our marin ride
About 240 miles in about 11 hours.

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miracles happen.
Guess what I did last weekend? Guess! I went for a ride! A real one! It was my first "real" ride of the season, and it felt so damn good to be out again. Diana and I are leading a Wind Dancers ride in mid-August, so we decided to start planning it now. What that actually means is that Diana came up with a big route and did a lot of research, and Cat and I tagged along with her while she rode over it.

We started out the day at 7:30am at Nini's Cafe in San Mateo, which ended up being an excellent meeting place. Three cups of coffee and some blueberry pancakes later, we headed north. Meeting in San Mateo meant that we got to San Francisco much earlier than usual (we've historically met further south on the Peninsula), which was nice. Naturally, we got stuck in stop-and-go traffic going through the Presidio towards the Golden Gate Bridge, but we eventually made it through and crossed the bridge into Marin County. I brought the camcorder with the intent of recording our passage across the bridge, but some imbecile who will remain nameless, because it's me, forgot to double-check the battery life before I left. Ha ha. Next time.

True to form, as soon as we entered Marin, the clouds parted, the fog lifted, and the temperature rose by about 10 degrees. Advice for anyone riding through the Bay Area: layer, layer, layer. Microclimates in the area are pretty extreme, and you can pretty much plan on freezing in the northern peninsula, and then melting as soon as you get into Marin. I had my heated grips on while in San Francisco, which was a lot more comfortable than my previous rides through the city. Other than that, I wore a tank top, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and my jacket (without the quilted liner) and was fine for the whole day.

We took the cutoff to north Highway 1 right after the Golden Gate Bridge, and followed it north along the coast through Point Reyes Station (our first gas stop).

why i love my friends.
I found 1 to be pretty tricky when I rode it last July, so when I found out that Cat wanted to ride sweep, I asked her if she could watch my riding and offer any suggestions. Fortunately, I rode like ass along 1 again this time, so when we stopped for gas in Point Reyes Station, she had a lot of useful advice.

Cat explained that my body language told her that I was afraid when entering corners that had a difference in contrast (i.e. trees shadowing the road), and that it appeared that I tensed up a lot and sat up in righthand turns in particular. She suggested that I ride more slowly in general, since it seemed that I rode more quickly in the straights and then had to brake hard for corners, often keeping the brake on halfway through the turn.

Her other suggestion somewhat surprised me -- she told me to stay in a tucked position, even while in the twisties. I was honest with her that keeping a tuck in the tight turns scared me, because a tucked position to me always implies speed, and I didn't need an illusion of speed while going through tight hairpins. Cat explained to me that the tuck is actually more about body positioning than about speed per se -- while I'm tucked in and leaning on the tankbag with my head down, my forearms are just about parallel to the ground, which means that my hands are in the same plane as my arms (translation: my wrists aren't bent). This allows me to push the handlebars out instead of down to countersteer, which would help me feel more in control in the twisties. She said to try that, and to keep my elbows pressed against the tank, which would help me keep my arms in place.

back to the ride.
After gassing up, we hopped back onto Highway 1, and followed it up to where it cuts inland at Tomales. At that point, 1 turns east-west and heads back over to the coast; we continued north on Bohemian Highway. We eventually came to Occidental, and stopped for lunch. We found a cute little cafe with outdoor seating, and proceeded to eat half of the restaurant. The guys at the table behind us were also riders, so as our lunch wore down, we took turns hitting the bathroom and chatting with our neighbors about the roads we were on. When we got back to the bikes, I noticed that my odometer was at exactly 9000 miles, so I took a picture for posterity.

After lunch, we kept going north on Bohemian Highway until it hits the Russian River near Villa Grande. The Russian River is a pretty famous destination around here; the white-water rafting on the river is supposed to be really fun, and there are many redwood state parks and wineries nearby. We turned west onto Highway 116 and followed the river back to the Pacific Ocean. There's some really gorgeous scenery along the riverbanks; that plus the swoopy roads makes for some really excellent motorcycling. More info on Bohemian Highway here. Cat's advice was helping me tremendously, and I really felt like I was cornering well and approaching the turns correctly. Life was good.

We met up with Highway 1 again at the ocean, and followed it south along the coast. The roads are nice through here, but the wind picked up, and I found it hard to concentrate on my cornering. There are also typically a lot of cars as you near Bodega Bay, and the combination made this portion of the ride a little more stressful than the earlier segments.

Just before the town of Bodega Bay, we pulled off into a little vista point/rest area for the mandatory bike porn pictures. There was a picnic table off the beaten track, with a plaque on it inscribed "In honor of Bob ". I thought that was really a nice tribute -- a well-made picnic table on a little outcropping overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Bob must have been loved.

Once the pictures were done with, we hopped back on Highway 1, fueled up in Bodega Bay, and headed east. We ended up on Valley Ford Road, which confused us by becoming Bodega Avenue. We realized we'd missed a turn, but rather than do a U-turn (which my bike couldn't do due to the left-lock-blows-ignition-fuse problem), we took a small farm road called Walker Road, which ended up being quite fun. Unfortunately, we missed our turn the second time too, and ended up in downtown Petaluma. Never ones to be too terribly discouraged, we stopped at a small Mexican convenience store, ate ice cream, and pored over maps.

We gave up on the particular road we'd been trying to get to, and instead turned south on D Street in Petaluma. We made a left turn onto Novato Blvd and headed east towards the intersection of Novato and Highway 101. Later, we found out that the trip along Novato Blvd was unplanned -- Diana had made a wrong turn -- but it turned out to be an excellent mistake. Novato is swoopy without being very hairpin-y, and rides alongside cow farms and a nice lake. Despite Diana's banging her head against her gas tank in frustration (er, not while riding), we had a great time on Novato.

Highway 101 meets Novato Blvd in, well, Novato. We headed south for the amazingly boring ride back down to San Francisco. We caused some minor excitement at the Golden Gate Bridge toll booth when Diana went through with her FastTrack (i.e. pre-paid toll card) and then stopped to wait for Cat and I. Apparently after I went through and pulled up with Diana to wait for Cat, it appeared that we were actually three terrorists with criminal intent, as the toll booth operator started screaming at us to move along. It didn't help that we couldn't hear her through our helmets, earplugs, and the road noise, so she was having a mild conniption by the time Cat finished paying the toll and we all three took off.

Naturally, we met up with horrific traffic going through San Francisco again. We stop-and-go'ed it for a while, but eventually the evil that is the posture on the Duc through stopped traffic proved too much for Cat, and she took off lane-splitting on down the road. Diana and I managed to survive the trek back to Highway 280, and we headed to our respective homes.

I literally pulled into my driveway, parked in front of my garage, turned off the bike, laid down on the tank, and fell asleep for maybe 5 minutes or so before dragging myself upstairs to take a long hot bath.

I love the first ride of the season, since it always gets me motivated to ride more. I'm going to be doing a similar route with Diana (and Cat?) again this weekend, and I just made my hotel reservations this morning for the Sport-Touring.net California coastal adventure ride at the end of the month. Woo! My hands are pretty sore today, especially now after typing this novel, but my arms are doing pretty well in general. I'm going to see a hand specialist next week, and will be keeping my fingers crossed that I can still do all these rides this summer. Maybe I can even convince Peter to take a weekend off and do that Yosemite trip we've been talking about for a year now....