|
||
|
|
|
|
Actually, the trip starts from Millbrae, next to the San Francisco airport. We bike up into San Francisco to dip our wheels in the Pacific at Golden Gate State Beach. Then across the Golden Gate Bridge, and around the bay to the north. "WRS" is the corporate headquarters of my employer, Wind River Systems, in Alameda. If you skip ahead to day 51 or day 52, you'll see the Nashua NH office where I actually work, marked as "WORK". I flew out on Wednesday to visit friends and family. Unfortunately, I didn't have excess vacation time. Actually, I'm going to be borrowing vacation time, and the last week or so is going to be unpaid leave. So I worked out of the Alameda office on Thursday and Friday. Met the group today. 25 riders are going all the way through. 9 more riders are starting with us, but dropping off at various points, and we pick up other riders along the way. We have three Dutchmen: Fred from Rotterdam, John from Groningen, and Daco from Amsterdam. Plus one Brit: Andy from Derby (pronounced "Darby") in the Midlands. Dan from North Carolina has a prosthetic leg. The rest of us are not as outwardly noteworthy, but I'm sure we'll soon display our uniqueness. My roommates are Andy, the aforementioned Brit, and John, from Folsom CA. Andy's been out of work since December, and came here from an extended trip to Australia and New Zealand. He's never been to the States before, but what better way to really experience it?
There was a solid mile of climbing right at the start, up to Skyline Blvd. In all, we did 3300 ft of climbing today, mostly at the beginning. The ceremonial wheel dip was at the Golden Gate State Beach. I wasn't planning to immerse my drive-train, but oh well. The real problem was that I overloaded the rack trunk, and I couldn't easily carry the bike over the sand, so I rolled the wet wheels through the sand, and spent the next 20 minutes cleaning sand out of my brakes. Cleaned the rest of the bike back at the hotel. We ran into the AIDS Ride or something going south on Rt 35 while we were going north - hundreds of bike, numerous bikers in costume. I knew the fog was bad when I couldn't see the other side of Rt 35. In Daly City, we biked right past the stable where my coworker Lisa and I rented horses to go riding on the beach last year. There was also a triathlon from Golden Gate Beach to the bridge. The police re-routed us around part of the race, but we ended up joining it on the climb to the bridge. Suddenly people were cheering us, saying things like "you're almost there!" But we're on our way to New Hampshire. First sag stop was at the far end of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was with Julie, Kathy, and Cindy, and we were the last group out of the beach stop, so I was mighty surprised to find that we were one of the first groups into the sag. I think a lot of people got lost. ("SAG" stands for "Support and Gear." Or "Stuff and Go," because some people just grab a few granola bars, and get back on the road.) Julie was our leader today, through various permutations of "us". She's one of the stronger riders, she doesn't let anything stop her, and, most importantly, she has a handlebar holder for the cue sheets. Today's cue sheet was 3 pages of text, plus 7 maps. Sausolito looks pretty, but we didn't stop. Likewise San Rafael (pronounced "San Rafel"). Biked right past the gates of San Quentin Prison. Lunch at Jack in the Box in Ignacio, because it was the last food before Vallejo (about 20 miles on). San Rafael would have been much better. Spent a while on Rt 37, which is both narrow and busy. Got on west-bound, when we meant to get on east-bound. After a lot of deliberation, we ended up running across the highway, and jumping the guardrail on the median. In Vallejo, we passed a bunch of signs that just said "America", with arrows. It turns out that America is a subdivision. Insert punchline here. Or maybe that is the punchline.
There was a cameraman from ESPN-2 filming us today, for a piece on Dan. He's going to be joining us again on Thursday, and then I guess they're filing the story. 5 riders rode in about 7:30. They didn't get too far lost, but Jason had two flats, and Carol had one, in the first 10 miles. They hadn't even gotten to the beach by the time everyone else left. And so it went for them - more flats, more troubles. They got to the first sag stop at the bridge, while we were at the second sag in San Rafael. |
|
We had fog and drizzle and climbing and flats and sun and heat and
cross-winds and everything today.
McGary Rd in Fairfield was closed to traffic after the earthquake and is
emphatically fenced off. Fenced all the way across, with a "No
Trespassing" sign at the far end. But that's where we were going, so
we slipped around the fence at one end, and under the fence at the
other end.