07/10/15 - Biking San Francisco, CA

To see the GoPro video of the trip click here:  Adventure 2015: Episode 8: San Francisco, CA

I have a friend named Kelly who lives in San Francisco.  Since I was only a few hours away and I hadn't seen her in a few years I had to make the trip.  Before I drove in to the city limits, and since Kelly was at work, I decided to try out some of the biking North of the city.  I chose to ride in the Tennessee Valley because there is a trail called Miwok that was supposed to have the most technical riding in Marin county.  I started off down a wide road and made it down to the Pacific Ocean.  I hadn't seen this ocean since I was in Costa Rica about three years ago so I made a point to go and dip my hand in the water to say hello!  I continued riding and found that although there are a multitude of singletrack trails in the area, most are closed to bikers.  I continued riding on the road and enjoying the beautiful scenery of the Pacific coast until I joined up with the Miwok trail and got excited for some technical singletrack.  I was quickly disappointed, however, to find a very smooth trail.  I must have been on the wrong section of the Miwok.  In the meantime Kelly got off work so I headed toward San Francisco and got to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge.  San Francisco is a cool, if

confusing city.  Because it is so hilly I found myself winding around like a snake through its streets trying to find Kelly's apartment.  Once there Kelly and I made short time of catching up.  I was in

desperate need of a shower and Kelly was only too willing to oblige!  The next day I walked around the neighborhood for awhile until I was hungry for lunch.  Upon getting to my car I found that I had a parking ticket!  Apparently I had the bad fortune to park in a place where it was illegal only between noon and two on the second Wednesday of the month, between noon and two on the second Wednesday of the month!  That night Kelly wanted to take me to a pub where they had a trivia night.  I am a huge fan of trivia pub nights!  Since it was only the two of us we qualified for "small team" consideration and I thought our chances were good.  Of all the categories we were most apprehensive for the music round.  Of all the rounds, however, that was the only one we managed to score perfectly!  It probably had to do with the quiz master's fortuitous selection of mostly 90's rock, which was right up my alley.  The next day I was feeling lazy so I turned on the TV and discovered a show called The Wire.  Kelly had all of the episodes and I did nothing the rest of the day but watch all of season one.  It is a really addictive show.

That night Kelly's boyfriend Paul got home from a business trip in Virginia and didn't have to work the next day.  Paul and I went for a ride just a little bit North of where I had ridden a few days before.  Although the trails were not any more technical, there was a lot more singletrack so I was happy.  After parting ways with Paul I headed North up highway 1 to Punta Reyes.  I hiked about a mile down to the shore and took a nice swim in the ocean.  The water was certainly cold, but a little less cold than I was expecting so I was pleased.  After sitting on the beach and listening to the waves for awhile I hit the road again.  My plan was to head to Annadel State Park near Santa Rosa and ride some of the trails there.  When I got to the park, however, I found all the campsites full for the weekend.  Since I was already planning on cutting my trip short and turning around here I decided to just head all the way back to Lake Tahoe.  I stopped to fill up with gas, and seeing the inside of the station closed, went to relieve my bladder behind the station.  When I got back to my car there was a police officer there checking out my licence plate and demanding to see my ID!

"What were you doing behind the building?"  he asked.

"Going to the bathroom," I replied.

"Why didn't you ask the attendant to let you in the bathroom?  He's still inside."

"He was counting the cash, they are closed, and I didn't want to bother him."

"Is marijuana legal in Colorado?" He asked while looking at my plates.

"Yes."

"Do you have any marijuana in your car?"

"No."

"Anything illegal?"

"No."

"Anything illegal behind the station?"

"No."

All the while he is checking my ID with dispatch to make sure I didn't have a warrant or anything.  He started to ask my about my criminal history and kept asking over and over if I had anything illegal in my car.  Once dispatch told him I was clean he looked at me slant-eyed and asked where I was heading.

"Lake Tahoe," I said.

"From Colorado?" He asked incredulously.

"I am heading there from San Francisco."

Finally he let me go, giving me suspicious glances all the while and heading behind the station to look for "anything illegal."  I don't like cops.  I spent the night in Lake Tahoe and debated whether to head straight back home or head North up to Idaho and explore the areas around Boise.  Since I have come so far, I reasoned, I had better go to Idaho!

07/06/15 - Biking North Lake Tahoe

Marlette Lake (left) and Lake Tahoe (right)

To see the GoPro video of the trails click here:  Adventure 2015: Episode 7: North Lake Tahoe

I can honestly say that Lake Tahoe has been my favorite place to ride so far on this journey.  There are so many trails, and they are all high quality.  The North side of Lake Tahoe was no exception.  The Flume trail is widely known, and despite its intermediate ranking I had to give it a go.  I have to say that the Flume trail itself was pretty boring.  The views, however, were excellent.  I rode to the Flume trail from Tahoe Meadows on the Tahoe Rim Trail and all of that was some excellent and fun trail riding.  The next stop was Northstar California ski resort.  I knew they had a bike park and I really wanted to give it a try as well as explore another of Vail Resorts' properties.  After getting shut down by a couple days of rain I woke up to blue skies on the 5th.  Rather than ride up to the

Sand Harbor, NV from the Tahoe Rim Trail

summit and maybe get to sample a couple of the trails I decided to buy a lift pass for $52 (no discount, by the way, for Vail Resorts employees, lame).  The purchase of the lift pass was well worth it.  I was able to ride all the double black and black trails and some of the blue trails.  There were so many excellent descents I managed to use up all of the battery on my GoPro for the first time this trip.  Unfortunately some of the best trails I rode came after the battery died, but I think I got some good footage none-the-less.  My favorite trails there are Sticks and Stones, Gypsy, and Boondocks.  Sticks and Stones and Boondocks are full of rock drops, jumps, super techy sections, and super smooth berms.  Gypsy is full of jumps and wooden bridges and ramps to drops that got my adrenaline pumping.  Unfortunately my GoPro battery had died before I rode Boondocks or Gypsy.  I managed to wreck myself pretty hard once (also no footage), and less hard a bunch of other times.  Thanks to Drew Barber for loaning me some Kali knee pads so I didn't destroy my legs too much!  I am most definitely planning on going back to Lake Tahoe some day, and riding at Northstar again is high on my list of to-do's!  I finished up my time at

Nearly ripped my nose off at Northstar

Lake Tahoe by meeting up with a friend from Vail (Kim aka Thunder Bunny aka Honey Badger) who is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and just so happened to be arriving in Lake Tahoe on the 6th.  Since I was wrecked by all my crashes at Northstar, and she had hiked 1,200 miles in the last few months we decided to make it a beach day.  We jumped off the dock a couple of times in Emerald Bay (beautiful) and finished the day by watching the sunset from Regan Beach (more beautiful) and falling asleep under the stars (my heart is breaking from all the beauty!)

Sun over the sand at Regan Beach

Sunset from Regan Beach (thanks to Kim for the photo!)

07/01/15 - Biking Yosemite and South Lake Tahoe

Yosemite Falls

Check out the video of the week here: Adventure 2015: Episode 6: South Lake Tahoe
As I mentioned in my last post, Lake Tahoe is just super.  But before I get to that I have to, briefly, address Yosemite.  Yosemite is beautiful, and I'm sure if I had been intent on backpacking and buying a bear proof food tin, I would have had a different experience.  I did drive all the way through the park from East to West and then down South to the heart of the Yosemite Valley.  Upon arriving in the main valley I was greeted by stop and go traffic and people scurrying around like ants.  I stopped to grab a few blurry pictures and got the heck out of there.  I drove North for about three hours before spotting a sign for a campsite and stopping for the night.  After sleeping in my car on the side of the road for the last week I wasn't going to take any chances about not finding a site as I got closer to Lake Tahoe.  After spending a few days just enjoying the woods, reading, and generally recharging my batteries, I continued on to Kirkwood.  I was interested in stopping in Kirkwood only because it is owned by Vail and I would like to ski here when/if it ever gets snow again.  Not knowing anything about the biking here I was not impressed to see a sign bragging about 12 miles of singletrack trails.  I quickly rode all twelve of those miles along with some climbing up the service roads in between.  Nothing spectacular for my first ever biking in California.

Kirkwood

 I continued on to South Lake Tahoe.  My first thought as I rolled in to town was, "oh, poop."  South Lake Tahoe is weird.  The state line between Nevada and California passes right through the middle of it and looking into the Nevada side is like looking in to a miniature Las Vegas.  If you don't know my feelings about Las Vegas let me tell you now, it stinks.  Literally and figuratively.  So seeing a bunch of neon lights atop casinos made me immediately uncomfortable.  I turned around and headed back to the California side.  Checking my very handy Singletracks.com phone app I found a trailhead nearby.  Thinking I would just camp there for the night I struck up a conversation with a gentleman who was loading his bike on to his car.  He worked for the local trail organization and they had just finished building a new jump and a couple new bermed corners on one of the trails in the zone and he thought I just might have enough daylight left to ride it.  Thanking him I geared up and headed out.  The ride up is on a very steep paved road.  It is not much fun.  The descent was totally worth it.  I started on the Armstrong connector trail and was pleased by all the fun technical

Star Lake

sections spaced well between some super fast flowy sections.  I joined with the Corral trail where I was expecting the one jump and a few berms and was surprised to find a whole series of table jump lines and lots of perfectly built berms!  Unfortunately the light had nearly disappeared by this point, so the video is garbage, but the 10 mile trail was spectacular.  Encouraged by my find I woke up early the next morning and greeted the few people that were milling about the trailhead.  One was a guy named Matt and just so happened to be planning to ride the same trail as me.  We joined forces and set out to tackle Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, a ~20 mile loop.  Matt and I have virtually the same climbing speed.  You may have an idea how nice it is to find a complete stranger who climbs at nearly the exact speed as you, but if you don't, it is glorious.  The climb up had the perfect amount of technical sections, just enough to keep my brain engaged, and not so much that it got exhausting.  At the top we grabbed a snack and prepared for the descent.  I was super happy to have my new dropper seat post as we rode along the ridge for about five miles.  Being able to raise and lower my seat along with the undulations of the trail without stopping was super convenient.  As the descent began in earnest I was, once again, delighted to discover that Matt rode at nearly the same speed as me!  The descent was full of rocky

but rideable technical sections dispersed between super fast and flowy sections.  All in all I was exhilarated!  Matt and I are nearly perfect riding partners and plan to ride again in Downieville this weekend.  The next day I decided to do a ~40 mile loop that combines the Cold Creek, Star Lake, Tahoe Ridge, Van Sickle, TPT, and Powerline trails.  This trail was also super fun and scenic and rides through California and Nevada.  After working up quite a sweat, and noticing for the first time that my shins were caked in black dirt, I finally hit the beach and took a swim in Lake Tahoe.  The shallows of Lake Tahoe are really warm; surprisingly and delightfully warm.  After discovering this I decided to spend the whole next day on the beach and let my legs recover from the nearly 100 miles of trail riding I had done in the last three days.  From here I

am planning on biking some trails on the North side of the lake before I meet up with Matt again to ride the famous Downieville Downhill.

Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park