San Fran ride day 3.

Yeah, yeah, sorry it's taking so long to get to this.  I just haven't been feeling the whole blogging thing these days. 

Anyway, this is what the profile looked like for day 3.

It was really the easiest day in terms of both distance and climbing, but after Day 1 (7200 feet climbing) and Day 2 (4000 feet climbing)....it proved to have some significant challenges late in the day (2000 feet climbing).  It didn't help that I had a pretty sore knee and back and that Chia had some seriously sore Achilles.  On the up side, there were wide shoulders and bike lanes for much of the day.

Bike path West of Sacramento.  Nice...but it does run right alongside 80 so it's a bit fumey.

Chia conquering a big hill just outside Vallejo.  Fortunately, for me my sore knee had resolved itself before this hill.  Chia's heels however, were not loving this climb.

A view of Vallejo from the hill top.  We foolishly thought it was all down hill from here!

Chia standing on yet another hill top about 10 miles later....surely there couldn't be that much more climbing....we're trying to get to the ocean for crying out loud!

And....luckily, it there wasn't that much more.  We made it to the docks with an hour and a half before the last ferry!

After changing in to some less smelly clothing.....

...it was time for a celebratory beer!!  And yes, it tasted really good!

Then it was time to load onto the ferry....and yep, that's another beer on the table. 

We pretty much had the whole boat to ourselves.

And if completing the trip itself wasn't a reward....San Francisco set off some fire works for us as we arrived at the docks!

 I realized that this isn't an amazing write up.  But, it definitely gives you the gist of it.  I'd encourage anyone to give the ride a go....although I'd recommend 4 days if you want to enjoy the experience a bit more....rather than feeling like you need to push along all the time!

Reno to SF ride. Day 2.

After a night with owls hooting and coyotes calling, the increasing traffic noise was what roused us from our roadside camp around 6:30. Tents and tarps were grabbed and stuff back into bike bags.  With Cook's Station only 10-12 miles away, we weren't messing around with a camp breakfast or coffee at this point.  **Note...it was more like 15 miles and it wasn't all downhill like we thought...go figure!**

Chia packing up the last bit of his gear.

What's that old commercial...."The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup!"  Here we see Chia before the coffee has kicked in. 

 So, the internet doesn't always lie.  The breakfast at Cook's Station was absolutely great!  That and big mugs of coffee started us out on the right foot.  Also...they are totally set up for cyclists...huge racks of candy, energy bars, and coolers full of chocolate milk, Gatorade, soda....pretty much everything you need.  Oh, and they'll pack you a lunch to go if you want!

A crappy shot of the dinning room and bar.

The days riding was tougher than we figured.  You hop off 88 and start a back road tour on low traffic roads.  The problem/fun is they roll into river valleys and climb back out repeatedly at better than 7% grades.  A fun but taxing way to ride 4000 ft. of elevation before noon!

Eventually we made it in to Placerville and then via some no shoulder, high traffic roads into Sacramento.

 I guess it's worth mentioning that the section from Placerville to Sacramento was probably my least favorite.  It was friday afternoon and traffic was busy.  The roads literally had the white stripe pained at the edge of the pavement (and sometimes even in the dirt off the road), a.k.a. NO shoulder.  Drivers don't have much room to maneuver on these roads and didn't make much effort to miss us by more than a foot.  Definitely unnerving.

Once you get to Sacramento you can relax....great bike lanes and a section of 35 miles of separated bike path.

You might note the long shadow in this picture in Sacramento.  Yep, we were behind schedule again.  We were thinking Davis, but by the time we hit the bike path (American River Trail) it was already getting dark.  We rode until about 9:30 pm on the path with lights blazing.  There were a surprising number of other trail users out there along with plenty of deer (Chia almost hit one) and rabbits along the trail.  It was really cool except for the fact that we were tired....a little sore...and there's no stealth camping in the middle of Sacramento.  We finally gave up and found a motel 6 just off the bike path (with a Denny's) and called it an night around 10pm, having logged another century.  Sorry, no pictures on the night riding....it's just to sketchy to try while riding at night when your tired.

A little side story....about 13 miles before we quit for the night.  We were stopped at an intersection (in the pitch black) where the path split, trying to figure out which way to go.  Some guy out riding asked us in a nice thick Russian accent where we were trying to go.  We told him West Sacramento....maybe Davis (which was about 25 miles).  He flat out says "No....Really....Where are you going tonight?"  And you have to say it in your best Russian accent.  After he told us the right way to turn and we where pedaling away....we couldn't stop laughing about the total sound of disbelief in his question.

Reno to San Francisco Tour. First 1/2 of Day 1.

Ok, I'll do this by the day I guess.  Here's the overall route as recommended by Adventure cycling.

We were planning on making it in to Cook's Station.  A little gas station / restaurant / cabin rental / camping location.  By our calculations it would have been about 112 miles and ~8,000 feet of climbing.  Turns out this this was a little ambitious!

Everything started out as you might imagine.  I was up freaking early and got down to Chia's house about 6am.  He was less concerned about time....meaning he finished up packing, loading the bike, we had a couple cups of coffee and left his house a little before 8.  Just to make things interesting...we road a whopping 10 miles to south Reno and had a huge breakfast at the Squeeze In. 

We then hit the road in earnest and made it in to Genoa around noon.  He's a few pics of the morning.

Who frickin' knew there was a designated Bicycle 395!!

A gas station stop in Carson City....Gatorade refill.

Lunchtime in Genoa at the corner store.  Chia was smart enough to have brought enough cold pizza for both of us!

In a complete lack of coincidence we were also right across the street from the oldest bar in Nevada.

And lord knows you must make an effort to make yourself part of history!

If you haven't had a beer here...it's worth a trip just for the nostalgia.

 A little note on the riding to this point.  There aren't any real hills (ok...there's one) and the wind was pleasantly non-existent.  You also discover that there are really nice bike lanes and shoulders for most of the trip....and even some excellent bike paths worked into the mix through some cute subdivisions I never even know existed along the northwest side of Carson City.

All and all we had 50 miles in by noon and were feeling quite confident of our plans.....

Ok, that's all I have time for right now.....tune back in this afternoon.  I'll try to have the "fun" second half of the day written up.

A quick preview of my weekend ride to San Francisco.

Ok, I'm behind at work due to this trip, but here's the dump of our tour to San Francisco.  Basically 300 miles over 3 days of riding with 13,000 feet of climbing. 

I'll do a real write up at some point shortly with pictures.  There are of course some good stories to tell.