rider got a flat 10 minutes down the road, it started being ridiculous, and by the fourth flat we were counting our spare tubes. We finally got caught by some riders who started later, and they told us that the side of the road where we had parked was covered with goathead thorns. We carefully checked our tires (found 1 thorn in Yana’s tire that hadn’t punctured it yet) and that was the end of the flats.

This ride was easier than we expected. The weekend before the ride, Yana and I weren’t sure we could do it, so we went out and rode Moody/Page Mill. Surprisingly, the longer Mt. Hamilton turned out to be easier. I think this was primarily because Mt. Hamilton has a shallower grade. Page Mill is steep enough that I really had to push to keep moving, while on Mt. Hamilton I was able to keep a comfortable cadence (and lower heart rate).

Lessons learned:

• It is easy to miss thorns in the dark. Double-check your tires before you start, and stay on the pavement.
• Patches don’t take much space, make sure you have lots (in case you miss the thorns in the dark…).
• Helmet-mounted headlamps are very helpful for changing flats in the dark.
• Don’t push on the last mile of climb when there’s still some climbing on the ride back.
• Slope is more important than distance in determining how hard a ride is.
• My eTrex GPS doesn’t save tracks at full resolution, it simplifies them first. I will get a better track by pulling the active log rather than a saved track.