San Francisco Bike Party

On October 5, I wrote that the day before I knew I was late for San Francisco Bike Party but eventually got everything I needed and headed up Page street on my Surly to Divisadero and calculated I was a whole 15 minutes early. Some acquaintances were in Golden Gate Park for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. At Fulton and Divisadero I was still a little uncertain where the ride was but I had calculated that they’d be coming my way since it supposed to go from 24th St and up The Wiggle.

When the ride showed up I noted that people I knew really well were leading and old friends were everywhere in the group. We saw a few people from the Midnight Mystery Ride. I saw a few people who had moved away and a few people from my neighborhood – all from my neighborhood.

The ride headed over to Hugo and into Haight Street. My phone wasn’t letting me take pictures. We passed Gold Cane and then we descended into the Lower Haight. Haight Street going down to Divisadero is steep and dangerous.

We picked up a few random people rolling through The Wiggle. One lady had a bike share bike and I said she was cool. I literally nearly lost my beer. We went through Hayes Valley, Civic Center, climbed up to O’Farrell and headed over to Grant Street. One of the riders got knocked off of his bike by a motorist there and everyone took pictures

We went to Washington Square. An acquaintance bummed five dollars off of me because he had a desire for Golden Boy Pizza. I chatted with a geologist and a bunch of people from my neighborhood. There was this one lady with a Yuba cargo bike which had interesting hoops on the back.

The sprinklers came on so we all rode to ferry building apparently One of my favorite riders fell off of his bike and his partner took him home. We basically said bye then and went home.

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.

Caltrain to Menlo Park

On September 22, I wrote that I got up at 10 and rode my electric cargo bike to the train station to catch the newly electric Caltrain to Menlo Park. When I got there, I discovered my bike’s batteries were low, which made me sad. I had coffee and rode through town to Alpine Drive and found my way to Arastradero Creek and Portola Road.

I stopped at Roberts Market for a snack and then I went to Old La Honda Road. I had to ride the whole way on low power because I had range anxiety over my batteries. Portions of Portola Road are fine but sometimes the motorists are not accommodating for even e-bikers.

When I got to Old La Honda, I climbed the road for a few miles until I had a nice view of the San Andreas Fault Zone below and ate lunch before heading back. I tried to use Farm Road but everything out there is gated, which was sad because Portola is teaming with terrible motorists.

I made it back to Alpine and Sandhill pretty quick, I was using low power the whole time. Alpine is all downhill so it wasn’t terrible at low power. I noted that an acquaintance called me and I agreed to meet him in Palo Alto.

There were events all weekend for Caltrain because of their newly electrified system. When I got there, I chatted with a few people I knew pretty well. We traded all we could about each other. For instance a few people had moved to San Jose. I also found out that Mountain Charlie Road above Santa Cruz had a blowout and that was sad.

The ride back to San Francisco was just like normal for me except it was faster.

 
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.