Saturday, August 1, 2009

Day Ten: Stillwater Cove to San Francisco

It was very foggy between Stillwater and Jenner … the park ranger has warned us that Bodega Bay is notoriously foggy and often the fog doesn’t burn off.  We rode a few winding climbs and descents in the morning before our breakfast stop.

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On the run-in to Jenner we passed this estuary that had some really killer current coming in from the ocean.  I wish I’d taken a south-facing picture as we descended into Jenner.  It was very scenic.

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We ate breakfast at the coffee shop in Jenner.  We chatted with two guys who’d lived in the area for many years.  We even talked a bit about HealthVault!

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11:05am: leaving Jenner we saw a guy on the side of the road selling smoked salmon.  I figured my dad would get a kick out of this sign.

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11:23am: more scenic beaches

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12:30pm: large group of cyclists from Marin doing a century and a double century in Sonoma County

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1:30pm: countryside

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Shortly after this, my phone ran out of batteries.  I tried to recharge it at lunch but I must have picked a bad outlet, so I was phoneless and cameraless for the rest of the day.  I was able to steal a few pictures from Vaibhav.  This is me during the run-in to Point Reyes Station.

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We ate lunch at a market in Point Reyes Station that advertised the presence of burritos and tortas on a large sign outside.  They were showing a NASCAR race on a big screen TV inside.  It seemed a bit out of place.

After leaving PRS, we had one final “climb” on the Sir Francis Drake parkway.  Once again, the pictures in the guidebook made it look a lot worse than it really was and soon we were on the gently downslope to Lagunitas.  The road was very rough in this area but our friends in San Francisco said that the alternate route (staying on Route 1 through Stinson Beach) included some crazy-steep hills.  Note: if a hill seems crazy-steep on your regular bike, then it will likely be hell on two wheels with a touring bike.

We got to Lagunitas and rolled on through the Marin suburbs – Fairfax, Mill Valley, Sausalito… eventually we found ourselves on roads that I’d ridden before.  I did an easy 2-hour spin after the San Francisco Triathlon.  I’d also ridden to Tiburon with Loren last year when he lived there and I was racing something-or-other in SFO.  Jessi and I had ridden a tandem over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito while in SFO on vacation a few years back, too.  All that experience with the local roads helped as a few of the intersections near Mill Valley didn’t have bike route signs.

We stopped for a few pictures before and after the bridge, plus one shot mid-span as we passed the San Francisco City Limits sign,

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And finally, a picture of me biting my lower lip so that you don’t see how badly sunburned/windburned it is after riding 1000 miles in 10 days!  WOOOHOOOO!

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