Pacific Coast Bike Trip, September 2010

Mike and I flew to California mid-September 2010 to cycle down the coast from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, visiting bike-friendly cities along the way. Our basic route is shown in the map, below, although we deviated somewhat from what you see there:

This atypically touristy (for us) photo on the Golden Gate Bridge marks day one of the bike tour, with cooler temperatures than we had expected, hence our jackets, which we wore most of the day.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, September 14, 2010

Mike's comment: You can cycle or walk across the entire bridge on a dedicated sidewalk but no bike lane. Lots of pedestrians (tourists) walking in both directions makes cycling across more like navigating on an obstacle course. Other big bridges in the Bay area have fences to prevent people from jumping off. You can see in this photo of the Golden Gate that you can just hop over the railing.

It was below 10 degrees Celsius for the first few mornings, which made early morning starts less than appealing. We took a leisurely pace, not out to set any distance records and to explore interesting sites along the way. Our average daily distance was about 80 km, our longest being about 130 km and taking all day. We were on rented bikes with panniers from Bike and Roll and we used an assortment of maps (unfortunately we couldn't obtain the adventure cycling maps, which are reportedly great) and a book called Cycling the Pacific Coast, which was helpful for knowing which roads would be safest for bicycling, but we relied on other sources to find interesting places to see and eat, especially people we met on the road or at restaurants and hostels/inns.

September was a busy month for us and between Clare's research preparations and Mike's house design in Muskoka, any wise person would have considered adding a 10 day bike trip as a clear indication of insanity. However, as it turned out the timing was perfect as it was during a hiatus while waiting for research ethics approval AND it was when Mike's brother Dave and his wife Cathy were staying at her cousin's gorgeous house in Big Sur, where we had the pleasure of staying for three days half way through the trip.

As a whole, the trip was an amazing opportunity to achieve an educational goal - to experience and learn about bike-friendliness first hand while riding through cities that have been ranked highly bike friendly - while seeing a fascinating part of the world on two wheels.