Tag: East Bay

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The biking along Skyline and Shepherd Canyon were more challenging than usual after the storms: This was a smooth bike trail the last time I was here: Still great views:

I moved to Oakland and bought a cargo bike. Oakland’s been very walkable and bikeable so far (with a good grocery store, hardware store, coffeehouse, garden center, transit centers, and bike shop all within 10 minute rides). While I’ve been idly looking at and researching cargo bikes for many years (including admiring the range of designs I’d see in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, or the Supermarket Street Sweep), I could never really justify the expense. Now that I’m living somewhere a bit more spread out than SF (and with, for the first time, a yard and room for gardening and woodworking), and with my motorcycle retired (no registration, insurance, gas the past few years), when I saw an Xtracycle Edgerunner for auction at a fund raiser for a good cause, I made an impulsive decision and rode it home that night. ...

I’ve been riding a variant on this 30-mile loop once or twice a year for 6 or 7 years and it never gets old. From Pleasant Hill or Walnut Creek BART along off-road canalside trails, then up the long but not steep uphill of McEwen between rolling hills of flowers and cows, down to the quirky Port Costa for a picnic and drink among pallets, potholes, and old theatre signs outside the Warehouse Cafe, then back along the twist, car-free Carquinez Scenic Drive along Carquinez Strait: ...

Striking out solo on a Sunday to explore trails in the East Bay hills, from Nimitz Way -> Fire Trail #3 -> San Pablo Ridge Trail -> Belgum Trail -> Wildcat Creek Trail: ...

Roadblock (riding in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park). Reminds me of 5 years ago.

On a ride with six friends: low tide, egrets, a large hawk, industrial detours, smooth paved waterfront bike paths, and some excellent beer, bluegrass, and mexican food with fresh-made tortillas.

An all-afternoon ride from Fremont BART to the shoreline, under the Dumbarton bridge, then up along the water all the way to San Leandro– riding on levees stretching out into the Bay, past green-tinted salt evaporation ponds, pelicans, egrets, herons, vultures, and a red fox, through landscapes moon-subdued in palette but with occasional brilliant splashes of color, on paved paths and dirt… a great day. Riding into the fierce, relentless headwind slowed us down, and the occasional sections of bone-rattling gravel numbed the hands, but we all made it around the levees, on trails where we saw few other humans. ...

I’ve done this general ride too many times to remember over the years. This was an especially good day of it– lush green hills instead of the usual dead grass, sunny but not too hot, a children’s lemonade stand, a group of friends, a picnic and some British beer at The Warehouse, and my first time riding on Carquinez Scenic Drive since its renovation (though to be honest, I sort of miss its previous painted, crumbling-into-the-bay state and the 50 feet of hillside dirt path you used to need to traverse).