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.

LaGuardia and Citi Field

Today (Saturday) was a gorgeous day and screamed out for a training ride. Even to me. The only fly in the ointment is that it probably also screamed out as well to about 99% of the Manhattan population that owns a bike. No way was I going near the Greenway or Central Park if I could help it -- they would be way too crowded. I try my best save those locales for weekdays (the benefit of having your own business and a flexible schedule).

So I fell back today on an old favorite -- Queens. Yes, Queens. Really. It's amazingly nice, with a ton of bike paths and very little vehicular traffic -- either of the self-powered or gas engine kind.

Of course you do have to get there, which involves taking the aforementioned Central Park loop down to 59th Street and then going crosstown on 58th Street to pick up the Queensborough Bridge (yes, yes, I know, it's actually the Ed Koch Bridge these days, but I'm a hold out). The Bridge has a great pedestrian/bike path, which even has been repaved since last I traversed it. And, then, once out on the Queens side, you have a wide choice of bike paths on fairly untrafficked side streets.

The paths are not the segregated kind that we're now seeing in Manhattan, mostly just the painted lines on the street kind, but I actually kind of prefer these -- primarily because pedestrians are acclimated to them and don't habitually step in front of you without looking! And, I admit, I kind of feel guilty (although I really shouldn't) about a segregated bike lane, like the relatively new one on Columbus Avenue, taking away an entire lane of traffic. If any traffic planners are reading this, how about giving us a painted bike lane up Amsterdam Avenue?

Anyway, back to the training ride. I went as far out as Citi Field......

....and then swung by LaGuardia to watch the planes take off and land. I admit, I'm kind of like a 10-year old kid in this respect -- it just never gets old to see these huge mechanical behemoths float overhead on the way to landing. You need a wind out of the North for LaGuardia to have the landing pattern that takes the planes over my route, and I was desperately hoping that would be the case -- but, alas, it was mostly ESE, so no go. So I, and you my dear readers, must make do with my video from the last time I rode this route.....

 After LaGuardia, since I don't like to retrace my steps, as it were, I came back into Manhattan (or, more accurately, Ward's Island) via the RFK Bridge (that's a name I can accept, although Triborough still escapes my lips as well), where the view is quite spectacular from the elevated bike path...

Here, as always, are the route and metrics if anyone is interested in following this path themselves. Sheesh. It's only 12 days until I fly out to California. I'd better get back on my bike!

A Short Spin across the Top of Manhattan

Well, the forecasters were pretty accurate for once, and the past three days really weren't very conducive to riding, so I'm glad I pushed myself to ride this past Monday. Which is kind of the story for today (Friday). I sort of needed a push to get going today -- which, I'm worried, is becoming a recurring theme in my training efforts.

The sad truth is that it's much more fun actually to do a ride like Climate Ride than to do the training for it. The conundrum, however, is that without at least a modicum of training, Climate Ride becomes more difficult to do and, hence, less fun. Go figure.

The push to ride today came in the form of Laura's cousin once-removed (her father's brother's daughter's son, if you must know), Greg, who lives in our building with his wife Heather and two young boys. Greg is an excellent athlete and he emailed me this morning saying he wanted to get out on his bike for his first ride of the season. How could I say no?

However, as a concession to it being his first ride and my feeling less than energetic, we kept the ride short and simply looped over the top of Manhattan, across Dyckman street, taking the West Side Greenway North, and the East Side Greenway (yes, there actually is one up there) South. But to our surprise, when we got back down to our neighborhood, we were still raring to go, so we threw in a Central Park loop for good measure.

The total was 20 miles on the day (see below), which really isn't going to do the job, training-wise. But it was fun keeping it short and sweet, so some times you just have to balance competing interests!