South Bay Loop Ride 2010

I used to ride my bike all the time as a kid, but not for particularly long distances. As I got older, I took longer trips, but not as often. The longest was in high school, and Google Maps now tells me that it was about 40 miles. I figure I'm bigger and stronger and more independent now, so I should be able to do a longer ride.

It's fun that there are so many bike paths around the bay. Unfortunately, Google doesn't know that some of them are on private property, so I had to improvise a bit. Stupid Moffett Field.

It is very very flat around the bay (being sea level and all). The only elevation is bridges and underpasses. The Dumbarton Bridge (highway 84) is pretty high, but it's such a gradual rise that I only had to go down a few gears. I was hoping to ride around the Coyote Hills a bit, but I had already had to backtrack enough that I decided to take the shortest way home instead.

The various cities and counties have clear goals to link up as many bike paths and bike lanes as they can. A lot of them are stymied by private property, but they're still doing pretty well.

They just finished the San Tomas/Aquino trail last year. It is nice.

Unfortunately, I forgot to change the batteries in my camera, so I wasn't able to take any other pictures.

My right knee started to hurt after about 20 miles, and it was very unhappy after 55, but it's feeling better now. We'll see about soreness tomorrow.

Big Basin 2010

Jamshid hiked to Buzzard's Roost in Big Basin. It was a nice hike.

Portola 2010

Jamshid and I improvised a hike in Portola Redwoods. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that after we paid our day-use fee, we asked the ranger to recommend a hike in the range of ~6 miles.

It turns out that Portola is a dense web of trails that also connect with trails in other parks. I don't really remember which trails we used, except that we had to briefly leave the park (and the map), where we connected with the Old Haul Road, which brought us back into the park.

We also took a spur trail to the Old Tree. It is large, but that's hard to show in a photo.

Los Trancos, Monte Bello, & Skyline Ridge

Jamshid and I did a hike.

We did a 2-mile loop in Los Trancos, which we followed with 1.9 miles through Monte Bello, which lead to 1.0 mile in Skyline Ridge around the lake, and then another 2.2 miles through Monte Bello back to the parking area.

It was OK.