Category: California

The Santa Cruz Mountains rise south of San Francisco, dividing Silicon Valley from the Pacific Ocean to the west. The normal Pacific Coast bike route keeps you hugging the coast out of San Francisco, so most cyclists won’t even notice them. But our route into Silicon Valley had us way too far south on the…

Sometimes mornings just suck. Nothing to do with Jayaram, Aparna, and Dharma, who were just as gracious as always seeing us on our way in the morning, similar to how they left the same front door for their epic adventure 20 months ago (maybe we’ll also return to their door in 10 months time like…

When I had messaged Jayaram and Aparna via WarmShowers about spending a night at their place, Jayaram not only responded, but graciously offered the opportunity to spend a couple nights if we wanted to. Our immediate reaction was “nah, we expect to continue south, and don’t want to impose that much anyway”. But, perhaps as…

Rather than traversing the Golden Gate for the third time, we’d decided to continue our overall-southward journey by traversing the east side of San Francisco Bay. There are no camping options in this stretch, but since we were now in a geographic area where the number of not-currently-on-the-road bike tourists offering lodging at their homes…

Today it was finally time to end our Napa vacation. We’ve already had a few “vacations” on this trip, where we’ve stayed in one place for more than two nights, and kept the bike riding relatively low. But even when we stayed at the Howard Creek Ranch, or San Francisco, for five nights, I never…