Last weekend on my Half Bay in a Day route, I rode over two of the three major bay area bridges that are open to cyclists ( the Golden Gate and the new Carquinez). So today I decided to traverse the third, the Dumbarton bridge, which is the southern-most bridge that crosses the bay, linking Fremont on the east bay with Palo Alto on the peninsula. I followed the Oakland Yellowjackets' routesheet (pdf), but I started at a different BART station to tack on a few extra miles.
Overall, this is a relatively uninspiring ride. It takes you through some nice parts of Palo Alto, Portola, and Woodside on the peninsula (ground I've covered on several other peninsula rides), but the bridge itself isn't all that interesting, and frankly, the areas surrounding the bridge smell really bad. The one area that was a bit interesting was the marshlands on the Fremont side of the bridge. This is the second weekend in a row that I've stumbled upon some interesting bay area marshlands that I had no idea even existed. I probably don't associate the bay area with wetlands because San Francisco and the east bay shoreline have filled them all in. Anything that was swamp back in the 19th century is now land-fill, of course. I've been reading on the internets that 85% of the bay area's original marshes and shorelines have been altered in the last 150 years. But it seems that there are these pockets around the bay-- in Marin, in the north San Pablo bay area, and in this area of Fremont-- where agencies have attempted to preserve and restore the natural shoreline habitats.
This one is called the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay WIldlife Refuge. This was the first urban National Wildlife refuge in the U.S., and it covers 30,000 acres of bay, salt ponds, marsh, etc. They have a beautiful visitors center and several nature hike trails, so I definitely plan on returning there when I have a bit more time to explore.
But enough of the positive, let's talk about the negative! Maybe it's my long biking season wearing me down, and/or the 3200 miles I've puts on the bikes since January, but I've developed some pet peeves that really prevent me from fully enjoying a ride. All three were present on the Dumbarton ride:
1. Poor road quality. I swear there are maybe 5 roads in the entire bay area that are not collections of poorly patched potholes, tree root cracks, earthquake fissures, and small boulders. Is this a conspiracy to make us all buy expensive carbon frame bikes? I actually have things fall off of my bikes because of the poor quality of the roads. Oh well, I guess I didn't need that rear reflector anyhow.
2. Headwinds. Seriously, it is possible to have headwinds in every direction during a single ride? Wtf?
3. Shards of glass in the bike lane, covering the entire width of the bike lane, just for good measure. I know we all love the smashy-smashy, but can we be a little less ghetto in the ghetto?
Speaking of ghetto, I parked my car at the Fruitvale BART station and when I got back in the afternoon I noticed that the lock on my driver's side door was a bit wonky, and there were papers and junk strewn about the passenger seat. So, somebody broke into my car (by opening my incredibly secure door lock), went rummaging through my glove box, map slots, ash tray (?), but didn't take anything. I don't keep anything of real value in the car because people keep fucking breaking into it, but I did have my stereo face and several CDs in one of the compartments and they were left untouched. Either they didn't look in there or they don't like my taste in music. But who doesn't love Lynyrd Skynyrd?!
Apparently my model of Toyota has the world's easiest locks to pop open. I wouldn't really mind them taking a peek inside, but their handiwork is really screwing up the lock mechanisms on the doors. At this point the passenger side door lock is completely busted, and now the driver's side is getting pretty bad. Thanks a lot hoodlums.
Total Miles: 60
Time in the saddle: 5 hours
Elevation gain: 1100 feet
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment