Two Bay Loops

Bill Bushnell — January 16, 1993

This route is mostly flat. What I call the “loop around the South (San Francisco) Bay” is a good long-distance route near home that offers an opportunity to practice a variety of bicycling skills including riding in a paceline and riding at a reasonably fast and constant cruising speed on flat land, something we haven’t been doing too much lately.

Brent, Jude, and I start out from the Palo Alto Cultural Center at about 8:15. The day is cold and damp. Rain is forecast for the evening, but it looks like we’ll be able to ride at least one of the loops before things get wet.

Our route takes us through Palo Alto and south on Central Expressway. We manage a good pace of 18 to 20 mph between traffic lights, but as we warm up, our speed increases. I lead, Brent follows, but Jude prefers to hang back out of our wind shadow; he wants to practice spinning in a lower gear, which for Jude means a cadence in the mid-80s. He also wants to complete the ride without the aid of drafting!

We stop briefly for the first time at a gas station near US-101 and San Tomas Expressway. A few minutes after we resume, Jude gets a flat. To make the delay less tedious, Brent offers us some still-steaming hot home-baked raisin bread that he had packed along.

Once back on the road, we continue to Milpitas Blvd. and then head north. The road is wide, but there are too many traffic lights through Milpitas! By the time we get to Fremont, the road has changed names to Warm Springs Rd., and then to Osgood. On Osgood the busy two-lane road alternates between narrow and broad. It seems that the city didn’t want to spend the money to build the road consistently wide.

We continue when the road changes to Driscoll, and after turning left on Paseo Padre, we stop at Fremont’s Central Park for a more extended break, being careful not to sit upon the abundant piles of bird guano.

After a moderately long 20-minute break, we continue to Stevenson Rd., then Mission Blvd, and then Alvarado-Niles Rd. Alvarado-Niles Rd. passes through what must be the old downtown of Niles. Some of the old-style shops still stand along the road. Several miles later after riding through more recently built-up areas of Union City, we reach the old downtown of Union City shortly before turning left on Union City Blvd.

I’m beginning to feel tired now, but we still manage a swift pace south to Paseo Padre and then to the San Francisco Bay Refuge Nature Center. We decide not to ride up to the building.

“Jude, do you mind leading for a while?”, I ask.

“No problem.”, Jude replies.

We continue down the frontage road along the eastern approach to the Dumbarton Bridge. Following behind Jude makes pedaling a piece of cake, except that I can’t see anything in front except Jude’s back. I’m not as accustomed to following as I am to leading, so this is something I’ll have to get used to.

The sidewalk on the Dumbarton Bridge is a dreadful mess, especially the west side of the bridge. Rocks, sand, broken glass, nails, metal shards, plastic shards, and other debris have been washed off the roadway by the recent rains and into the bike/pedestrian lane. Miraculously, none of us flats. Once on the west side of the bridge we make our way swiftly to Willow Rd. and then to downtown Palo Alto where we stop at the Togo’s sandwich shop for lunch.

As we eat, heavy-looking clouds begin to pass overhead. Rain is forecast after dark, but these clouds look thick. As long as we can see the Santa Cruz Mountains, I figure we’ll stay dry.

Since we’ve ridden over 50 miles on the counter-clockwise loop, we can shorten the clockwise loop. After taking more than 45 minutes for lunch, we ride slowly out of downtown Palo Alto. I have decided that we’ll return across the Dumbarton Bridge via Marsh Rd. We ride north on Middlefield to Marsh and then to the Bayfront Expressway. Perhaps mistakenly, we decide to brave the traffic lane rather than cross the highway to the bike path. There is no shoulder on the four-lane road, and traffic passes closely at 55 mph. When we reach Willow Rd., we use the bike path and continue back across the Bridge. Again each of us passes, tires intact, through the debris on the bridge sidewalk.

This time we stop at the Nature Center for a short break and a group picture. The clouds look thick, but the mountains stand etched in the sky across the bay. No rain comes from these clouds.

As we leave the Nature Center we continue on Thornton through Newark to Fremont Blvd, and then we zigzag to Peralta and continue to the Fremont BART station. Why stop at the Fremont BART station? Because I need to know the distance and climbing from Fremont BART to Warm Springs Rd. and Auto Mall Parkway for my cycling map.

After a short break we continue on Civic Center Drive to Stevenson and Paseo Padre, and then we turn right on Driscoll and head south to Milpitas. By my calculations, if we arrive at Montague Expressway with our mileage over 82.3, we will be over 100 miles by the time we reach the Cultural Center in Palo Alto, and we won’t have to add gratuitous loops at the end of the ride to get our odometers to pass the 100 mark.

As we ride south I can feel a slight headwind that makes it difficult to maintain a 20 mph pace, yet when we stop at traffic lights, the air feels still and heavy.

When we reach Montague Expressway, our mileage is about 84. We turn right and continue to the Shell Station at the corner of Old Oakland Rd., where we make our last stop of the ride.

We continue by taking Trimble Rd. to Central Expressway. This cuts a few tenths of a mile off of the Montague to Central Expressway route. The ride up Central Expressway is uneventful. We can still see the mountains, so it looks like we’ll make it home without getting wet.

Brent is about 11 miles ahead of us since he rode from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto before the ride, and it looks as if his energy is flagging. He’s not quite able to keep up the 20+ mph pace even while following. Jude and I wait up for him at Wolfe Rd. where he’ll be leaving the ride and heading home.

After saying goodbye to Brent, Jude and I continue quickly up Central Expressway to Middlefield and then to Palo Alto.

“Do you mind if we stop at Haltek?”, I ask Jude as we pass Linda Vista Street in Mountain View. “I need to get a replacement LED for my VistaLight.”

“Well, I’d rather not today. I’m getting hungry, and I don’t want to start digesting my stomach.”, Jude answers.

We continue north to Palo Alto without incident and end the ride at over 100 miles.

Ride stats:

distance: 101.7 miles

climbing: 1020 feet

total time: 8:45

riding time: 5:44

average speed: 17.7 mph

maximum speed: 26.0 mph

index: 106

irp: 12

mirp: 18

climbing density: 10 ft/mi

climbing gradient: 0.00190

An article on indexing can be found here.

©2004, Bill Bushnell

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