Tag: Favorite

Ten years ago I’d go on a 70 or 80 mile ride to Santa Rosa for a beer at Russian River Brewing… but I’m not feeling anywhere near that strong these days. But I’d been musing for a while about some sort of Russian River area ride on some bike paths I’d wanted to scope out, assisted by the newer Marin/Sonoma SMART train. One transit-heavy way to do this could be to take BART to El Cerrito del Norte, change to Golden Gate Transit bus #40 from that station to the San Rafael Transit Center, and hop on the SMART train there… but there are some timing logistics to make work: ...

A few friends had been interested in doing a multi-night bike camping trip in the Bay Area before one of them moved out of town. I happened to be up in Guerneville for a few days, so we schemed to meet up there with camping gear and ride back to SF (a friend with a van who was heading up North for the weekend dropped them off in Guerneville to meet me). ...

I think I first heard about ‘Old Caz’ (Old Cazadero Road) when reading a recap of someone’s 300km (yes, 180 mile) randonneur ride that included it. That’s… ambitious. I haven’t been biking much due to pandemic sluggishness and malaise, but I was going up to Guerneville for the weekend with friends, so I brought my bike and set out to do a much smaller loop that included the mythical Old Caz. I’ve been gradually biking on more gravel and forest roads (just with my normal bike) and enjoying it… ...

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Three times makes a tradition– after last year, I had to do it again– organize a bicycle tour of my favorite dumpling shops for friends and strangers through the SF Bike Coalition (picking up hundreds of dumplings as takeout to eat in a nearby park). I spent the previous weekend scouting, test-riding, and test-eating, and put together a route combining low-key roads, paved off-road paths through Golden Gate Park, and riding along the ocean… with stops for last year’s group favorite (pan fried pork buns and ‘soup dumplings’ from Dumpling Kitchen, eaten in a small park nestled above Stern Grove), the chicken and Chinese spinach dumplings from Kingdom of Dumpling (most notable for the intensely pleasurable fiery orange chili sauce) ferried all the way to a strip of trees and benches at Judah and Great Highway, and new-to-the-ride Shanghai Dumpling King for the eponymous dumplings and ‘dessert’ in the form of sweet BBQ pork buns plus a few other sweet dumplings from across the street, eaten in a nearby playground. ...

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… ...

Saturday I organized a third “SF Bicycle Dumpling Tour“ (year 1: friends, year 2: public) for about 50 people. Good food, weather, and a casual 15-mile bike ride around the city, with a few hills…. A few photos I took or people on the ride sent me: Pork and chive dumplings arriving in the park by bike: For the $10 registration fee (definitely a zero-profit endeavor) you got all the dumplings you could eat, a low-tech copy-and-paste ride booklet (map, directions, trivia, and a dumpling recipe), and some useful tools… ...

[ Finally posting a map and photos from a great group ride organized by K back in October ]: Amtrak to Sacramento with our bikes, then two leisurely days of riding back to BART via the Sacramento river delta. With drawbridges (and an impromptu tour of a control room), birds at night, a quaint old-timey hotel, a ferry, and old-town California. The route (about 95 miles, click through for a detailed map): ...

My second year bike camping for a three-day weekend in Point Reyes: eight of us rode up lugging camping gear, braving the hilly Four Corners / Panoramic / Highway 1 route, and admiring the views. , The blackberries were out in full force. We filled up a whole container for breakfast the next morning: Oyster break in Olema: ...