The Ride
When the
San Rafael - Richmond bridge opened its bike lane, I was very excited to ride across it. But busy weekends and a body that isn't always ready for big rides kept me from doing it, until this past Sunday.
More on that ride, below. But first, a little personal and bike history.
Personal History
I lived in San Rafael when I first came to California from Pennsylvania, in 1981. I was thirteen. I had been on a bicycle and out of doors since I could ride, in Pennsylvania. The bicycle meant autonomy, exploration, freedom and it made me feel good. In California, there were more people like me, riding bicycles. In Pennsylvania, it was a BMX bike. In California there were road bikes, BMX bikes, but also this thing that looked like a motorcycle or a cruiser bike. Hippies rode them. They were taking them on dirt, up mountains, in the woods. I wanted one! My family was poor, there was no money for me to buy a new bicycle. So I got a job selling newspaper subscriptions for the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner door-to-door, as part of a crew of kids in a van led by a guy named Leonhardt, I think. Nothing creepy about getting in a van and being driven all around the bay, dropped off in neighborhoods and sent off to talk to strangers. :) I still recognize random neighborhoods from this job. I once sold a newspaper subscription to Ray Bradbury, my favorite author, who was visiting his daughter. I submitted a copy of the slip and kept the original, because it had his signature on it.
With the money from my first job, I bought a second-hand "
klunker." That's what they called these bikes. They were all hand-made from scraps of other bikes and even motorcycles. They were usually old "paper boy" bikes from the 1930s and 1940s with various modern bits added. This is poetic irony, because the early motorcycles forked from bicycles, and were not much different at first. By 1981, these klunkers had reached the evolutionary state that we now call "mountain bikes." The one I bought had a red
Laguna frame, a cruiser from Southern California which
looked like an old-fashioned frame, but was made more recently. If I remember correctly, and I'm not sure I do, someone had brazed on cantilever brake mounts. The frame and fork had been painted red. The rest of the parts were a mix of bmx, road and motorcycle. The stem was a Tuf-Neck, gold. Bar were big, wide cruiser bars, gold. Crank was gold. Maybe Sugino? Rims were gold, maybe hubs too. It had a five-speed derailleur, a thumb-shifter, five-speed freewheel, motorcycle brake levers and I don't remember the rest. This was a long time ago, I only had it for a year, or less, and I certainly don't remember it all clearly. I have no pictures of it. I loved it. I explored everywhere on it. It weighed a lot. One of my favorite things to do was to push / ride it up to the top of
San Rafael Hill - the hill above downtown - then bomb down the spiral fire road to Boyd Park, then ride home to Lincoln Avenue.
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| This wasn't my Laguna klunker, but it gives you an idea of what it looked like. This one is in the stock, cruiser configuration. From bmxmuseum.com |
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| My homage to the original |
I had a parent on each coast, and got sent back and forth between them. Home life was not great. I did something to make my mom angry, so when I was sent to my dad in Pennsylvania she sold the bike. (Twenty five years later I built a modern homage to it, my
XL Retrotec SS 29er.) I worked part-time (grocery store, farm labor) in Pennsylvania and got my next bike, a Specialized Rockhopper via mail-order from
Mountain Bike Specialists in Durango, Colorado, then, the next summer, when I was in California again, I worked building trail and doing conservation work for
Marin Conservation Corps. I sold the Rockhopper and got a second-hand Ritchey with my earnings. I went to school in California, staying put for a whole year in one place. I remember riding for the first time up
Mt. Tamalpais, up Eldridge Grade with an older, stronger and more experienced rider, and throwing up at the Indian & Eldridge fire road intersection. I went everywhere I could on that Ritchey. That summer I commuted to work at 4th & Heatherton in San Rafael, locking it to the fence while I was at work all day. I don't think that would work, now.
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| The Ritchey eventually made it back to Pennsylvania. Here it is on the dirt road behind my dad's house. I've since found a similar 1983 to hang in my garage, because of a nostalgic desire. |
Now, 2020 I still ride bikes, everywhere. Two of my favorite bikes are my
Falconer, built with "
extra bomber action" and my
Santa Cruz Stigmata. The Falconer actually reminds me a lot of that Ritchey.
Bike History
They are "gravel" bikes. I really don't like that name. We tend to pigeon-hole bikes, for specific purposes. The Falconer is so close to the original
safety bicycle as to be the perfect mutt. They are
bicycles, as true to the original diamond-frame bicycle design as can be. Mutts make better dogs, and bikes. Here's a 1900s
Mead Ranger:
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| Tell me that's not a gravel bike. From Ebay |
It's steel, the wheels are called 28", but they are the same diameter as modern 700c / 29er wheels. The 28" refers to the outside diameter of the tires, which were usually 1-1/2" "single-tube" tires that were shellacked onto the wooden rims, basically like a garden hose, no inner tube. Just like 29er wheels, the designation refers to the outside diameter. The tire diameter is right in line with what we now put on "gravel" bikes. In the early 1900s, most roads were dirt. This bike had the kind of geometry, tires, tire tread and body position that would work on all terrain.
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| Falconer all-terrain bike |
[Thank you to Joe Breeze, for some corrections in this section. I've updated it. - MF]
I've heard the guys who first started riding and building klunkers say that the mountain bike would have had bigger wheels, if they'd been available. They were all familiar with the modern form of the road / touring / cyclocross bike, its 700c wheels and the much rarer 650b wheels, but the cruiser bikes had 26" wheels. Why? Because by 1930 the bicycle had been reduced to a child's toy, while America fell more and more in love with the car.
World War II saw more restrictions on bicycle production. Sales of adult bicycles dwindled, and 28" wheel bikes became both somewhat more rare, and also somewhat less capable. The 26" wheel and balloon tire mimicked the smaller wheels and larger tires which were becoming popular in the 1920s, and also suited children better. Bikes for kids are built to take abuse. The cruiser bikes that formed the basis for klunkers had 26" wheels, so the first mountain bikes also had 26" wheels.
Gary Fisher raced cyclocross, all the Velo Club Tamalpais racers did. (Joe Breeze, Charlie Kelly, Otis Guy) They knew the big wheel size worked on the dirt, but the rims and tires weren't there, and the geometry they knew was built around the smaller wheels. Later, guys like
Wes Williams,
Bruce Gordon and
Don McClung started building off-road and all-terrain bikes around the 700c wheel size, driving tire production that could match the bikes. (We actually sold the Nokian Hakkapeliitta 700c tires at Sausalito Cyclery (see below) that got Bruce rolling on the idea of the Rock 'n Road tire, and bike. The Ibis Hakkalugi and Hakka get their jokey names from Hakkapeliitta.)
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| Bruce Gordon and one of his Rock 'n Road bicycles, from Bikerumor. RIP Bruce. |
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| Ibis Scorcher; look familiar? Even the name Scorcher comes from the same era as the Mead Ranger, above. Photo from retrobike.co.uk |
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| A Don McClung mountain bike, from MTBR |
Now the 26" mountain bike is on the decline, except for smaller riders, and both 29er and a resurgent 650b wheel size rule the mountain bike world. (26, 27.5, 29) Alongside the mountain bike, a dirt-capable, curly-bar, larger-wheel bike was always co-evolving. For a long time the cyclocross bike existed, with cantilever rim brakes, knobby, skinny tires and slightly more dirt-capable geometry. I had some, and both raced and rode them everywhere. They were good, but the tire volume was too small for real adventure, and the gearing and brakes also wanted for more capability. The
French constructeurs, and later American frame builders and the mainstream bike industry built somewhat dirt-capable touring bikes with both 700c and big, fat 650b tires, and these were also close to being right for all-terrain, but were still focused on road, with fenders, dynamos, bags and racks cluttering the bike, but just right for country roads. My view of history is biased, and I'll just say that Miguel Crawford and his
Grasshopper Adventure Series races in western Sonoma really made the adventure bike. He writes:
This is the genesis of the Hoppers: long, fun, hard, rides with no waiting for your friends (unless you really want to) and cold beer and good stories at the end. The fun of picking the rides is to challenge myself and others. I make the loops just long enough that you know you can finish but when riding outside your limit must really make good choices or it will be a long way back, maybe alone. Dirt. Whenever possible I throw in dirt on the road bike because bikes are meant to get dirty. To be crowned the champ of the Hoppers you need to be able to ride your road bike on dirt; both up and down. Cross, road, mtb. Instead of changing sports we change bikes. I know that some people try to get by with one or two bikes but in Sonoma County you just need an adventure bike. Call it a cross bike if you wish but it’s really much more than that.
I saw cyclocross, mountain, road bikes on these rides. I also saw a lot of us that loved the bike, in all its disciplines, loved getting out of bounds and beyond our capabilities, getting lost, getting found. Many of those people were from the bike industry. We took the best of all these bikes and made one. The mountain bike and the road bike had a baby, and it's good. I think this is where the modern, adventure bike as we know it, the unnecessarily pigeon-holed "gravel" bike was forged. I think we should reclaim the term all-terrain bike, and drop gravel. These bikes are the anti-pigeon-hole bikes; they are closest to the original bicycle and can go on all terrain. Call them adventure bikes if you like. Now you'll see bikes with the best technological advancements from the mountain bike world - tubeless tires with tough casings and good rubber tread for all terrain, wheels to match, often with wider, tubeless-ready rims, hydraulic disc brakes, clutch-tensioned rear derailleurs, single-chainring, wide-range drivetrains, two-sided clipless pedals that shed mud well, and even dropper seatposts - combined with wide, flared drop bars affording many hand positions, a neutral geometry bike frame that has had one hundred thirty years to evolve, built around 700c / 29er or 650b wheels with plenty of clearance for mud and big tires, from a variety of materials. This is what I wanted, when I asked
Cameron Falconer to build me a bike. I was thinking specifically of the
Old Caz Grasshopper when I requested it. I've ridden it everywhere, most of the time, since I got it. I commute on it. I beat on it. It's always ready to go. Recently, I had the opportunity to get another bike like this, a Santa Cruz Stigmata, this time with 650b wheels:
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| My Stigmata, near where I threw up thirty six years ago, Indian and Eldridge fire road intersection |
This is my new favorite bike. The Falconer is doing hard duty, and the Stigmata does sport duty. I recreate on it. It is very light, stiff and comfortable, and with
Panaracer GravelKing SK 650B×48 tires on
Santa Cruz Reserve 25 650b Carbon Rims at about 27psi, tubeless it's just a joy to ride.
More about the ride
With this bike, on a good day, with my body feeling right and the bridge to Marin open to me, I decided to ride from my door in the Oakland hills to the top of Mt. Tamalpais, the mountain of my boyhood adventures, and back. I had talked about this before, but it was a spur of the moment decision, and I didn't invite any friends. It would have been more fun with friends. I loaded my pockets with food, money, a flat-fixing kit, a jacket, phone, etc and rolled out. It was cold. I didn't leave until noon, a bit too late. I brought almost enough warm gear. I put lights on the bike. I'll tell the rest of the story in pictures. If you click on
my ride in Strava on a non-mobile web browser, you can see where the photos were taken. If you click any of the photos below, you can also see their location on a map via the information icon.
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| My first glimpse of Mt. Tam, descending Broadway along Highway 24 |
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| Turkeys and a creek near the Berkeley waterfront |
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| Mt. Tam, seen from Pt. Isabel |
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BICYCLISTS WATCH FOR TRACKS
You can see this sign in the distance, in the previous picture. Turns out this is a bike route, and the tracks deserve caution. |
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| Point Richmond looks like fun. I've never been there before. I want to go through that tunnel. Check out the pipe cleaner "tree" on the ridge. I went right... |
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| I'll visit the East Brother Light Station another time. This is right next to the bike path approach to the San Rafael - Richmond bridge. |
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| Target sighted. |
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| On the bridge, pointed at Tam |
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| Rolling through San Rafael on 4th Street, I had to snap a pic of the original location of Mike's Bikes at 4th & F Streets. Back before it was a chain of stores, this was my shop when I was a kid. My friend Scott worked there, Mick owned it. I bought a Fisher Procaliber and an Eddy Merckx Corsa there, did some of my first group road rides with Scott, Lance and Chris from the shop. |
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| My bike and I, at the base of Eldridge Grade. I used to ride up this all the time. I would go up it as fast as I could, and track my time. Riding here from San Rafael, past Phoenix Lake brought back all the emotions. Here's another blog post about the first two guys to put bicycles on the top of Mt. Tamalpais in 1885. They probably went up this road. |
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| A beautiful view of the mountain, in a rare sunny spot on the north side, late in the day |
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| I texted my wife my plans, here. I decided I'd go over the top of the mountain, down Railroad Grade, to San Francisco and then take public transportation to Oakland and ride home, door to door. I was also ready to ask for a pick-up, if I got too cold, if it rained, if my lights died, if my body let me down... |
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| At the Indian and Eldridge fire road intersection, where I threw up as a newbie 14-year-old |
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| Beautiful Marin |
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| At the end of the road, enjoying the late sun, wondering if I have the starch to complete my journey, fire lookout at the summit in the upper left |
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| Enjoying the view from Railroad Grade; my next destination, San Francisco is middle right |
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| The same view, as a panorama |
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| Late light, lower down on Railroad Grade, imagining gravity cars and flowing down the mountain as fast as I can |
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| The mud flats of Richardson Bay were exposed during low tide, as I cruised along the chilly bike path in Sausalito |
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| I worked here in the late 1980s, back when it was Sausalito Cyclery, and Sammy Hagar owned it. Now it's a Mikes Bikes location. |
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| Peeping the Golden Gate Bridge form Battery Cavallo |
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| I had to stop and snap this stunner of a San Francisco view. |
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| There it is. I chased that guy at middle right up the hill, couldn't catch him but my goal was drawing nearer. |
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| Brr, last light crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, a bit warmer than the descent off Tam but still very chilly |
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| Sunset over the Pacific |
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| I got off-course, but saw this stern section of an old windjammer down by Fort Mason. |
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| Ferry would have meant an extra twenty minute wait, so I took BART from Embarcadero to Rockridge. |
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| Almost home |
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| Door to Door |
What a ride. Love it! I'm sure next time you'll leave in time to ride all 3 bridges (well, 2.5 anyway).
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