One Third of a Bay in a Day, July 2005

One Third of a Bay in a Day

Bill Bushnell — Saturday, July 23, 2005

Today was the inaugural event of A Bay in a Day Double Century, starting in Novato, CA. The ride circled the San Francisco (and San Pablo) Bay, touching on all nine bay area counties, and was organized as an event to raise funds and awareness of the local bay area bicycle advocacy groups.

I was curious to see what the route was like, but I didn't want to ride the whole 210 miles. I discovered that a friend of mine, Zach Kaplan, was riding the whole thing. So, I got the idea of joining him for the part of the ride that traverses the south bay area.

I started from downtown Sunnyvale and took the fastest and most direct route I know to the Dumbarton Bridge, then rode across to Newark, Fremont, and Union City. I ended up waiting for him for 20 minutes across from the Masonic Home before he arrived with a couple other cyclists.

After we joined up, we rode south on Mission Blvd., took a detour up Old Canyon Rd. and through a subdivision near Morrison Canyon before returning to Mission Blvd. We continued south past the Mission San Jose, and then took Warren Ave. to avoid the traffic on Mission Blvd. between I-680 and I-880.

After Warren Ave. we took Kato Rd., a frontage to I-880. At first this road was in very poor shape, but the condition improved greatly as we rode south.

We crossed I-880 on Dixon Landing Rd. and continued south along the east side of the freeway. At McCarthy Ranch we took a side road west along CA237 that turned briefly into a dirt trail.

This part of the route was nicer than I expected, in part because the weekend traffic was so much lighter than it would have been on a weekday and because we didn’t get stuck at any long-cycle traffic lights.

At Tasman Drive and San Tomas Aquino Creek we took the bike path north along the creek, diving under all of the major roads, and then headed west into Sunnyvale's Baylands Park.

Once past Moffett Field, the route became more tedious though more familiar. The section through Mountain View from Ellis and Middlefield to the lunch stop at Gunn High School was the least enjoyable. Major cross streets had unfavorable traffic signals with long cycles (>1 minute).

At the Gunn High School lunch stop we met up with other riders who were doing the official ride and met Randall Hull who after not riding much this season managed to find the time to come out and get some exercise with us.

Upon leaving Gunn we rode out the usual way on Arastradero Rd. to Alpine Rd. up to Portola Rd.

Zach wasn't feeling too good on the mild climb up to Portola Rd. and decided to stop at the Triangle Park to rest in the shade. He had all the symptoms of dehydration and heat exhaustion. Temperature on the road was close to 100F. After resting for 1/2-hour in the shade (and being joined by several other cyclists, some of whom were riding the double century) we moved into a nearby cafe where the AC was set to a comfortably tepid temperature.

Almost two hours later we started off again. Zach felt much better and felt up to finishing the ride. We continued around The Loop, through Woodside, and north on Canada Rd.

At CA92 Randall and I wished Zach well on the rest of his ride back to Novato, and we turned around and headed home.

Ride stats:

distance: 105.4 miles

climbing: 2150 feet

total time: 11:38:23

riding time: 6:18:39

average speed: 16.5 mph

maximum speed: 40.6 mph

HR(av): 79/85 (overall/while-riding)

P(max): 524 watts

P(ave): 127 watts

E: 2884 kJoules (Calories)

Find the full picture gallery: here.

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