A post gap year cycling update

I have a rather strange  difficult to explain hobby that combines my love of travel with the challenge of finding the most obscure routes to random destinations, acquiring air miles and paying the least amount of money to do so. I’m not the only one: there are web forums where similar minded  people like me swap routings and talk in acronyms all the time. We also know most of the airport three letter codes off by heart, so it is never Heathrow or San Francisco but LHR or SFO. . If you have a spare couple of weeks and a sense of humour, I’ll happily explain how it all works.

So talking of SFO, my bizarre route of this little trip was London-Inverness-London-Helsinki-New York-Los Angeles-San Francisco. The fare rules stipulated that you needed a minimum 3 night stay in your destination, so using my love of cycling seemed like a perfect way of filling in the three nights. I say the word “my” as Sian can’t take holidays at this time of year, so I was on my tod.

Inverness at stupid o'clock on a cold morning.

And the cool departures board at Helsinki Airport. Not quite
so stupid o'clock

I/We have been to San Francisco a few times before so I was used to the layout and the way it works. What is new to me though is the very slick Uber pickup point from the airport. You get a little slider on the app that allows you to alter the colour of a light in the drivers windscreen so that you can recognise your ride. I chose Deep Purple, in honour of the rock demi-gods.

Cycle hire is a big thing in SF- although mainly for one day hires and the obligatory trip across the Golden Gate bridge. Which is what Sian and I did on a tandem some 13 years ago. It didn’t end well I’m afraid – I failed to warn her of a pot hole and she jarred her back, using that as an excuse to literally put her feet up and let me do all the work. I haven’t heard the end of it since.

So I picked up my bike after a short walk through a park known as the Presidio- past the Lucas Arts building and the fountain of Yoda, to which an elite band of tourists were paying homage to . I’d organised bike rental  all on line( hallelujah to Tim Berners Lee), and paid $120 for 3 days for a decent, although not top of the range, Cannondale carbon bike. They had also sorted out the correct pedals, and the only thing I needed was my shoes – helmet and puncture repair kit provided. Having experienced double puncture time in Surrey, I did express a bit of alarm that I only had enough kit for one puncture. As I was intending to go reasonably far afield, the co worker ( you don’t get members of staff/ shop assistants in the US) gave me an extra CO2 cylinder and box of patches. Which I promptly lost on my way back to the hotel. 

Black mean machine. Good brakes which is just as well given some
of the streets in San Francisco.

Resting at the fountain of Yoda.

Fortunately a light bike, as hoiking it up 3 levels of stairs to get to my room was easy- and being one of these motel style places, I just walked the bike into the room. Now, my grown up person said “ You have just come a long way and are probably jet lagged. Don’t rush to go out on the bike.” Fortunately my inner self exclaimed “Sod that for a laugh”, and off I went. Strava has a pretty good local guide section for various cities, and San Francisco was no exception. Laughing at a mere 30km route, I  boldly opted for a 40km route. 

‘Twas a bit overcast, but with shorts, jersey and top felt perfectly comfortable. What it was though, was windy. Anyone that associates California with endless sunshine and warmth ( possibly from listening to too many Beach Boys songs) is mistaken. That Pacific can be fricking freezing. 

 

Not many California girls around here.

I called it an orientation ride. Roads are good generally, although there are intermittent pot holes from hell that threaten to swallow your entire bike if you are not careful. What Is different, of course, are the obligatory stop signs. If you haven’t driven in the US, these are essentially their roundabouts, where you have to physically stop at the white line. There is then (generally) a polite “I got here first, so I will move off first” kind of interaction. It does mean it’s a lot safer for cyclists. The flip side of this is of course having to lose all your hard earned speed every time you come to a junction. And this is what I did for at least the first hour.

Until I realised that most cylists ignored the rule, and just used stop signs as give ways. Technically in California this is illegal, but apparently it is legal in Idaho, and is therefore known as the Idaho rule. I’m not sure that the police would necessarily stop you, but I did generally make sure that I didn’t  apply the rule in front of a police cruiser.

A novel "hazard" - driverless cars. They make quite
twitchy little movements making them stand out from
human drivers. There was a driver at the wheel - but I think
quite a quantum leap to being confident to let it handle
everything.

I pointed and asked for a "pain aux raisin" and got the
blank "no idea what you are talking about mate" look.
"Oh", he said,"You mean a raisin swirl?".............

There are lots and lots of marked cycle paths – not the useless ones that you get in the UK where you are expected to constantly get up and down onto pavements, but much more akin to the Dutch ones, where you even get your own traffic light. Couple with generous hard shoulders and a lack of heavy lorries and I didn’t have a single “that was a bit close” experience. Cycling road markings are plentiful to remind motorists that we might be around, and a lot of signs saying that cyclists are entitled to use the full lane. Whether the numerous wide passes were genuine courtesy or a fear of having the pants sued off you for hitting a cyclist I know not.

Next day I set off over the Golden Gate bridge to do a loop north of SF and complete the monthly club challenge of a 100km ride. A bright and early start meant that the bridge was pretty clear of other users ( more on that later!) and after clearing the bridge carried on north through the touristy town of Sausilito, and then to some less manic towns like Fairfax. It was, a total treat; quite sharply undulating, but warm and spring flowers out in abundance. The climbing did mean that the first 25km ticked away a bit slower than anticipated, but the experience easily made up for that.  

A pretty iconic view, complete with deliberate cyclist for
perspective.

The early morning view of the cycle and
pedestrian path. Before the hordes had descended.....

Fairly typical of the scenery and the roads.

Says it all. Pacific coastal road all the way
down to the Mexican border

As always, you pass oodles of decent looking coffee stops on the basis of “let’s get as much of this done as possible before stopping” and after a couple more climbs reached the half way point, Point Reyes. Well, if you are looking for hip California, you need go no further. An abundance of flower painted VW Campervans, a very organic bakery ( so organic that even the coffee stirrers were made of spaghetti) and a long haired hippy ( am I allowed to use that term nowadays?) strumming his guitar outside. Couple that with a large slice of pizza and warm sunshine and I was very happy thank you very much.

Hippy, bike, spotted dustbin and a cool vibe.

Obligatory post pizza selfie

One reason for getting up early was that it was forecast for the wind to get up, but rather fortuitously by the time it had done so I was heading back on the return section, and got a pretty good  tail wind for a bit down by the coast. Which made me forget, briefly, about the 5km 8% climb up to the top of Mount Tam. What I realised at that point was my bike was missing a decent granny gear and it took a while to get used to the slow cadence you need to chunk your way up the hill. Fortunately there was loads of shade from the redwood trees that decorate this landscape, and the peak started to come into range on my Garmin. 

Glorious coastal section, complete with basking
elephant seals and wading birds.

This I thought was a great idea, until I
opened the box and found a rusty allen key set
and one perished inner tube. More take than give
methinks.

Pretty well downhill/level from then. Just waiting at the lights, and I hear an English voice saying “Is that Woking in Surrey then?”, referring to the club jersey I was wearing. Turned out he was from Kingston and here on work, but using a day off to do the exact same route as I did. So we chatted about the Surrey hills etc until the lights changed to green, and he shot off. Well, he was much younger than me.

The only downside, and not entirely unexpected, was the chaos on the return trip back over the Golden Gate bridge. The tourists had all appeared in hordes – walkers, tandem riders, riders with no sense of balance, riders with no sense of what might be behind them. Oh, and the randomly guided torpedo that is the dog. So no chance of soaking up what is an iconic sight as I navigate my way through this lot. Including people on bikes who just slam on the brakes to stop  and take a picture on a designated cycle path. 

Ironically I took this on the way back - and just coincidentally
got a gap in the crowds.

And then back via the final coffee stop of the day – the Four Barrels coffee place. Well this place is so hip, that it doesn’t even have a name outside. Presumably if you are hip, you just know where it is. I am most certainly not, so had to cycle past it on at least three occasions before realising where it was. And then a bewildering choice of organic and vegan wholesomeness. I believe that I had a blueburry and guji berry muffin, whatever the latter are.

The unnamed but remarkably popular coffee shop

Passing through the Golden Gate park. This is a frizby
golf tournament. Competitors trundle little suitcases behind
them that contain different frizby's for length, accuracy etc -
just like real golf. They don't call them frizby's of course - just
mere discs.

So there you go – not officially part of a gap year, but cycling in a different part of the world. 

Now back to reality.