Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Commute to Work

This is an image of coyote point. It's rediculously small for whatever reason. My commute is 22.61 miles and took me 2 hours. There are three hills, these being my first hill climbing in quite some time.

It wasn't the most pleasant ride, as a lot of it is industrial.

4 comments:

~ lauren said...

are you working IN the city?

and you're thinking about commuting over the dumbarton to BART and then taking BART to SF?

i'm about to email you the route. but, it does go down streets with parked cars near freeways. but not many.

shawnkielty said...

Yes -- I am working in the city. Near Potrero Hill.

No, I am not serious about riding around the bay to go to the city. I was kidding, because your commute looks so much more beautiful than mine.

But I would like to be able to extend my recreational rides to the south from my house. It would be nice to know the good route to the Dumbarton bridge from my house.

The parked cars near freeways thing -- you should see my commute. I'll be fine.

I am looking at the route now -- it looks dandy. Oddly, I somewhat remember the route to the bridge on the east side -- I must have hiked out there when I lived in Hayward near Decoto.

Thanks!

Yokota Fritz said...

Shawn, there really aren't any wonderful routes from the Peninsula into Menlo Park. The farthest north I've ventured on bike is Redwood City on Seashore Blvd. From Seashore Blvd, E. Bayshore Rd is the frontage road on the bay side of Hwy 101. Bayshore curves around to Haven Ave before it does a dogleg to turn into Bayfront Expressway at Marsh Road.

Before Marsh Rd, Bayshore/Haven is mostly narrow and bumpy and industrial with a big trailer park along part of it. But Bayfront Expwy will take you onto the Dumbarton Bridge.

Dumbarton is not my favorite ride -- windy and very noisy with lots of traffic. But it gets me to the SF Bay Wildlife Refuge visitors center which is a nice spot to visit.

Do you have a SamTrans or anything like that? I would just take SamTrans into Menlo and then ride from there.

shawnkielty said...

Hi Fritz.

Thanks -- I don't really care for buses. And, as you so aptly pointed out in your recent video, bikes typically pass normal paced buses.

But I frequently ride the train, and the bart. So I would probably train to Menlo Park.

My quest in trying to get out to the Dumbarton was more to get a fairly sane century in for training, by riding directly out my front door.

To work I ride out my door and cross over the freeway to get on the bay trail and ride north to the Airport, where I turn onto Airport Blvd, and follow that, to the top of visitacion valley where I turn onto third Street, which I follow to 16th and turn west, which leads me to my desk. 23+ miles, some of it scary. I hear from other riders there is a route out near the bay that goes all the way from the north side of the airport to the ballpark.

To the south I can ride on the bay trail to Holly Street and 101 in San Carlos with out trouble (there are a couple of stretches of gravel) for a round trip of 30 miles. Beyond that, I hear from Lauren that I can get to Whipple without too much pain and beyond that it's what you've described. If I were to get out across the Dumbarton it might be a 100 mile round trip out my door, all without too much danger or crazy traffic. Which would be extra cool.