Let’s go ride a bike! Half Moon Bay and Bay Trail
First of all, I’m a terrible blogger. While my girlfriend Kendra over at girlonbikewrites.blogspot.com seems to crank out a couple posts a week, I can’t even remember my last post. The guilt! Somewhat of an excuse: I bought a house which has been one of a hell of a project and have been busy for two months straight. But finally, time to take a break!
Kendra and I loaded up our bikes. Quite pleasing to feel my bike with the light load of only a day trip; what a difference in weight! We BARTed over to San Francisco (ya, it’s a verb now), rode down Market towards Golden Gate Park and then the coast, the official start. Great Hwy, the coast road, is apparently closed seasonally, which I was aware of, but was not aware it would be closed NOW…but it was. Ended up being all the better though, we hopped the barriers and had our own private 3 lane highway, what a treat.
The ride to Half Moon Bay is 30ish miles, fairly leisurely with a few hills (which Kendra totally conquered). Not the quietest route; lots of traffic throughout especially when you’re forced onto Hwy 1. I’ve crashed on this route before so I was careful to watch my speed and take the lane on downhills and when necessary.
Half Moon Bay was a little too cold and foggy to bring out our bathing suits but we had a campfire at least. Strangely scored a few goodies at the campsite too: a firsbee, an MSR stove, a mystery bottle of brown oil, a CKRT knife and box wine and vodka. Score.
The next day we bused over the Hayward Bridge for lack of other options for biking folk and got off at the first stop. Never been on the Bay Trail before and I was surprised, it’s awesome! (At least the continuous portions like near Hayward are)
Sometimes the trail disappears and you blaze your own…
In San Leandro we veered off course to Kendra’s favorite taco place, Los Pericos. The BEST fish tacos ever and unlimited chips and salsa! Just what we needed
Riding by the Oakland Airport we found a huge grove of Arbutus trees with loadsss of sparkling red ripe fruit. We picked as much as we could.
So, fun ride all in all. Nice little break from the day to day and our other projects
09.Jun.10 
Touring
What will you do with the Madrone (Arbutus) fruits? Are they tasty?
I think they’re pretty tasty. A little like a sweet apricot but a bit mealy on the texture side. We’ve been meaning to try to make jam with them. Cities seem to love to plant them as landscape trees so they’re everywhere!
Wow! i live in seattle and these trees are on every block. I never knew you could eat the fruit!