Great global cycling website! Maybe many of you already know bout it

[pink-o]

...but I've just discovered it.


http://www.bikely.com/


I just did a great ride last Saturday in Palo Alto. It was 85 degrees, about 25 miles and thru a lot of roads less traveled by internal combustion engine, gasoline fueled transportation!

I'm just about to submit some of my own favourite rides!

[Gregorian]

1. Which ride did you do!

I spent my youth riding those roads. I can't even list a favorite, there are so many. I just loved Arastradero to Page Mill to Arastradero to Alpine to Old La Honda to Skyline to Kings Mountain road to... Too many loops.

Moody road. Or just Page Mill to Skyline to La honda to Woodside and back down Sand Hill.

Old La Honda. That's the premier climb of all time.

But it's all mountain biking for me now. But I do get rather nostalgic about those days. 1970. No cars. Hardly any bikes. It was nice.

[pink-o]

2. Here's the link

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Small-Page-Hill-Alpine-loop

If you remember riding there in the 70s, then yeah--a lot has changed! Page Mill is a huge boulevard, HQ of HP taking up a lot of it. But once you're off onto Arastredero Road, it's still pretty isolated. But the best is that when you're with traffic on this ride, it's mostly all bike lanes.

But I couldn't help thinking about this: I took the train from San Francisco to California Ave in Palo Alto. It's great that they allow bikes on board (albeit limited, it's better than stupid old BART who won't let you board with a bike during commute time! Talk about missing the point!) but I don't understand why there aren't bike lanes running parallel to railroad tracks in every corner of the land! It's not like the trains are gonna turn and run into you. (at least, they're not supposed to!) Seems it would be pretty easy to make a route for us.

[Gregorian]

3. That's it?

You just barely got to where the ride almost starts. What a shame. That's the warm up, cool down part of the ride. You owe it to yourself to find someone who's familiar with the area.

Aha, Google has maps. I'll show you what used to be my daily ride. Argh, it won't let me do a complete circuit. But from point B you'd go back down through Woodside and then Stanford. There are a dozen permutations on it. The fun part is that from Skyline all the way down Kings Mountain road to Woodside is almost all downhill.


Hmm. This didn't really work too well. Whatever. I love riding!

[pink-o]

4. Oh, you century-milers! I'm just a middle-aged woman with a commute bike!

I am working up to going farther, and yours sounds like a great ride! I'll have to keep it on my list for next summer, maybe.

I usually just use my bike for shopping, biking to work (which is only 11 miles) or traveling around on the weekends. I have nothing but admiration for you guys who stay in the saddle for many kilos, but my areas of expertise are riding city streets thru traffic. Although, when I was in New Zealand last January, I rented a bike on a small island just off Auckland, called Waiheke. It's loaded with vineyards and not that much traffic (I was worried I'd end up on the continental/yankee side of the road--and I did a few times!) so I did the wine tour. My family live in Sonoma/Napa, and I wanted to compare :evilgrin: .

It was great, but I didn't go very far. I spent most of the time swimming in the ocean, which looked just like the Caribbean.

Nevertheless, lots of fun. It's why I like the website being global, I can plot where I'm gonna ride next trip to Europe or Down Under.

[Gregorian]

5. I realized that after posting.

And thanks for not taking it the wrong way.

My parents live on West Dry Creek in Healdsburg. I seems to be a very popular bike destination, even if I think the road is horrible for that. Too many cars, and too narrow. I would never put my bike on a road again. I'm spoiled, and things are just way too busy now. That map I posted was what I was doing when I was just a child. I really am thankful for that being in my backyard.

I've got to give you a lot of credit. Biking isn't well appreciated here as in Europe. Although it is skyrocketing in popularity now. And that ride you went on has a few pretty decent little climbs. They used to have the Palo Alto criterium out that way. Deer Creek.

I'm up in Mendocino now, and the mountain biking is just fantastic. Today wasn't fun, though. It's really over for a while due to rain. But it's just so fun to have miles of beautiful redwood forest to ride through.

Biking is a wonderful community. I hang out on a mountain biking forum. There's a guy who lives in New Zealand who posted some photos. I swore it was Marin.

I hope I live to see more bikes and fewer cars. It would be such a nice thing. I love bikes.