San Francisco Adventures
Aug. 16th, 2015 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aYesterday the weather report said that the East Bay would be in the high 80s. That's very hot for us East-Bayers, so I decided to do my Saturday biking adventures in San Francisco. It's, I think, just the 4th day I've spent biking over in the City, and just the first time I've really dived into the heart of the City, rather than just riding the Bay.
I started out on Market Street, which the City Council has been working to quiet for years. The most recent change was just a few days ago when they outlawed turning onto Market Street from 3rd through 8th. The result is indeed a much quieter Market, with most of the traffic being buses, taxis, and bikes. Apparently Uber and Lyft were becoming a big problem on the street, especially for bicyclists (because they were regularly sitting in bike lanes) and they're pretty much gone now. Lower Market is still challenging because you have to dodge buses, but it wasn't the horrifically busy street that I remember (just bus-sy).
Further up Market Street, past 101, you duck behind a Safeway and then you're on the Wiggle, a bike route that even has its own PSA and theme song. It's pretty much the route between Market and the Panhandle. Nice, quiet streets with very clear markings that eventually bring you onto a protected bikeway that leads into the Panhandle, and beyond that Golden Gate Park. It's all very well constructed, and exactly the type of safe bikeway you can have on city streets with careful thought. (It was also the source of Civil Obedience from bicyclists in the last week; a local precinct started aggressively ticketing bicyclists on the Wiggle, so bicyclists started showing them what happened to traffic if they put their foot down at every stop on the Wiggle as the cops were requiring. Traffic snarled to a halt. Two full-stop demonstrations, and the clueless cops went back to what they're supposed to be doing, which is ticketing Vision Zero violations that actually cause traffic fatalities ... like cars not stopping.)
The Panhandle is AOK. I don't think I've ever gone its full length before, but the best part of the trip came when I got to Golden Gate Park. I don't like how many cars fill Golden Gate Park. I've never liked that. But a mile or so into the Park, the streets were blocked off for automobiles, and then it got pleasant. It got even nicer a bit further when my path diverged from the main road. Though the parts of GG Park right next to the roads are very crowded, you get just a quarter-mile from parking, and the Park becomes much quieter, because the people who use GG Park largely don't like to actually walk. And, I love the quieter, darker parts of the Park, which is just so full of nooks and crannies. My favorite stop for the day was the Polo Fields, which have a track around them that bicyclists train on. I decided to do a lap, and it was beautiful, fast surface. Even weirder was the Angling & Casting Club, which really looked like it should be a Roman Bath or or something. While in the Park, I actually got lost twice, once because of construction and once because I just got confused and took the wrong turn (ending up back at the Polo Fields instead of the Windmills). I love that the Park is big enough to allow that sort of thing. By the time I got to the Park's western extent, the temperature had dropped enough that the rest of the day was totally pleasant.
I had never realized that there's a long strip of public land on the west side of San Francisco that runs from Golden Gate Park to the SF Zoo. That's what I rode as I headed south. It's unbroken, with sand all around. Lots of people are crossing from the beaches back to their cars or houses. Often the dunes are too high to see the beach, but occasionally I got to see long vistas of the waves crashing into the sand. Ahhhh. The Bay is just nothing like the real ocean.
At the Zoo, I took a left and went here and there and ended up at Lake Merced. This is a big public land in the southwest corner of San Francisco, which had always caught my eyes on the maps. But it turns out to be pretty disappointing. Much of the green area there is actually surrounding golf courses. Then, the actual park just isn't that well constructed. There's a big lake, but it's far enough down from the park that you often can't see it. There isn't even a path around the lake at lake level! And there's too little seating and way too little shade. (Hello? Trees!?) I did find one of the scant trees and sat against it, overlooking the lake, writing for a while.
Afterward I went to Fort Funston, mainly because it was right next door. This used to be military defense, but it's now a beach and dog park. I locked my bike against a street sign (no bike parking at one of the entrances, darn it!) There were some nice trails here and there, and some interesting remnants of the base. Unfortunately, some of the park's main paths were ripped up for reconstruction, and apparently have been for some time. So, those was much walking in sand, and I was wearing the worst shoes for doing so. (Never, never, never will I ever again buy shoes with mesh across the top to create airflow; I got rain in my shoes last winter, sand in my shoes in Hawaii, and sand and dirt in my shoes yesterday.) Nonetheless, I enjoyed walking along the cliffs, then there was a viewing platform that I stood entranced on for a while, watching the beach and the views.
And that was pretty much it for the day.
I came back through Daly City, which was the only place that I had a jerk honking at me to get off the road. I find that ignorant asses like that are more common when you get outside the SF-Oakland-Berkeley area, so I wasn't surprised that I met one yesterday in Daly City. From there I looped back up into San Francisco, finally hopping back on BART at Glen Park. (And 'lo and behold, bike lanes reappeared as I moved from Daly City back into SF.)
The whole route was slightly under 25 miles in a big circle from Embarcadero, out to Golden Gate Park, down to the Zoo and then around to Fort Funston, over to Daly City, and then back in to SF. There were no hills of much note in that route. I did drop down as low as 50 feet or so and got as high as 400 (though I might have exceeded that on foot when I hiked around Fort Funston). The weird thing is that I circled all the big hills in San Francisco: Mount Davidson, the Twin Peaks, and Mount Sutro. I just stayed clear of them the whole way.
It was a nice ride with GG Park being the highlight, but I enjoyed seeing the more farflung places. And it was definitely cooler than the East Bay, especially when I was up against the Pacific, as I was most of the afternoon.
I started out on Market Street, which the City Council has been working to quiet for years. The most recent change was just a few days ago when they outlawed turning onto Market Street from 3rd through 8th. The result is indeed a much quieter Market, with most of the traffic being buses, taxis, and bikes. Apparently Uber and Lyft were becoming a big problem on the street, especially for bicyclists (because they were regularly sitting in bike lanes) and they're pretty much gone now. Lower Market is still challenging because you have to dodge buses, but it wasn't the horrifically busy street that I remember (just bus-sy).
Further up Market Street, past 101, you duck behind a Safeway and then you're on the Wiggle, a bike route that even has its own PSA and theme song. It's pretty much the route between Market and the Panhandle. Nice, quiet streets with very clear markings that eventually bring you onto a protected bikeway that leads into the Panhandle, and beyond that Golden Gate Park. It's all very well constructed, and exactly the type of safe bikeway you can have on city streets with careful thought. (It was also the source of Civil Obedience from bicyclists in the last week; a local precinct started aggressively ticketing bicyclists on the Wiggle, so bicyclists started showing them what happened to traffic if they put their foot down at every stop on the Wiggle as the cops were requiring. Traffic snarled to a halt. Two full-stop demonstrations, and the clueless cops went back to what they're supposed to be doing, which is ticketing Vision Zero violations that actually cause traffic fatalities ... like cars not stopping.)
The Panhandle is AOK. I don't think I've ever gone its full length before, but the best part of the trip came when I got to Golden Gate Park. I don't like how many cars fill Golden Gate Park. I've never liked that. But a mile or so into the Park, the streets were blocked off for automobiles, and then it got pleasant. It got even nicer a bit further when my path diverged from the main road. Though the parts of GG Park right next to the roads are very crowded, you get just a quarter-mile from parking, and the Park becomes much quieter, because the people who use GG Park largely don't like to actually walk. And, I love the quieter, darker parts of the Park, which is just so full of nooks and crannies. My favorite stop for the day was the Polo Fields, which have a track around them that bicyclists train on. I decided to do a lap, and it was beautiful, fast surface. Even weirder was the Angling & Casting Club, which really looked like it should be a Roman Bath or or something. While in the Park, I actually got lost twice, once because of construction and once because I just got confused and took the wrong turn (ending up back at the Polo Fields instead of the Windmills). I love that the Park is big enough to allow that sort of thing. By the time I got to the Park's western extent, the temperature had dropped enough that the rest of the day was totally pleasant.
I had never realized that there's a long strip of public land on the west side of San Francisco that runs from Golden Gate Park to the SF Zoo. That's what I rode as I headed south. It's unbroken, with sand all around. Lots of people are crossing from the beaches back to their cars or houses. Often the dunes are too high to see the beach, but occasionally I got to see long vistas of the waves crashing into the sand. Ahhhh. The Bay is just nothing like the real ocean.
At the Zoo, I took a left and went here and there and ended up at Lake Merced. This is a big public land in the southwest corner of San Francisco, which had always caught my eyes on the maps. But it turns out to be pretty disappointing. Much of the green area there is actually surrounding golf courses. Then, the actual park just isn't that well constructed. There's a big lake, but it's far enough down from the park that you often can't see it. There isn't even a path around the lake at lake level! And there's too little seating and way too little shade. (Hello? Trees!?) I did find one of the scant trees and sat against it, overlooking the lake, writing for a while.
Afterward I went to Fort Funston, mainly because it was right next door. This used to be military defense, but it's now a beach and dog park. I locked my bike against a street sign (no bike parking at one of the entrances, darn it!) There were some nice trails here and there, and some interesting remnants of the base. Unfortunately, some of the park's main paths were ripped up for reconstruction, and apparently have been for some time. So, those was much walking in sand, and I was wearing the worst shoes for doing so. (Never, never, never will I ever again buy shoes with mesh across the top to create airflow; I got rain in my shoes last winter, sand in my shoes in Hawaii, and sand and dirt in my shoes yesterday.) Nonetheless, I enjoyed walking along the cliffs, then there was a viewing platform that I stood entranced on for a while, watching the beach and the views.
And that was pretty much it for the day.
I came back through Daly City, which was the only place that I had a jerk honking at me to get off the road. I find that ignorant asses like that are more common when you get outside the SF-Oakland-Berkeley area, so I wasn't surprised that I met one yesterday in Daly City. From there I looped back up into San Francisco, finally hopping back on BART at Glen Park. (And 'lo and behold, bike lanes reappeared as I moved from Daly City back into SF.)
The whole route was slightly under 25 miles in a big circle from Embarcadero, out to Golden Gate Park, down to the Zoo and then around to Fort Funston, over to Daly City, and then back in to SF. There were no hills of much note in that route. I did drop down as low as 50 feet or so and got as high as 400 (though I might have exceeded that on foot when I hiked around Fort Funston). The weird thing is that I circled all the big hills in San Francisco: Mount Davidson, the Twin Peaks, and Mount Sutro. I just stayed clear of them the whole way.
It was a nice ride with GG Park being the highlight, but I enjoyed seeing the more farflung places. And it was definitely cooler than the East Bay, especially when I was up against the Pacific, as I was most of the afternoon.