SF Bike Ride Review
Jul. 6th, 2008 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjWow! Nice ride! Not as much elevation change as the Bear Creek ride last week, but my worry was that I wouldn't get much in the way of hills at all, given that my plan was to spend a lot of time following the coast. Ha ha. This is San Francisco, after all.
So I BARTed over to the Embarcadero station and had a brief breakfast (courtesey of Acme Bakery & Peets) at the Ferry Building looking out over the Bay. Chatted with a woman with a large backpack heading for Yosemite. Not entirely clear how she's getting from SF to Yosemite, but it looked like she'd have fun doing it.
The first leg was severely urban: along the Embarcadero, dodging around the tourists and taxis interacting with the various tour company parking lots. I actually don't mind the urban bicycle thing too much -- lots of opportunity for power acceleration and watching everything at once. Following the bike map, I turned inland on North Point, but rather than following it all the way down to Fort Mason, I jogged right a couple blocks to hit Fisherman's Wharf -- reminding me what an utter tourist-zoo it is. From there, I pretty much followed the edge of the land past Fort Mason, the Marina, Crissy Field/Presidio, and then up a mild hill to the SF end of the Golden Gate Bridge.
On a whim, I went ahead and pedaled across the bridge and back. I don't think I'd realized before how serious the tourist-bike-rental business is in SF. About 2/3 of the cyclists crossing the bridge had tell-tale rental agency bags hanging off the handlebars. They tended to ride slowly and somewhat unsteadily in linear clumps. The other 1/3 of the cyclists on the bridge tended to wear team jerseys and ride racing bikes ... with the expected velocity that goes with such. The western bridge walkway is reserved for bicyclists while the eastern one is mixed pedestrians and cycles (but you'd be crazy to try to ride there in the crowds I saw today). So while the cyclists didn't have to dodge pedestrians, you have a situation that's equivalent to a 2-lane country highway with no shoulders, populated by equal parts slow semi trucks and zippy sports cars. I didn't see any actual collisions, but there were some hairy times, especially at the bridge towers where the pathway suddenly makes a series of right angle turns to go around the tower (and you suddenly realize that the cross-winds are quite strong).
Back on the SF side of the bridge there's some mildly hilly bits along the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Seacliff neighborhood (which contains some really serious architechture-porn -- and biking is the right pace for appreciating it properly), and then the most significant hill of my route leading up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I took a brief break at the Palace to try out some of the various electrolyte chews I'm testing out. Then down through the golf course, along the edge of the park, past Cliff House, along Ocean Beach, and then pick up Golden Gate Park at the southwest corner.
I'd meant to pick up the designated bike path through the park, but made the mistake of following another bicyclist and ended up in the bridle path instead. (Well, it's a general purpose trail, but unpaved and clearly the trail of choice for riders.) So I got in some "off road" work as well, complete with tree roots and sand traps. In fact, the only time on the entire ride I had to get off and walk was a completely level stretch of loose sand on that trail. I'd thought about doing some loops in the park, but gauged my exertion and decided to go straight through then out the Panhandle. Since I wanted to stop by Union Square to do some shopping, I took the next likely looking road north to Post St. then east on Post past Japantown to the square. From there, down to Market St. and down Market to the Ferry Building again. More shopping and a bite of (late) lunch at the Hog Island Oyster Company followed by a hazel-filled macaroon from Miette.
And so back to BART and home again.
I wanted to do some play-testing with the GPS on bicycle despite not having a mount for it yet. I fired it up over breakfast and set it for "bicycle mode" with an initial destination of the Exploratorium then zipped it into its carrying case and put it in the outside pocket of my backpack. Through experimentation and periodic checking, I determined that it was picking up the signals perfectly well through the case and backpack, but that the voice directions were completely muffled by them. I had, unfortunately, divested my backpack of the various music devices it usually carries, so I wasn't able to try running an earbud out of the case. More experimentation is called for. At some point during the trip, the battery ran down -- not surprising since it's advertised with a 5 hour life and what with the shopping and dining breaks my entire trip lasted from ca. 8:30 (leaving home) to ca. 4:30 (arriving home again). Actual cycling time (courtesy of my new cycle statistics gadget) was 2 hr 50 minutes, total distance was about 28 miles, average speed ca. 10 mph.
So while I didn't work out precise biking times to specific locations, it looks like I can get to almost any location I'd care to go in SF allowing an hour of bicycling time, with plenty time to spare.
So I BARTed over to the Embarcadero station and had a brief breakfast (courtesey of Acme Bakery & Peets) at the Ferry Building looking out over the Bay. Chatted with a woman with a large backpack heading for Yosemite. Not entirely clear how she's getting from SF to Yosemite, but it looked like she'd have fun doing it.
The first leg was severely urban: along the Embarcadero, dodging around the tourists and taxis interacting with the various tour company parking lots. I actually don't mind the urban bicycle thing too much -- lots of opportunity for power acceleration and watching everything at once. Following the bike map, I turned inland on North Point, but rather than following it all the way down to Fort Mason, I jogged right a couple blocks to hit Fisherman's Wharf -- reminding me what an utter tourist-zoo it is. From there, I pretty much followed the edge of the land past Fort Mason, the Marina, Crissy Field/Presidio, and then up a mild hill to the SF end of the Golden Gate Bridge.
On a whim, I went ahead and pedaled across the bridge and back. I don't think I'd realized before how serious the tourist-bike-rental business is in SF. About 2/3 of the cyclists crossing the bridge had tell-tale rental agency bags hanging off the handlebars. They tended to ride slowly and somewhat unsteadily in linear clumps. The other 1/3 of the cyclists on the bridge tended to wear team jerseys and ride racing bikes ... with the expected velocity that goes with such. The western bridge walkway is reserved for bicyclists while the eastern one is mixed pedestrians and cycles (but you'd be crazy to try to ride there in the crowds I saw today). So while the cyclists didn't have to dodge pedestrians, you have a situation that's equivalent to a 2-lane country highway with no shoulders, populated by equal parts slow semi trucks and zippy sports cars. I didn't see any actual collisions, but there were some hairy times, especially at the bridge towers where the pathway suddenly makes a series of right angle turns to go around the tower (and you suddenly realize that the cross-winds are quite strong).
Back on the SF side of the bridge there's some mildly hilly bits along the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Seacliff neighborhood (which contains some really serious architechture-porn -- and biking is the right pace for appreciating it properly), and then the most significant hill of my route leading up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I took a brief break at the Palace to try out some of the various electrolyte chews I'm testing out. Then down through the golf course, along the edge of the park, past Cliff House, along Ocean Beach, and then pick up Golden Gate Park at the southwest corner.
I'd meant to pick up the designated bike path through the park, but made the mistake of following another bicyclist and ended up in the bridle path instead. (Well, it's a general purpose trail, but unpaved and clearly the trail of choice for riders.) So I got in some "off road" work as well, complete with tree roots and sand traps. In fact, the only time on the entire ride I had to get off and walk was a completely level stretch of loose sand on that trail. I'd thought about doing some loops in the park, but gauged my exertion and decided to go straight through then out the Panhandle. Since I wanted to stop by Union Square to do some shopping, I took the next likely looking road north to Post St. then east on Post past Japantown to the square. From there, down to Market St. and down Market to the Ferry Building again. More shopping and a bite of (late) lunch at the Hog Island Oyster Company followed by a hazel-filled macaroon from Miette.
And so back to BART and home again.
I wanted to do some play-testing with the GPS on bicycle despite not having a mount for it yet. I fired it up over breakfast and set it for "bicycle mode" with an initial destination of the Exploratorium then zipped it into its carrying case and put it in the outside pocket of my backpack. Through experimentation and periodic checking, I determined that it was picking up the signals perfectly well through the case and backpack, but that the voice directions were completely muffled by them. I had, unfortunately, divested my backpack of the various music devices it usually carries, so I wasn't able to try running an earbud out of the case. More experimentation is called for. At some point during the trip, the battery ran down -- not surprising since it's advertised with a 5 hour life and what with the shopping and dining breaks my entire trip lasted from ca. 8:30 (leaving home) to ca. 4:30 (arriving home again). Actual cycling time (courtesy of my new cycle statistics gadget) was 2 hr 50 minutes, total distance was about 28 miles, average speed ca. 10 mph.
So while I didn't work out precise biking times to specific locations, it looks like I can get to almost any location I'd care to go in SF allowing an hour of bicycling time, with plenty time to spare.
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