The following articles were featured in Cycle California Magazine.
2022
Alone in the SAG van, totally gassed having biked down the Alpine Lake turnaround, almost 34 miles from returning to Markleeville, my decision was whether or not to take the SAG or try to ride my way back. SAG stands for “support and gear,” but it also is shorthand for the “SAG wagon.”
The paved Stevens Creek Trail in Mountain View was originally named on March 25, 1776, by Spanish explorer Anza for an Italian Franciscan friar, Guiseppe Desa, whose native town of Copertino is located near the end of Italy’s boot heel. Guiseppe in English is Joseph, which as San Jose remains the name of the nearby pueblo. Elisha Stephens created a ranch upstream on Cupertino Creek, which then took his name, misspelled as “Stevens,” but not before a settlement used Cupertino as its name.
Joe Shami began biking at age 57 in 1992. In July 2008, he started weekly Sunday rides up Mt. Diablo, regardless of weather. Accounts vary but at least 600 weeks is agreed upon and up to 615 consecutive weeks. Allowing for 52.14 weeks per year, the streak covered 11 years and 9 months.
2021
As I neared the Woodfords former Pony Express Remount Station at 3 p.m., my goal seemed assured. I had already done both sides of Monitor Pass and the front of Ebbetts Pass, now headed toward the Carson Pass summit some 20 miles ahead. This was Saturday, July 18, 2020, one week after the now cancelled official Death Ride 2020 date…
Sometimes in biking those areas far from traffic and pristine you can forget bicycling can be a way to explore and enjoy more than redwood groves and ocean views. Nick Peterson, Jim Zavagno and myself embarked in September 2020 on two bike journeys within a couple of weeks to four Bay Area missions. We chose those landmarks not to celebrate or honor the missions but rather because the sites are centuries-old and historically familiar. However, we found that three of the missions have been completely rebuilt.
2020
With lots of time these days, I’ve listed my favorite Greater Bay Area roads for each alphabet letter, with a preferential nod to those close to my home near Arastradero Road. Here’s the list…
My friend, Jym Clendenin, upon turning 80 in the summer of 2019 expressed to his biking circle about wanting to do 80 miles and 8,000 feet of climbing. That would be the equivalent of twice biking Mt. Hamilton Road up and back from Alum Park Road. Biking to the observatory once is a challenge—twice in the same day would be very…
2019
In 1845 George Donner, a wealthy farmer, twice widowed, decided to sell his property and take his current wife and daughters from his two most recent marriages to Mexico. At age 62, when most men were settled, he was venturing the wild Indian lands headed toward a foreign country, leaving behind contact with adult children from his…
2018
Well off the beaten path is Rancho Cañada del Oro, or the Valley of Gold Ranch, another open space preserve. It’s a very romantic name but a recent one, not that of the original Mexican land grant. The cañada is tucked away in Morgan Hill and drained by Llagas Creek. Llagas is Spanish for “sores” and is this case refers to…
Sure, you can load your water bottles with powdered electrolytes and stuff your back pockets with all varieties of gels or protein bars. But sometimes a ride just needs a booster rocket in the form of a doughnut, also efficiently spelled as donut. According to the Smithsonian, the doughnut was developed by the loving mother of a New England ship captain, who actually put nuts in the soft center of a small round cake. This has evolved into what you crave…
2017
Back before vineyards spread everywhere that houses didn’t already take over, the hills of California belonged to cattle. Where hills are too steep for neighborhoods, cattle still roam as they did in Old California. Thankfully, such land has been donated or affordably purchased for open space preserves that allow mountain biking on primarily…
“Stack ‘em, pack ‘em and rack ‘em.” — Fred Thompson (Mr. Trudeau, Dulles operations chief), Die Hard 2. For years, my vehicle bike carrier was the flatbed of my Ford pickup truck. Now some truck bed carriers are made special for that, such as the one owned by my buddy Pete from Chicago who can clamp in his bike without removing wheels.
“Meet me at the Bucket of Blood.” How often do you get to say that? It’s what I told my wife as part of a prolonged training ride a week before the Death Ride. Four days earlier, three of us—Andres, Bill and myself—had left Palo Alto for a four-day road bike journey from southern San Francisco Bay to northern Nevada.
There are two kinds of Peninsula Loop bikers: those who bike the 11.5-mile long Loop in Portola Valley clockwise and those who bike counter-clockwise. They both begin from Santa Cruz Avenue, built in 1868 as a toll road from Menlo Park to the coastal town. The Loop done clockwise takes off on Alpine Road, once the cattle-drive trail down the ridge from a coast-side ranch.
One winter morning you decide that this is the year for your first Century ride, target being 100, whether kilometers or miles. A 100K is definitely a good start but 100 miles is where it’s at this side of Europe. But if it’s a 200K (124 miles), now we’re talking. However, this article is about a good ol’ 100 miler ridden for the first time.
2016
One of many Lake Tahoe circumnavigation rides is the self-proclaimed “America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride” or AMBBR for short. Having done that ride, twice, I can say that the ride around Crater Lake, which I’ve done once, could also argue for that same title, or at least for America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride around an Out West High Mountain Lake.
Biking south from Carmel is bicycling’s version of going through a hundred mile wormhole. It’s one long mysterious trip and, if you’ve never biked the coast before, you’re unsure what you’re going to encounter.
2015
Mt. Hamilton is San Jose’s Mount Olympus, hovering with its white domes over Silicon Valley. For bicyclists, the road to the top provides a pantheon-like Apollo to Zeus...
Those bicyclists who hit the road early in the pre-morning take off in what was once known as the Wolf Hour, just before the eastern sky started to lighten. In olden times within the dark forests of northern Europe, this was the time in which wolves returned to their lairs with their nocturnal...
Every year that my bike group has trained for the Death Ride, we’ve always included biking up Fremont Peak, outside of the Mission town of San Juan Bautista, between Gilroy and Salinas. And every year, it’s kicked our butts. Want to know what’s the Death Ride like? Go bike 3000-foot...
During rainy, wintry days, rather than go out for a run, I ruminated over my past history of jogging and have several thoughts to share. I believe a half-Marathon to be a very unsatisfactory name. While completing one is quite an accomplishment, telling friends that you did half of something...
Los Altos in Spanish means “The Hills” but most of the town itself is very flat, fine for bicycle-touring quiet neighborhoods. For a more challenging bicycling experience, Los Altos Hills, which translates “The Hills Hills,” has plenty as the redundant name suggests. LAH is just across Foothill...
Skyline Ridge, the towering fog bank is more like a mountain lion. The Bay Area is said to have a Mediterranean climate. Athens and most of Sicily are about the same latitude, but without the fog bank particular to the peninsula. The northwest seabreezes that blow along the coastal...
Bay Area road bikers know the Loop as an 11 ½ mile oval-shaped course, curving through Portola Valley. While the Loop is generally an easy-going, stop-free cruise, the real challenges are found in the side-loops, many of which are off Alpine Road, the first Loop segment clockwise from the...
2014
Products exist in which the tires are essentially solid rubber, perhaps not suitable for most road bikers opting for maximum speed and reasonable smoothness. My experience has been putting up with the occasional tube change or patch rather than deal with the complications of tubeless...
2013
I recently went on a Napa Valley road bike ride organized by volunteers of the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame, located in Davis, California. Although I've been bicycling for the last 25 years, I didn't know there was such an institution, much less in Davis. I was the guest of a long time...
Biking Portola Valley means following The Loop. Bike The Loop and you'll discover Old La Honda Road (OLH). From a small bridge just off Portola Road, it’s the shortest way up to Skyline Boulevard with least amount of auto traffic. The short stretch of road has an unseen history of a...
Though it will never be confused with the Pyrenees, located between Livermore and Stockton, Tracy has lightly traveled and desolate canyons waiting to be explored by road bike. Three ascents out of town are all relatively short and daunting when pushed hard. For a few mid-week rides...
In August 2012, my buddy Larry and myself along with wives set out for Montana for a four-day road bicycling adventure. We each drove matching compact RVs complete with bicycle rack in back. The first part of quickly getting to Montana is to follow I-80, which means leaving the pine...
2012
Out on the road, sometimes bicyclists just have to stop and chow down. Several dining establishments in the San Francisco Bay Area are already well known to road bikers, such as Duarte’s (pronounced “doo-ertz”) in Pescadero (“fishin’ place”) just off Highway 1 in San Mateo County. It’s...
2011
The San Francisco Bay Area is full of great road bike routes: long loops that even include a 200-kilometer circle of the Bay. Around the Bay are also various out-and-back dead ends that can be ridden not to go past somewhere but to arrive at a place knowing you must return the same...
Remember that far old man Rooster Cogburn in the original True Grit? Nineteen sixty-nine, I was 19 then and he was old—John Wayne was 61, yep, my age now. In the last scene, Kim Darby asked if he was too old to be jumping fences. My first Death Ride was 20 years earlier and then...
2010
The San Francisco Bay Area offers some of the best varieties of road biking in the way of mountains, redwood-tree-lined creeks, hideaway villages, but also the best bike lane bridge crossings to be found anywhere. Ok, they’re hardly a challenged for a seasoned road biker and...
2009
There’s a place in the Bay Area where you can mountain bike a volcano and under the ocean at the same time. Sound a little crazy? Why not throw in Crazy Pete and some Russians too? Local biking pamphlets may discuss the Johnny jump-ups, Cooper hawks, hound’s tongue and...
2008
The John Muir House in Martinez, like the Mystery Spot, also has a tour that requires walking uphill--a small charge—but this house is a tasteful 19th century shrine to California’s premier environmentalist, set in a peaceful orchard away from busy boulevard below. For those not so inclined...
You’re in the middle of a long ride and you’re ready for a break, but you don’t want to go to either coffee house, donut shop, convenience store, or café. You have your carbohydrate-bars, gels and your water bottles are mostly full but warm. Maybe cold water would be nice and, of course...
2007
Tunitas Creek Rd. spans from the scrub-brush cliffs of Highway 1 on the San Mateo County coast to the redwood-tree ridgeline, over nine miles and 2,000-vertical feet to the east. The road follows a tumbling creek shaded by tall trunk grottos. It is steep but no oppressive and has little...
2006
There’s a danger in keeping a mileage log. It begins with the acquisition of an odometer/ speedometer, purchased innocently enough just to find out how fast and how far you’ve been biking. That knowledge may lead to increasing your end-of-the-day distance, but the real problem comes when...
2005
There’s no quaint ghost town called Old La Honda waiting at the end of the road of the same name. Old La Honda Rd, built ten years after the Civil War ended, is a road biking favorite, being the shortest and least traveled-by-car route to Skyline Blvd., which forms the crest of the local...
2004
Years past in early June, you mailed your Death Ride entry form with your check. Now an on-line lottery determines the Have-rides and the Have-nots. The official name is now the blissful sounding Tour of the California Alps, another name for the Sierra Nevada range in Alpine County...
The only way up to the Skyline crest (on the San Francisco Peninsula) directly from Palo Alto is Page Mill Rd., which, west of I-280, is a snaking, upward ridge-hugging road that joins Skyline Blvd. after serious bike climbing that includes a five mile section of an 1,800 foot climb. The grandly...
The mountain’s familiar pyramid top is visible from much of the Bay Area to the south. Named after the Miwok words for “coast mountain,” the mountain is proclaimed to be the home of the mountain bike with several accommodating trails. There are two main ways up, all converging at the...