The Sewer Ride

On May tenth I woke up knowing that the Sewer Ride would be difficult.  I was pleasantly surprised when, on the way to the start of the ride at Daly City BART, I met one of the ride participants.  At the station the ride organizers were ready to go with a group of 50 or so.  There was a couple with a baby in a trailer, some people from Bike Party, a bike ambassador and even an old coworker.  He was leading a “goat trail ride” which was supposed to be a bit more difficult that than the easy ride up Guadalupe Canyon.

Of course there were also a lot of people I didn’t know.  Two guys had horns and there were two others that were musicians, including one person with a saw!  I liked that everyone in the goat trail ride showed so much character with their musical instruments and outfits as we climbed Crocker Street into the Southern Hills.  We got back together at Old Guadalupe Canyon Bl and continued to the Picnic site.  I noted that the parents with a baby trailer had bravely climbed up Crocker with us.

At the picnic site we found the easy riders and I got to know the musicians at their table.  Then John Seagrave the organizer and a retiree from DPW explained the storage/transport boxes, which catch the city’s run off.  There were a lot of questions.  We then left on a loop ride around the top of the mountain.  I met the woman who made all of John’s maps and at an overlook we observed a recently “daylighted” creek with a lot of potential.  While our guides did point out one riparian area below us, I noted that the creek could also be extended through a city park and even the Cow Palace’s parking lots.

We circled back at the picnic site and split up for another goat ride to Carter Street along the edge of Guadalupe Canyon Bl which everyone else used as the easy ride.  I noted that I would have had an easier time with this part on my mountain bike.  We descended into Visitation Valley and on to Little Hollywood where I managed to get a photo of the old railroad UC near there.  I had to enter a gravel yard filled with Heavy equipment.

We met at the storage/transport boxes near Candlestick Point and John made a presentation.  The group was so big that I was constantly meeting new people and the Musicians introduced me to some new people.  We rode then to HP and looked at Yosemite Slough and I talked to some new people about the area on the way.  We headed to 3^rd where we encountered a lot of dangerous traffic on Palou and later on 3^rd a minivan threatened the family and their trailer.

We ended up at a reusable-stuff/junkyard place where they had barrels of “beach glass” and an art show curated by the Sewer Ride’s organizers.  I liked the variety of conceptualizations from WoodenBikes.  This was when the musicians started playing.  The musical “sawyer” found a cache of saws to play—she seemed really excited about them.  We drank beer and when I went looking for more water one of the musicians drunkenly said, “you can drink water later!”

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.