krishna2.com

Summary: I got a bike three weeks back and biked 28 miles to work (from Union City to Redwood Shores) on bike to work day. You can check out the route here.

It all started about three weeks ago when I finally got a bike.

Will I be able to BTW (Bike To Work) on BTWD (Bike To Work Day) ?

Ride history: On the first day, I biked about 6 miles. A few days later, 11 miles. Then a week later 16 miles. But so far, I had been just biking inside my residential community – very clean paved roads. So the week after, I tried to try a real road/trail biking. I biked the Alameda Creek Trail for a round-trip of about 22 miles. Details about my bike ride on Alameda Creek Trail.

Four more days to BTWD and I was entertaining the idea that I could actually BTW. I started looking around for bike routes. First I tried on 511.org Bicycle Maps. Next, I tried MapMyRide. Then on Bikely. Then I tried Google Maps with “walking direction” option – got this - not for now, I thought.

If you are masochistic, please feel free to try drawing a route on a map.
It is like hand-writing XML, not meant for humans – better left to machines.

Would it be possible to BTW on BTWD ?

The closest to a good bike direction was from bikely, where there was a route plotted between Union City and Foster City. I could start to piece together bits here and there and make a route out of it. But just one day before the day, Keith (@monkeynova) pointed out about the awesome site sf2g.com. I was also chatting with Bryn (@bauxring) and Bob (@bobtruel) who gave me some helpful pointers and route suggestions. Lucky to be amongst these hardcore bikers. Part of me was thinking that by openly making all this ambitious route plans, I was maybe setting myself up for a big fail. I figured, what the heck, it is going to be a fun story anyway and I would know that I had tried.

Four of my colleagues were going to BTW on BTWD.

By the way, sf2g.com is a very inspiring as well as a very informational site. If you want some cool routes, this is a very good place to look. The home page had a ride, called the Bay Way which had a path from Dumbarton and University avenue all the way North to the city. But at the point where it met Holly Street was all I had to get to.

Bay Way : SF to Google

So I thought if I took the Union City Blvd and continue to go South, then it becomes Ardenwood Blvd which would eventually get me to Dumbarton Bridge. Then I had to just cross the bridge to the other side to University Ave intersection and I was all set. There was light at the end of the tunnel route after Dumbarton bridge.

Maybe I could after all BTW on BTWD.

This is where a divine intervention plays a part. Clicking around on the sf2g site, I find their blog and also an article posted just four days back about a few folks who had biked from East bay to Google.

East Bay to Google

Update : After the ride, I found one more nice blog post on another trip from East Bay to Google.

I think I am going to BTW on BTWD.

I saw all their flickr and picasa photos. If not for their mention that it is okay to ignore the “Danger – No Crossing” sign and the photo that shows it is now safe to do so, I would have given up on this route. The peninsula part of the ride looks okay after all – it was much better than I expected it to be. There were more dedicated bike paths / lanes and seemed very little traffic on the few places where there was no exclusive bike path.

I read the article a couple of times, saw the route and couldn’t believe my luck. They had done the route passing as close as possible to my home and all the way to Dumbarton and University Avenue. I just had to piece the two routes together and voila, I have my own route-mashup.

I decided I will BTW on BTWD.

My Mash Up Route : East Bay to Blekko

Finally, the big day arrives. I had set up an alarm for 6 am and woke up without hearing a sound. I thought, hey, I beat the alarm, after all – so much for my stupid fears. And then I look at the clock to note that it was already 7.10 am and I had just slept in spite of the alarm. Next, I couldn’t fit my bottle cage properly. So I just threw the water bottle into my bag. I had meant to watch the satellite map of the full path just one last time – but alas, no time. So I just dotted down couple of street names (turns) and got off to a not-like-this start. I never take breakfast, just coffee – so even though I am going to be in need of lot of energy, I didn’t want to disturb the usual rhythm and hence just had the usual coffee – and finally, no guilt on that extra spoon of sugar. And off I started.

Hurray, I am about to BTW on BTWD.

I was merrily humming a tune like “I like to Bike on Bike to work day”. Which should be no new-tune for Seinfeld-fans who have heard George and Kramer singing “I like to stop at the duty free shop” on their way to pick up Jerry and Elaine from the Airport.

As I turned on to Union City Blvd, I noticed that a fellow biker was just standing there and not crossing the intersection even though we got the signal – turns out, he had fallen down, had a scratched hand and was just resting a bit. I felt sorry and asked him to be careful. Good thing, he was only going to Fremont – so not that far away.

Four miles of road plus pavement went by fast and I was on the Alameda Creek Trail. I was hoping that the parking lot there would be almost full and there would be stream of bikers. Boy, I was in for a surprise. I was the only biker on the entire trail the entire time – just saw three joggers at various points – that’s it. It was a such a quiet and serene ride. The only nagging fear in the back way back of my mind was that should I get a flat tire, I would have to walk about 2-3 miles before I could get to a road (and maybe cellphone signal) and call my home for help. (1) I haven’t done before and don’t know to patch a flat tire (on my to be learned very soon list) and (2) the only tool/equipment I had to handle such a situation was my iphone. (and of course a snickers candy bar).

I had biked a few miles when I first saw the bridge. It was big, it was far and it was very blurry. Hmm..is it that far away. And then I realized that it was the San Mateo Bridge. Sigh of relief, pedaling on.

I take a quick look at the bike computer to see 12 M. Nice, I think to myself, 12 miles..that’s cool, I am almost half way done. And then in a second, I see that it is actually 12 MPH and I had only traveled about 7 M. Damn you, PH…I have biked only 7 miles and then I realize, ah hah PH 7, maybe I do need some water to clear me up. For some reason, I found the ph7/water thought very funny and was laughing out loud for a moment. Now, as I type, nah..not funny.

I see lots of water around now. Murky water. sometimes smelly water. I am almost tempted to take a sample of that for a ph measurement, like in the movie Erin Brokovich.

I reach the end of Alameda Creek Trail. As expected there was the big sign that said “Danger, Don’t cross, Soft mud, Levee broken” warning sign. Ah..silly, I just walk my bike for a few feet and am back on what is now Shoreline Trail.

I could see the Dumbarton. This trail is not a paved one though – it is a dirt road – but a road bike supposedly will do okay. I had a road bike but with a slightly wider tire and it also had some treads. That was a little bit comforting.

Details about my bike ride on Shoreline Trail.

I couldn’t but help think that if those creatures from Tremors were to appear in Bay Area that this route would be a perfect ground zero. By the way, Tremors is an awesome movie and one of my all-time favorites, only next to Star Wars, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Spiderman…I am sorry, I got carried away. Tremors2 is cool as well. I don’t recommend Tremors3 – and haven’t watched Tremors4.

Another thought : What if Jack Bauer had to do BTWD ? I am sure he would do it in 10 minutes no matter where he starts from or where he has to go to. After all, the man goes from anywhere to anywhere in L.A. in 10 minutes – all while getting shot at, poisoned, immobilized and electrocuted.

Also if you check out the Shoreline Trail link above, you will see the birds picture. I bet if you see that many birds and you are alone on the route, you will also think about The Birds, Hitchcock movie.

Finally, I reach Dumbarton Bridge, only to see that there are two big gates on either side of the way and fences. I get a bit worried that I had biked 13 miles only to go back home. And then I start getting closer to the gates and looking around, only to realize that in those vast fence / gates, there is an opening about the size of a door (no kidding). First timers, watch out. So yes, you can pass through that to the other side of Dumbarton bridge.

I first take the smaller side bridge to check out the view from there and see what’s up there. It is a place for fishing. So I turn back and take a moment’s rest, gulp half a bottle of Gatorade and started climbing the bridge. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined it to be. It was hard, it was windy, but I had thought about falling off or getting down and walking the bike and such scenarios that riding (even though at times at only about 7mph) was still comforting. I got to the top and had good fun doing the down ride.

What a journey, I think to myself, even if I stop right now, at least I am on the other side of the bay and I had also biked the Dumbarton – so there, something accomplished, now let’s just get on with the rest of the route to work.

At the bottom of Dumbarton bridge, near University Avenue, was the Energizer Station. Very kind folks greeted all the bikers. I was offered a bunch of choices but being a Seinfeld fan couldn’t resist Snapple iced tea – it was very sweet indeed. I bid farewell to the nice folks and cross University Avenue.

Now, at this point, there is a road inside the Sun campus and there is also a trail. So I asked a biker standing nearby about how to get to Bayshore. He said “you can take the campus route or this trail”. I thought maybe the trail will lead me to more bike paths/trails better than the road. Wrong. Both lead to the same point. The trail is just a loop around the Sun campus. Anyways, had fun while I was at it. Bayshore express way was very straight-forward. Separate bike lanes. I had to continue on, pass Marsh Road, take Haven Avenue and get to Bayfront Road.

The following two detailed paragraph of write up is probably for the two souls who will read this blog and try this route. I hope they don’t get lost. Feel free to hit the space-bar. [Who am I kidding, who the hell did really get this far].

And you end up hitting Seaport Blvd (at Redwood City). So based on the map, I decided to continue to go straight on Bloomquist. (on the way, you would pass the Malibu Gokart, Mini-golf place – this is one of those places which you can easily see from the highway (101), but would find it not so obvious getting to it.). Now, I hit a T-junction on to Maple Street. On the right, the sign says, “Not a through street”. So I decided to take the left since I remembered that I had to take a turn from Maple street. Before I realize, I am on a small bridge and I have crossed 101 to the other (west) side. I remembered from the map that I didn’t have to cross the 101 at all. So I pull over and check my paper direction which says, “right on maple, then turn on bair island”. I am confused a bit – so if I have to go the other way, which is not a through street, how can it lead to another street ? Anyways, I ride the bridge back and can see the sign “Holly Street 2 miles” on 101 – I am so close, yet so far. So I continue on to the other side of Maple steet (not through street). Sure enough it just takes makes you take two left turns and you keep going straight and I end up near a building that says “Women’s Correctional Facility”. I trace the full route back to see if I had missed any road signs or anything. Nada. So I check my iphone maps and find that Maple street leads to a dead end. Some where half a mile or so North, is where Bair Island Road is and the bayfront road continues. I don’t have the plotted bike route. [In retrospect, I should have gone back to sf2g.com site, pulled the map with the route plotting and checked it again with the map mode and the satellite mode. If I had done so, I would have realized that near the second turn in the Maple street, there is a small dirt path to an extended parking lot. From this parking lot, there is a small dirt road to a very small bridge (walk/bike only) which leads to the other side of this small creek and I would have been able to join the Bair Island road and then on to Bayfront road.]

Since I found the Redwood City Police Station right near by and there was an officer standing outside, I bike over there and ask him for directions. He advised me to cross Maple St again, take Veteran’s Blvd all the way to Whipple and then right on Whipple to get to the other side of 101 (again) and then take the bike path from there. So I ended up doing that. It was lot of traffic and no bike lanes. Had to watch out for cars coming out of parking lots. Then came the awful Whipple Road turn. Seriously, people will try to kill you here. It has a two lane right turn – and the rightmost exclusively taking you to 101-South. So you have to cross this, compete with drivers now wanting to take 101-North and then move past. I wondered if I had used up all my life lines on this one intersection. It was later that Bob (@bobtruel) told me the trick to cross Whipple. The way to do is to stay on the left of the two lanes turning right. And then, stay on the small middle yellow lines (which is wide enough for a biker) and cross without having to cross the path to highway ramps.

But once past that, there is a dedicated bike path which just parallels 101. The same 101 scenery, billboards but in much slow motion. Nothing new. I finally reach San Carlos Airport, then past the Airport museum, flight schools and then on to Redwood Shores parkway (the other side of Holly). From there a left on to Twin Dolphin Drive and I finally arrive at 100 Marine Parkway (Blekko). I was almost tempted to do a victory lap around the building. But it was already getting late. So I just called home to convey that I have arrived safely and not worry about my crazy idea to btw on btwd and got in to work.

Five of us had biked to work that day with three doing round-trips. We lost the sixth rider to Disneyland. :) I for one decided to take alternate transport back and then do the return bike trip on some other day.

I BTW on BTWD. Cool.

All said, it was about 28 miles and took me about 3 hours and 15 minutes. How fitting, I rode exactly a perfect number of miles. If I had known the full route clearly, it would probably be close to 25 miles and I think I might have done that in less than 2.5 hours.

UPDATE: I did the route another time and it was only 24 miles and it took me about 2:25 (but that was including a few stops for photos – so I guess, I can probably cover the route in 2:10 or less).

I figured I should create a better East Bay to Blekko map. In hindsight, this intense process of creating the map path would have been good to do at the beginning. But anyways, here it is for the future riders. I took the two kml files from the sf2g.com site – the bay way and the east bay routes. I wrote a script to strip out all the coordinates and print them line by line and also in five equal groups. Then, I created a very simple KML file copied the coordinates and opened them up on Google Earth – Sure enough, it shows the full route. I started with the East Bay route first. Now comes some trial and error with some intuition and guesses and binary search with some lat/long number gazing and I removed all the points that weren’t part of my route. Now, I repeated this with the second file – I had to reverse the coordinates here (since the original route is from SF to G). Again, the same process to remove all the unwanted points. Now, I could put the two sets of coordinates together on one file and get a single route.

But for the extensive route, articles and photos on the sf2g.com site, I would have probably taken much inefficient routes and maybe would have lost the way more often. Thanks to the nice folks there.

I don’t have a GPS – but I think it would be cool to have a model like the Garmin Edge 305 or something similar. More data to play with. I might get one soon.

Now that BTWD is over successfully, time to move on to more. Next up, Tour De France Fremont. And more East Bay Trails.

If any one would like to do a repeat of this path or in general, east bay rides, I am all for it.