San Francisco!

OK, this trip is now officially under way. I flew from JFK to San Francisco yesterday, arriving a little after Noon, only to find myself in the midst of a heat wave the sort of which SF rarely encounters. Sunny and in the 80s. Seemed OK to this New Yorker!

I'm staying here, until the ride starts on Saturday morning, with my niece, Emily, and her spouse, Christina, and their 14 month old son, Elliott. As much as I love Emily and Christina, they know that Elliott is the main attraction. Yes, almost all babies are cute and adorable, etc., etc., but Elliott really takes the cake in my unbiased view.

I arrived somewhat jet-lagged, and also not feeling all that energetic for someone about to undertake a 250 mile bike ride. Emily and Christina helped cure that by taking us all down to the Presidio for dinner catered by about 20 different food trucks, lined up at the edge of a beautiful grassy lawn littered with families and their young children enjoying the Summer-like weather (actually, that's inaccurate -- I'm told Summer in SF is not generally like today -- it remains cool, wet and windy). There was a band playing, and the entire scene (known as "Off the Grid") was invigorating and rejuvenating. And Elliott definitely got into it:

So that was a very nice way to arrive and adjust, and take my mind a bit off the ride itself. I admit, I'm a tad nervous about my stamina and how little I have really trained! If you don't see a blog post tomorrow, it means there's an exhausted Roger flopped out in his tent!

Today, I went to pick up my rental bike and fine tune it for tomorrow. And by that I mean put on my own pedals and seat and swapped out the handlebar stem for one that is shorter and angled higher. I do the latter because I have long legs and a shorter torso, so my seat always needs to be set pretty darn high and, on road bikes, the handlebars then end up being too far away and too low. So I adjust it all as best I can.

The bike is pretty nice: a Cannondale with a carbon frame (I've never had one). I took it for about a 12 mile test run and mini-sight-seeing trip around SF, and it rode beautifully. It's much lighter and more responsive than anything I've been riding in NY. The only con is that the lowest gear on the bike is only a 34 front, 28 rear ratio, which makes me a little nervous for when we hit real hills (OK, San Francisco has real hills, but as you'll see from the route below, I managed to avoid the worst of them today). I'd rather have a 32 tooth gear in the rear, or something to make the ratio closer to 1 to 1 (i.e., one pedal stroke = one full wheel revolution). To be continued from the road, I guess....

Here's today's route, as well as a smattering of photos of and around this gorgeous coastline.

Tomorrow -- Climate Ride starts. We have about 150 riders in all, who have broken Climate Ride records by raising over $500,000 to date. Good stuff, and I'm looking forward to it! Thanks to everyone for reading and for their donations.