Nov 18th - If you're going to San Francisco... bring your bike!!

San Francisco treated us well. Not only did we benefit from the support of our friends and sponsors there, but we were able to benefit from the car-free culture in San Francisco. The bike lanes in San Francisco are plentiful and well mapped, we comfortably shared them with so many other cyclists.

We stayed at the YMCA in Point Bonita, so we were especially lucky to have a dedicated bike line across the Golden Gate Bridge. On our way there we realized that it was Car Free Sundays in Golden Gate Park, so we got to enjoy the full breadth of the road with so many other walkers, bikers, and roller skaters. A lot of us got to see Disco roller skating for the first time when we took a break to watch them. A big climb and a speedy downhill gave us a little taste of the Santa Cruz mountains that we will be climbing tomorrow. We pulled into the YMCA with enough time to watch the sunset from Point Bonita. We joked that we got to find out why it was called “bonita” this year, because last year we arrived in pitch black and fog!

The next morning we had to get up at 5am to visit our San Francisco school. I took a turn at “sagging” meaning that I was responsible for driving our SAG (Support And Gear) vehicle. Travis is still a bit laid up from his injury so he joined me. We got to enjoy the simple pleasure of crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on a crystal clear day just after sunrise. As we reached the end of the bridge Travis and I scrambled to find money to pay the toll. As I rolled down the window with some cash crumpled in my hand, the attendant let me know that since we were technically a carpool the $6 toll charge was waived. Kind of funny to think of a 20 passenger bus with only 2 people in it as a carpool, but glad to take advantage of this carpool initiative (and hold onto the 6 bucks).

We got to the school early and were ready to talk to the 8^th grade. We were split up into three different activity areas around the campus thinking critically about our environmental footprint, exploring the depths of non-point source pollution, and thinking creatively about solutions when using alternative transportation.

Thirty-five miles of urban riding later, we pulled into the Foothills Congregation Church. We’ve been so luck to be able to stay at this community’s facilities for the last three years where they have given us shelter and a hot shower (kind of a hot commodity on the bike trip). We’d also like to send a shout out to the choir that was practicing there that night – you sounded amazing, and send our apologies if we were too loud to the meditation group that met in the morning.

Next we get to visit our friends of many different grade levels at Almaden Country Day School, but we’ve got 25 miles before we get there in the morning!