Nato’s Bike Trip

After my previous failure to ride from San Francisco to my home in Santa Rosa, I resolved to try a similar challenge and accomplish it one day.
Note that after the completion of the challenge, I retroactively defined a day as a 30 hour period.
I left Santa Rosa at 3:30 PM on Friday. I had planned on leaving a bit earlier, but you’d be amazed how hard it is to psyche ones self up for a ride of this sort. I spent about two hours riding to Jason’s
place in Petaluma with a dinner of orange chicken in my pack, minus the chicken. That is, I had the oil and flour and oranges and ginger and garlic and rice vinegar and molasses and rice and soy sauce, but no chicken. Jason would be providing that, at least that was the plan. Jason had told me that they normally do dinner at 5:30 so the kids can eat and so that he and Kelly don’t get too cranky (they’re
hypoglycemic and require metabolization of food at regular intervals). Knowing that children’s hunger and my hosts’ lack of grumpiness was depending upon my prompt arrival and rapid food preparation, I
boogie-jammed down the road. I plowed along stony point road for about 14 miles. It was a chilly
day, but the sun was out and the hills were green. The farms on either side were well stocked with cows and goats and lambs and old rusty cars and derelict boats. There were few hills, which was good
because my bike doesn’t really go up hills well. It’s a 23 kg, single-speed swiss messenger bicycle from the 1950’s. Here’s my current favorite article on this type of bike:
http://www.63xc.com/stefs/sabike.htm

It’s huge and clunky but the ride is comfortable and reasonably smooth. It corners like a champ, and it’s indestructible. Anyway, I got off stony point road in Petaluma and cruised the remaining four miles over to Jason’s place, getting there at 5:30, just as he, Kelly and the kids were arriving. We found that the chicken that was supposed to be in the freezer was instead still at the supermarket, so Jason went to get it while Kelly cleaned up the kitchen and I started making it messy again. We cooked up the grub, consumed, chatted, and finally played a game of ‘Puerto Rico’, which is a lovely way to pass the time.
Jason and I stayed up late futzing with Lisp. It is the uberhax0r programming language, and it is intially nonintuitive. Ben arrived late and then we all crashed out. In the morning I arose a bi t before 8, packed up, hopped on the bike and cruised down Lakeville Highway. This was another fantastic ride. It was reasonably flat, with the light commercial/industrial buildings rapidly yielding to more farmland as well as a wastewater recycling project that looked lovely, really. It looked marshy, with birds flying around and tall grasses obscuring whatever grossness might have been at the root of it all.
I eventually turned onto highway 37, heading toward Novato. When I was doing my planning for this trip (a huge change from the last time I did this – I actually planned this one) I noticed that on highway 37 there is a bridge over the Petaluma river. It’s ugly. There is no bike lane. There is no pedestrian walkway. I just hoped that there wouldn’t be that many people heading over it at that time in the morning. My hopes were smashed to smithereens. There was not enough traffic to slow cars down, but more than enough to make it unnerving to be heading up the bridge at 3 miles per hour, and have traffic blasting past at around 60. When the semi passed me it was particularly harrowing. And then it was over. I coasted down the other side and breezed on in to town. It was then just a long cruise down a couple city streets to San Rafael.
Some background: Last time I tried this kind of thing, I was northbound and ended up in San Rafael and it was dark and cold and Adrian gave me directions home, but it was too late and dark and I was too tired to continue so I bailed and asked Sahaj to pick me up and he did and I collapsed at the end of it all. This time, I arrived in San Rafael at about 10:15, and I saw the name of the street “Los Ranchitos” that Adrian had suggested I take northbound and I almost jumped up screaming because I was so excited to be as far south as I had been north before. And the sun was out and the few white puffy clouds were drifting across the sky. And I was making time. It was beautiful.
In San Rafael came the only involuntary dismount. I was heading up a road called “Altena” near the 101-580 interchange. When I say I was heading up the road, I mean at a 35 degree angle. The road was a single-lane residential road in the hills. It was preposterous. My body weight was completely inadequate to push the pedals and I found myself standing on the pedals, pulling upwards on the handlebars and giving myself a massive ab workout to make even the smallest, slowest forward progress. Each pedal push was its own distinct event. Push Left. Push Right. Push Left. Push Right. And then I heard a car coming. I tried to pull over to the side of the road to let it pass, but it was so hard just to keep moving and just after the car squeaked by and howled on up the hill I ended up sideways with the bike on my leg. It wasn’t bad, but there was no way I could get started again on the slope. So I started pushing the bike. I passed a number of houses before I caught sight of a lovely maroon Karmann Ghia that looked just a few years older than mine, perhaps a ‘65 or ‘63. I stared at it as I pushed up the hill. A scrawny guy in a mullet and white t-shirt across the street asked me how it was going. I paused for a moment, caught my breath, looked up the steep grade, and then back down the twisting road. ‘Uphill,’ I replied, and pushed on. I eventually reached the top of the road, turned onto Tiburon rd and then coasted downhill. I tucked my arms in, squinted and felt the wind slap my pants and shirt around. I squinted out the tears and began to slow down.
I arrived in, and passed through, Corte Madera uneventfully. In mill valley I got on the mill valley dog run bike path and took it down into sausalito. I stopped in the shade of some eucalyptus at the back of a bike shop around 11:45 and took off my shoes. I messaged my friend Elaine who I knew lived nearby and she responded a short while later. She and her boyfriend Halden were just grabbing some sandwiches and beer and heading to the beach, so I joined ‘em. First we stashed my bike on their houseboat and then Halden drove us out to point reyes where it was way too cloudy and cold to satisfactorially hang out. So we tried stinson beach. But it was too busy. I don’t know exactly where it was that we ended up, but it was nice and quiet and the grass was short and soft. We consumed the sandwiches and drank a couple beers. We shmoozed. There was some insect’s molted skeleton and Elaine put it next to what she claimed was a partially-digested rat stomach. Those were the two gross things in the area, and they belonged together.
Then we went up mount Tam with a frisbee that got tossed a total of about 6 times. The view of the city was quite impressive. Towers grew out of the city like those ugly hairy bits that grow out of mold.
We returned to the houseboat, listening to Michael Jackson for at least some portion of the journey. We hung out and watched/listened to humorous comedians for a while. Then, with the sky darkening and my mother guilting me for not showing up for the dinner she’d made, we cleaned out the trunk of Halden’s car, wedged my bike in there, tied the trunk closed and drove in the most aggressive way possible to the train station. I hopped on my train at 9:00 after a half-hour wait and rode to my
mom’s place from the train station, getting to the door a bit before 11. I was hungry and had some artichoke, spaghetti, salad and a short game of cards before retiring for the evening.
In the interest of giving scale and a general overview, here’s the whole path I took on the bike. (copy-paste into a browser window)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=14655717546098166184,38.425250,-122.728379%3B12485557894143821564,38.426989,-122.740639%3B15824155124597933828,38.409270,-122.741410%3B13473854816017774694,38.308019,-122.729447%3B2850743013775296843,38.244112,-122.644501%3B15807904171874523527,38.218937,-122.561214%3B16230648796057006691,38.063599,-122.536986%3B11475301571653696867,38.049266,-122.532870%3B12643887849480937262,38.030337,-122.545273%3B3448928420562138351,38.018396,-122.550431%3B31232880784063519,38.000688,-122.542370%3B10899036452726038174,37.982895,-122.524082%3B9321044270021461505,37.968521,-122.523593%3B12159698709845628893,37.956144,-122.509729%3B5157201332970482089,37.937084,-122.518840%3B16392631158536466777,37.924884,-122.518183%3B3131567049854836275,37.904539,-122.525596%3B16788609346393183674,37.892191,-122.528633%3B1859249152691427885,37.859980,-122.486730%3B11845484845057858106,37.835624,-122.484696&saddr=W+Ave+%4038.425250,+-122.728379&daddr=Sebastopol+Rd+%4038.426989,+-122.740639+to:Stony+Point+Rd+%4038.409270,+-122.741410+to:Stony+Point+Rd+%4038.308019,+-122.729447+to:Petaluma+Blvd+N+%4038.244112,+-122.644501+to:Lakeville+Hwy+%4038.218937,+-122.561214+to:Alameda+Del+Prado+%4038.063599,+-122.536986+to:Unknown+road+%4038.049266,+-122.532870+to:Las+Gallinas+Ave+%4038.030337,+-122.545273+to:Las+Gallinas+Ave+%4038.018396,+-122.550431+to:Los+Ranchitos+Rd+%4038.000688,+-122.542370+to:Lincoln+Ave+%4037.982895,+-122.524082+to:Lincoln+Ave+%4037.968521,+-122.523593+to:Albion+St+%4037.956144,+-122.509729+to:Tamal+Vista+Blvd+%4037.937084,+-122.518840+to:Casa+Buena+Dr+%4037.924884,+-122.518183+to:Ashford+Ave+%4037.904539,+-122.525596+to:Miller+Ave+%4037.892191,+-122.528633+to:Bridgeway+%4037.859980,+-122.486730+to:37.859405,-122.486572&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=19&sz=13&via=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18&sll=37.858591,-122.454472&sspn=0.095279,0.160675&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=38.101063,-122.353363&spn=0.759707,1.2854&z=10
If there are places on the map where it looks like I was on 101, It is because I was on a bike path near 101 and google maps doesn’t acknowledge bike paths as traversable terrain. Due to this, take some
of the route info with a grain of salt. I spent a fair bit of time on bike paths. If you see a path near a road, it’s likely I was on the path, not the road.