Bay to LA: Day One - San Francisco to Half Moon Bay

It all started when Jeff decided that he wanted to go on a really, really long bike ride. He mused on the idea of riding from my house in Olympia to Monrovia. Thankfully he realized that was a little too ambitious of a trip (at least for our first one), in addition to the complicated logistics of shipping/flying with our bikes and transporting ourselves and gear to the start and/or from the end. Determined, Jeff thought of a feasible plan that not only overcame the transportation obstacles but also was a reasonable distance (less than 1,000 miles). He devised a plan that went a little something like, "Let's have Mom and Dad visit the Andersons in San Jose, and we'll come along with our bikes, start there and ride back home!" Unfortunately, the whole thing appeared to fall through when the Andersons moved to Utah. In discussing the matter with Mom, she was still enthusiastic about taking us despite having no grandchildren to visit. 

And so the planning began. In his research, Jeff found that the route from San Francisco to Los Angeles (which he coined "Bay to LA") is a well traveled road for bike touring. People come from all over the world to ride down the California Coast on Highway 1/Pacific Coast Highway. He purchased bike-specific maps and started planning our route down the coast, marking possible stops and sites for us to see. There are scores of campgrounds that offer hiker/biker sites for a low nightly fee, so he labeled various campsite options for us along the route. After countless hours of research and training, our tentative itinerary was planned, lightweight camping and bike tour specific gear was acquired and our bikes and bodies were all tuned up and ready to go. 

Jeff and I drove to California on Saturday, June 29. We left 336 on the afternoon of Sunday, June 30. It was a lovely six hour drive through the bread basket of the United States. We slept in a hotel just south of San Francisco so we could be close to our starting point the next morning. It was difficult to believe the time had finally come for us to start the tour that had been in the works for months. It was a rather amusing thought that it would take us over a week to bike the distance we had driven earlier that day. 

I had never been to the City by the Bay, so we took the scenic route in getting to the Golden Gate Bridge the next morning. The townhouses were charming and the drive down Lombard Street was a lovely experience. It was just a small taste of the city, but it was magnificent on such a sunshiny day. It would have been the perfect start to the tour, but our first hiccup came before we even hopped on our bikes.

It seems that the keys to the bike racks (which were indeed locked) were left behind at home. So in order to access our bikes, which were rather essential to the tour, we found a locksmith to unlock the racks. After that, we were good to go!

It was a sunny, but foggy morning in the Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is quite the site to see in person. When we rounded the bend and the bridge came into view, the realization came that we were really going to do this! We had dreamed of starting at the bridge, and there it was right in front of us.

We drove across to the North side of the bridge and loaded up our bikes with stuffed panniers, camping gear and orange safety flags (which I insisted on, even though they are kind of nerdy). It was surreal being by the Bridge. A funny thing happened just before we started riding. Dad was taking a photo of us, but before we could snap the picture an Indian family of three approached us and pointed to our bikes. They had their camera out and I assumed they wanted a photo with themselves and the bikes. But it turns out they wanted a photo with Jeff and I, HA! It was more hilarious than it sounds. We felt like some kind of weird celebrities. I only wish we had taken a photo of that on our camera, but the moment passed too quickly. Shortly after taking photos it was time to start riding. The trip across the bridge wasn't very pleasant what with lots of pedestrians, inexperienced tourists riding rented bikes and lots of wind...but now we can say we have ridden across the Golden Gate Bridge!

We got out of the city by riding through some of the parks around Golden Gate Bridge. Finally, we made it to the highway along the coast. Our first notable climb was in Daly City as seen above. The last stretch of the hill was quite steep, so you just have to shift into your lowest gear: "Low and Slow." My goodness we are so dorky in our spandex cycling clothes, fast sunglasses and helmets. Ha!

This tunnel was Jeff's favorite part of the ride our first day. It was pretty cool, literally...it was ventilated with huge fans. There was a substantial bike lane so we didn't feel like we were competing with the car traffic as we rode through. 

There were many beach coves like this along the way. This was a really nice change of scenery after riding around the plains of Utah.

Our first campsite was in the small beach town of Half Moon Bay. It was a really beautiful campground right by the water. We set up our tent underneath a large cypress tree and unpacked our panniers. By this time we were rather hungry so we rode into town, which was only about a mile away. After a refreshing dinner courtesy of a cute little cafe, we went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for breakfast and snacks.

We had arrived at our campsite around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to explore and stroll along the beach. It was a beautiful and relatively warm evening, but still the beach was rather vacant.

This was in the front lawn of the state park. It's the skull of a blue whale! It was pretty neat.

I just have to say, I think this is my favorite photo of Jeff from the entire trip. Isn't he just the cutest? He looks like a little boy enjoying his milk and cereal. 

It was such a great first day, aside from the whole locking ourselves out of our bike racks thing. The entire ride Jeff and I kept reminding each other that we were actually doing it; we were actually riding from the Bay to LA! Jeff couldn't stop yelling out about how much fun he was having, especially as we rode through the tunnel. It was so exciting to be on the road. The campsite was lovely, we felt so alive after having spent the day outside riding our bikes and we ended the evening by watching the sun set over the horizon. We knew it was going to be a good tour.