Day 28 – Ride Day Twenty one: Tomales to San Francisco, California!

I slept pretty poorly last night, I’ll admit. But waking up at 7 this morning was one of the best things I’ve done as far as mornings go on this tour. I woke up invigorated for the day ahead. Today was the day where I’d make my goal, I’d see the Golden Gate bridge and I would officially be successful. Today was the day I’d ridden nearly 1200 Miles for. I packed all my stuff up, had breakfast and the team headed out for an 8:30 start.

Today’s ride started out at a fairly calm pace. But as happens every day, the line thinned out fairly quickly with the rolling hills, and once they’d finished we trickled into what I believed would be the last real town on the ride until we were less than 15 miles to San Fran. It was at this point about 10 miles in that we decided to break for a snack, bathrooms and for some, coffee.

Being one of the first to arrive, I was anxious to get going again especially since we’d gone such a short distance. Julie and Phoebe had gone ahead with their bikes to try and find some bathrooms and their plan was to hit the road once done. I followed suit shortly assuming that I’d find them and hit the road with them, but that was not to be. I’d gone almost an hour without really looking back and never seeing Julie or Phoebe in front of me. Mile after mile passed, the time ticked by, and the mile markers counted down, but I’d not seen a single team member. Where this might have bothered me earlier in the trip, this was motivation to keep moving today. The ride was fairly uneventful for a while and I decided to stop beyond the 15 mile marker where there was a safe spot to pull off, and have some lunch.

I found a nice spot just before hitting the 14 mile marker and stopped for lunch. I’d been on a low road, floating just beside a tidal area, and this point I’d stopped at just happened to be where at least a dozen sea lions were hanging out not 30 feet from me. A quick lunch and rehydration session had me back on the road in about 10 minutes.
I was counting down the miles.

14 Miles.

13 Miles.

12 Miles.

11 Miles.

10 Miles.

And then the ride got interesting. I was suddenly faced with a range ouf fairly large hills – dare I say Mountains? – which wound the road up at a fairly steep pace and winding between rocks, along cliffs, and at points seemingly right into the ocean. Unlike the climbs of days passed, when this climb got steep and then wound around a corner, it did not level out or descend, instead today required further climbing.

I got to what visually appeared to be the end of this first huge climb and pulled off to the side of the road to get a few pictures of the amazing views I had of the coast and from this wonderful new altitude. It was here where I encountered two locals – whom were spending the “hottest day of the year” enjoying the ocean breeze while bird and airplane watching – and asked them how far we were to the Golden Gate bridge. They informed me that it wasn’t much beyond the 9 miles that the mile markers alluded to.
I also asked what the terrain was like. I got some awesome feedback: we were allegedly at the highest point between here and the bridge, and it was supposed to flatten out!
Fantastic!

I was in a great mood, I was less than 10 miles to the start of the bridge, I’d be able to meet Phoebe and Julie and wait for the rest of the group and enjoy the views that I could only assume were waiting for us.

As expected curling around this cliff led to a soft descent, a welcomed descent. That is until it got steeper, and windier, and suddenly I was pretty much at sea level, and I knew that something was amiss. The road infront of my was flat, it looked flat, but look up from the horizon and there lie hills larger than what I’d just come down from.  The flat road wound its way between hill bases for a little while before starting back up into the air again. Just less than 8 miles from the end of Marin county I started to see construction signs. Ones which indicated that our road would be reduced to one lane and that minimum 10 minute delays should be anticipated by cars.

I’d come to enjoy these warnings over the past few weeks as despite their indication of slowing/stopping for extended periods, once the cars passed you by you had a clear road for a long time. My timing however was quite unfortunate as I was slow up  the hill to this light, and just as I arrived it turned red. Time to wait, and this may have helped as I was exhausted. It was smoking hot out, there was little shade, and the road was clearly only getting steeper into the distance.

The light turned green and traffic slowly snaked its way past the rock slide and road damage and I followed suit. It was tiring, it was slow, but I was soon staring at the traffic waiting to come the other way – the part that I least liked of these construction zones – who didn’t seem to thrilled to be waiting for a cyclist to get through. However there was some humor in this massive line. As I slowly pulled up to a convertible with two ladies in it, they briefly looked up before returning to their conversation, and just as I got to the end of their car one of them muttered “Keep going Lance”, and that I will say made me laugh. I was chuckling about it for a couple of minutes until I was surprised almost right off of my bike!

Not a quarter mile up this ridiculous hill after the light, behind me I heard a hoarse and exhausted yell of “Alex!” Lo-and-behold it was Julie! After all these miles and hours, Julie was behind me? I was so surprised by the fact that not only was she behind me, but now she was passing me – as I guess I should have expected from the Bullet – and leaving me in the dust.

Fortunately this mountain started to level off  and soon wound into one final town where we stopped with about 2 miles remaining in the county. It wasn’t too long before Michal arrived, followed by Phoebe. And after the experience of the last 10 miles, Michal and I walked back down the road to a 7-11 to get some liquids. Clearly these next two miles could be interesting, and as we couldn’t see the bridge yet, well, we knew anything was possible.

The rest of the group started to trickle in and pulled into the 7-11 lot. Again after being there in the early stages, Julie, myself and Phoebe wanted to keep going to the bridge, so we headed off.
After the trek we’d had to this point, we were following the maps still to get us to the Golden Gate Bridge. This sadly is where the maps let us down. After cruising through more than 500 miles of highway 101 the map indicated that this next stretch would be any different than the 500 we’d seen before.  But the mere entrance to this stretch was far different than what we’d seen, and as I soon learned, this stretch was much more dangerous than any previous. Fortunately for Julie and Phoebe, a concerned motorist stopped them before getting on the highway, but in the lead I could neither hear nor see their concern and as such was left all alone up the ridiculous slope and a midst the 10 lanes of traffic to try and find my way alone to the Golden Gate.
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Notice the silly and tangled route from direction point C to G. It was not an easy ride, let me say that! In fact apparently the difficulty was evident as before getting off the highway I had a police officer slow down beside me merely to wish me good luck before driving off… What the hell? I guess that was my welcoming to San Fran.
After over 2 miles on this nasty bit of 101 I fortunately found an exit and wound my way down through the streets of Sausalito and down to the water front, which after all the climbing again was frustrating. I knew that the bridge was not at sea level, but none the less, I still couldn’t see the darn thing!

But the farther I followed the water the more encouragement I would get. First I started to see San Francisco skyline! Following this further brought me to the first thing I really wanted to see in the area… the Golden Gate Bridge. It loomed high above me, and still a ways off in the distance. The group was waiting for me there though so despite the struggles and confusion of the bike paths and roads, I would soon be where they were.

After finally getting up to the top and finding my way to the group, I was able to take in a piece of the accomplishment. Despite health issues, dangerous roads, and other shenanigans I’d made it! Over 1200 Miles of pain, fun and adventure. I made it to San Francisco!

It sucked that they were/are doing construction on the bridge though as we had to cross on the east side of the bridge with the (seemingly)thousands of pedestrians and other tourists which made for a rather slow journey. But none the less it was a cool ride over the bridge and to finally hit land in San Fran – this however had it’s downside as we had very little idea of how to get to our accommodations, this was made worse too by the road work and detours on the south side of the bridge. For some reason, even after getting lost on a deathly highway and taking a route that was 5 miles too long, the group decided that I should lead… I decided to swallow my phone bill and busted out the gps for a little bit of help in this new found city, and after following the detours we realized we were too far east. So now started our intimate experience with the hills of San Fran as we wound our way up and down hills back west and then south.

Our Route:
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After finally settling down into the church, showering and getting cleaned up  it was time to start cooking our delicious Stiry-fry and Quinoa! It may not have looked very good from the outside, but it was absolutely delicious. We had carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, spinach, peppers and garlic with some Teriyaki sauce for good measure. It was most enjoyable and held off the hunger for a few hours.

Once it started to get dark though, we decided that we wanted to go for a walk and explore the neighbourhood. Maybe we would find a drink or two, or some snacks along the way. It was at this point however that our group split up. Michal, Sarah and Amelia were apparently waiting outside for us and bailed when we didn’t come out quickly enough, which was weird as we were waiting inside for them and scoured the whole building looking for them. When we couldn’t find a trace of them though we decided to get our walk on instead. Thanks to a little bit more clever googling we found our way to a wonderful spot called the Squat and Gobble. This turned out to be a fantastic find for us as it had booze, desert, and warm drinks!

The fresh Strawberry Crepe was my selection and was thoroughly enjoyed! That plus my hot chocolate were enough to subdue me for the night and our short walk back to the church put the nail in the coffin. The day was done, I was exhausted and it was bed time!

Today’s Adventure: 61.46 Miles /98.336KM
Max Speed: 35.4 MPH / 56.64KM/Hour
ODO: 1263.7 Miles / 2021.92KM