Tag: Retrospect

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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… ...

Along the lines of the 2012 bikeit recap, some of the most memorable rides from 2013 were: Organizing a dumplings-by-bike tour for friends and strangers that pulled in about 45(!) people and was a great day. A Dogpatch/Bayview history ride I posted publicly through the SF Bike Coalition (and met new people on, including one person I’ve continued riding with), along scenic dirt bike paths and past graffiti, goats, and other strange sights: ...

2012 was another great year for biking, with friends, on many new adventures. Looking back, the highlights for me were: An overnight 120-mile ride to Russian River Brewery with a big group, tasting Pliny the Younger, staying in a retro motel, merging a few different social groups, and a dramatic conclusion. Bringing my bike on a trip to Chicago and taking an overnight trip to Wisconsin with a few friends who live there, on mostly dedicated paved paths, braving flooding and angry birds. ...

Bay Area bike maps– a few-paragraph review. Google Maps and OpenStreetMap both have decent bike path coverage in the Bay Area, but they’re not perfect, and they often don’t show hills or road conditions. They’re also both weak when it comes to off-road bike trails. Here are a few notes on the other bike maps I’ve picked up over the years (starting in the upper left and going clockwise): Bay Trail maps (6-map set, though I’ve read there’s a single-map version now as well). These cover the present and planned multiuse paths that run around the Bay, from SF down the peninsula, up the East Bay, even to Richmond. They’re an interesting set, with trivia on the back, and useful for finding hidden little parks in nooks along the bay… however, they don’t have bike route coverage once you get away from the Bay, and many sections of bay trail aren’t fully connected. So I’ve only used them a few times. ...

[ ignore this post if you only follow the blog for ride planning and photos– below’s just a rare bit of personal New Year’s self-indulgence ] I biked a fair amount a decade ago, fell off the wagon for a few years, then three years ago started organizing rides (on this blog and a separate mailing list): for fun, to catch up with friends and meet new people, to explore more of the greater Bay Area at the more observant pace a bike allows, to get in better shape (I’ve never enjoyed going to the gym), and because I knew scheduling rides with other people would put pressure on me to actually make them happen and get organized on the mapping/planning front. ...

For anyone who reads this through an RSS reader or so on and wouldn’t have noticed this– a few months ago I added a static “Favorite Rides” page. People occasionally ask me where I like to ride, so I figured I’d keep a quick list, with links to maps and photos. Carry on.

Yesterday I biked for about 13 hours (with breaks), maybe 200km (120 miles), twice as far as I’d planned. The weather was perfect, I had a tailwind, navigating was easy, and I was in a euphoric cycling state of mind. So when I reached my planned campground around 4, I kept going… and only when it started to get dark after 10 (solstice, moderately high latitude) did I think about stopping. I even found myself idly thinking about biking all night because I was in such a good mood– but fortunately common sense took over before I did something that crazy (I was out of food and water, only had a small light, canal ferries wouldn’t have been running). It’s a sickness, I tell you!