Lost and Found

I forgot to take my earrings off before going to bed last night and woke up wearing only one of them. Searched the bed to no avail. Just found the second hooked to the side of the laundry basket. Not sure how it got there, but I'm not quibbling.

Pork and its expiation

Yesterday I went to the porkgasm party thrown by ppfuf and husband. An homage to the pig, and the many wonderful (and sometimes unexpected) ways one can eat it. I made a deal with myself that I wouldn't worry about portion control or tracking if I put in a bike ride of at least 40 miles today. (I'd been planning a ride one of these weekends anyway.) As those following the ride on facebook may already know, it ended up at 50 miles (exactly -- the bike trip odometer says "50.0something").

I started out thinking in terms of a San Francisco loop and took the same route I did last time: start at Embarcadero BART, light breakfast at the Ferry Building, then along the Embarcadero, past Fishermans Wharf, the Marina, Chrissy Field, climb the hill, and across the Golden Gate bridge. But that's only about 10 miles, and I wasn't sure how much wandering around in SF I wanted to do to stretch it out, so I consulted Google maps on the iPhone and headed down through Sausalito. They have some great bike paths in Marin -- once you claw your way through the hordes of tourists in Sausalito (many of them on rental bikes, creating vast safety hazards for all and sundry) you can take a mixed-use recreation path along the shore (well, actually directly through the wetlands for a lot of it) then eventually turning onto Blithedale, over 101 where it becomes Tiburon Blvd, then following Tiburon Blvd and Paradise Dr to entirely circle the Tiburon peninsula, cut back across on Trestle Glen Dr at the base of the peninsula, and then back along the same route I went out. I wasn't sure whether it would fit my mileage goal, but when I paused at the Tiburon ferry landing, I was at mile 24, so I figured I was good to go.

I stopped for a late lunch in Sausalito to recoup my strength for the climb back up to the bridge (which had seemed very long and steep when I came down it earlier) but it ended up not being too bad at all. In fact, while I won't claim it was a particularly strenuous ride (in terms of Serious Bike Riding), I'm proud of never having stopped to rest or gotten off to walk. And it was all very very scenic and reasonably safe, traffic-wise. There were twice as many bikes as cars on the road around Tiburon and I generally felt in far more hazard from the clueless-tourists-on-rental-bikes than from any of the auto traffic.

I am now totally wiped and intend to do nothing more strenuous than the laundry for the rest of the evening. But I think I'll take this route again in the future. It could be extended maybe another 10 miles by continuing on Paradise Dr up past Corte Madera to Larkspur Landing, then West on Sir Francis Drake Blvd, and south on Camino Alto -- although from the twistiness of that last on the map, I suspect it would add a bit more elevation change as well as miles.