SFOLA – September 12-19, 2005
Well I finally got my first bicycle tour done. Did San FranciscO to Los Angeles (SFOLA) with Richard O’Brien a friend from work, REI. Some folks have asked how the trip was so here is a little journal of the trip.
Day 1 Sept 12 – Getting to SFO
Here Richard hoists his fully loaded bike onto the Metrolink train at the Claremont station. To avoid having to beg someone to drop us off in downtown LA and then drive all the way back to work through rush hour traffic we decided to take the Metrolink downtown to Union Station. It was my first time on Metrolink. I have to say it was super easy. We strapped the bikes in the designated location with Velcro and enjoyed the ride in. Our Amtrak train left at 10:15am and we needed to get to the station in time to get the bikes into boxes to go on the train. So, we were on the 7:28am Metrolink out of Claremont. Our car was full of a regular group of ladies that knitted and gossiped on there morning commute in to the city. We were a bit of an oddity, the conductor was interested in our trip and asked lots of questions, and of course wished he was headed on trip rather than work.
Above is Union Station in LA. We arrived in plenty of time to get our bikes in the specified train boxes. To do so we had to find our way to the shipping and receiving dock and extract some form of assistance from the person in charge. The person that “helped” us seemed straight out of the Pink Floyd movie the wall, marching around bumph bumph bumph bumph, “you must fill out this form and sign the dotted line. There will be a $10 fee for the box, and a $5 handling fee”. The bureaucracy chugged on and I realized how happy I was to be headed out on an epic journey and not be someone stuck buried deep in the machinery of society clinging to a fraction of imagined power for the gagilionth day waiting for God knows what to save them from their misery.
It was very easy to box the bikes loosen the bars and stem bolts turn the stem 90 degrees and swing the bars down and around the top tube. Slide the whole bike with wheels on into the box. Panniers and handle bar bag came off and go with us as luggage onto the train. I happened to be Field Testing a prototype pannier for REI on this trip. You’ll see pictures of them below. They snapped on and off so easy it made loading and unloading the bike a breeze. So, we were ready for the train ride in plenty of time. The train ride was fairly uneventful as we lumbered along the coast on the Amtrak Coast Starlight. The trip was supposed to be a 12 hour train ride but it ended up being 13-1/2 as we steadily got behind schedule as soon as we started. It was a beautiful ride until the sun went down and one I will recommend, just expect the train to run late so it doesn’t piss you off, sit back and enjoy the view. The only really eventful thing happened after we left the San Jose station when an elderly couple moseyed back from the dinning car sat down a few seats in front of us and realized they had missed their stop. They used the call button to get the conductor and began to blame them for not getting them off the train. They were all in a tis, “you didn’t announce that we were at San Jose, well we didn’t hear it and neither did anyone else, how are you going to get us back to San Jose it’s Amtraks fault”. In fact the conductor did announce the stop and it was the longest stop on the entire ride up. We were there for 22 minutes while all the smokers stepped off the train to have a puff. We sat there so long I finally stepped off the train and walked along the rails a bit. They had simply been having such a grand time chatting with a couple they had meet on the train they were oblivious to the train being stopped at there stop for over 20 minutes. I felt sorry for the conductor because he had to bite his tongue and take a health serving of unwarranted abuse. Their saga continued as Richard and I watched once the train arrived in Oakland. Of course they wanted to talk to the Train Engineer, the Station Manager, the President. They took everyone’s name down and wanted to know who everyone’s boss was. All of their blustering and aggression served to set everyone they hoped to help them against them instantly, it would have been so much more effective to say “Oh we screwed up and missed our stop is there anything you can do to help us.” In the end they had to pay $80 for a cab ride back to San Jose. Richard and I got the entertainment of a live soap opera as we put our bikes back together. We had planned on getting a snack when we arrived at 9:30pm, however since it was now 11:00pm our prospects looked dim. We rode the 2 blocks down to our hotel the Jack London Inn (JLI) and checked in. On the corner was a restaurant just getting ready to close, a place called Waffles and Chicken. It seemed like an unlikey combination but we decided to try it anyway in desperation. We had been reluctant to pay the outrageous prices on the train for crappy food. So we were starving. Waffles and Chicken turned out to be a real Oakland institution, we was in the hood know what I’m say’n. We did get ourselves some waffles though and they were pretty good. That was pretty much the end of Day 1.
Day 2 Sept 13 – Golden Gate to Sunset Beach
In the morning we got up had about the worst continental breakfast on the planet at the JLI. Then we rolled out a mere 3 blocks to the Ferry terminal.
Here is Richard and I on the Ferry with all the morning commuters. It was cool to see about 20 people get on the Ferry with there bikes headed into the city. Of course several of the other bikers were interested in where we were going. The Ferry dumped us off at Fishermans wharf where we really started to ride. We rode by all the folks scurrying to work and the tourist headed out for breakfast, past all the piers, past chrissy field, past all the beautiful homes looking out on the bay. We stopped at a park opposite Chrissy Field for a shot with the Golden Gate in the background.
There it is and there are those panniers I was talking about. They are like a dry sack with a mounting system on the back. They don’t have any other pockets just a cavernous main compartment and a great mounting system. My bike and gear when we took off weighed 62 lbs. not bad but now that I’ve done it once I could have been down to 57 lbs pretty easily I think. I rode my Novara Element Cyclocross/multipurpose bike and Richard rode his Cannondale Mtn bike with slick tires and aero-bars on front. Now the real riding started. We were of course electrified to finally get rolling. The ride through San Francisco while up and down was great. We saw lot’s of folks on bikes, nice bikes! The Adventure Cycling maps took us on low traffic city streets in quaint neighborhoods. A climb up high on top of the Presidio then our first fully loaded descent into China Beach, all is well keep rolling. Along the cool Norcal beaches through Daly city and Pacifica. When I setup our itenarary I knew we eould be excited and fresh our first day, I also thought the day was pretty flat so I made it long 103 miles, our longest day. Most of that was true but this section was definitely not flat. The first climb came just outside Pacifica and it was long and steep, like 3 miles long and 6%. Before we left I had wanted to put a front triple chain ring on my bike but I had already spent as much money on the trip as I wanted and I felt strong so I braved it with my stock gearing, a compact 48-39 tooth front and 12-25 rear cassette. This first climb reduced me to 6 mph out of the saddle. I made it over but now I had the fear in me for what I knew was to come in the climbs around Big Sur everyone had been advising about. We rolled on up and down up and down. Nothing more quit as long or steep but plenty of rollers. We stopped in Half Moon Bay and had a great big chicken burrito at the Taquaria Mexicana, a little road side joint that the local field hands were stopping for lunch. It was a great lunch at a cheap price. About 1pm the cloud cover burned off and it started to get nice. We were making a little better time than I had expected. In a test ride I’d done before we left with Gina I thought we would be rolling pretty good anytime were doing 15mph. I was happy when I found that once we got the machines up to 18-20mph it wasn’t that difficult to keep them going. Of course the inclines instantly dropped us back down but we were doing about 4 mph faster than I expected generally. Once we got to Santa Cruz it was back to the city streets. It was quit a ways to get through, first Santa Cruz, then Soquel and Finally Aptos. We stopped in Aptos at a Health Food store and got dinner fixings, Pasta, salad, water. I had my Trunk bag mostly empty just for this kind of thing. So I was able to put the food in the Trunk bag. We had another 10 miles to go with the extra weight. Richard strapped his to the outside of his panniers. It worked but I was ready at any minute for something to drop off the back. As we left Aptos we transferred to a country road that wound through miles of agricultural fields, lots of Strawberries, lettuce, artichoke, and stuff I wasn’t sure what it was. We rolled into Sunset Beach State Campground around 6pm.