Day One: Charting Our Own Path

We started our cross-country ride today at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. With an unexpected amount of effort, we carried our bikes across the beach so we could dip our tires in the Pacific. The beach must have been a quarter mile wide and bikes are much harder to move when not being rolled. But we did it.

For the first third of our trip, we’re following Adventure Cycling’s “Western Express” route from San Francisco, CA to Pueblo, CO. The route starts at Ocean Beach in SF and then instructs us to take a ferry to Vallejo. For obvious reasons, we didn’t want to start our cross-country bicycle trip by taking a boat. So instead, we took the long way around the San Francisco Bay. We now all have a better understanding of why Adventure Cycling advises a ferry crossing.

At around 2pm today we thought we would make it to our destination in Vallejo by 4pm. We didn’t roll up to our motel until 6:30pm. Looking forward to getting an earlier start tomorrow and riding on the Adventure Cycling-approved route!

Highlights

• Biking across the Golden Gate Bridge
• Riding along the San Francisco Bay Trail near Pinole - beautiful trail, right along the bay, next to train tracks.
• Beautiful weather

Lowlights

• We got our first flat tire of the trip (Mike’s bike).
• Biking up San Pablo Avenue between Rodeo and the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge. These few miles alone made the ferry seem like a very good idea. I think each of us thought to ourselves: Can I make it up this hill? I’m not so sure I can make it up this hill. But also - not making it up this hill doesn’t seem like an option. So. I guess I just gotta make it up this hill then.

Julie’s food (for the curious - specifically her mother, Maryanne)

• Breakfast: bread with almond butter
• First snack: half of a granola bar and some cashews
• Second snack: almond butter and banana sandwich
• Lunch: sandwich from Whole Foods (tempeh, tomato, lettuce, and avocado)
• Dinner: frozen pad thai from a grocery store + beer

Stats

• Total distance: 48.74 miles
• Elevation gain: 2345 feet
• Weather: hot and dry, high of 94