Goodbye ride

With some last minute attempts to see if somebody would want to offer me a job in the Bay Area, I had four days to get ready for the journey north. Medication refills, email follow ups, car maintenance, constantly thinking "Do I have everything ready? I'm sure there is this one super important thing I forgot..." I needed to clear my head for one day and luckily, Jill agreed to go for a long ride of unknown duration on Wednesday. Going mountain biking with Jill is a worry-free activity. She is an experienced adventurer and although we never experienced any mechanicals, crashes or orientation problems, I know that none of these would turn a great ride into a disaster when riding with Jill.
Jill is an active blogger and her audience expects to hear from her almost on daily basis, so she has already posted a nice description of this ride. And her pictures are so much better than mine.

I still have to record this ride on my blog, mostly just as a reminder to myself how scenic some places around the bay are, and for those few who ever browse to these pages, as a motivation to go out and explore.

Muir Beach from Coastal trail

 Marin headlands is a great area, but climbing Mt. Tam from the Muir beach overlook on the Coast View trail is also a very scenic ride.

San Francisco and most of the North Bay archipelago from Railroad Grade fire road, above West Point Inn.

 Riding on the West Ridgecrest boulevard is of course a classic Marin road ride, but often one cannot see around the bend due to a dense fog. This time, we had clear sights of Stinson beach as well as the Bolinas lagoon.

The Bolinas ridge trail connecting Mt. Tam with the foot of Point Reyes is so tempting on a map. In reality it is a bumpy ride which will leave you wishing for a full suspension mountain bike.

Bone jarring descent on mellow looking Bolinas Ridge Trail

 Miles thirty-eight to sixty are not covered here since even reaching for camera seemed like too much energy waste to me.
In brief, we took Cross Marin bike path through the Sam Taylor redwoods, SFD boulevard through Lagunitas to Fairfax and rode on streets through Ross, Larkspur, Corte Madera, Mill Valley and Sausalito, just in time to catch some last sun rays reflecting of San Francisco skyline.

Yes, there were some flat sections on this ride.

My next post will likely be from Seattle area and it may take a while. Stay tuned and read more interesting biking blogs in the meantime.