Just kidding.  Check out Jonathan Mauss’s great report on a trip he did with his family and two others recently on Bike Portland.

Rogue and reckless gang member descending Camino Alto into Larkspur. Photo by Dustin Jensen.

This past weekend a local bike gang known by their seemingly innocuous name ‘the ragamuffins’ did a quick overnight trip to Samuel Taylor (redwood!) state park north of Fairfax, about a 30 mile ride from SF.*

Dustin Jensen, pro bike photog and sfwiggle blogger, captured the ride in a colorful and dynamic photoset.  Curious what chill, laid-back, post-car camping in the bay looks like?  Watch the slideshow of Dustin’s photos.

* Larkspur ferry shortens the ride and knocks out some climbing.  The park has hike-and-bike campsites which are only $3 and require no reservation, and no one turned away.  If you’re not into cycling or not able to, take the bus right to the park and still use the super cheap and convenient hike-and-bike sites.  Full details on the trip available in the print version of Post-Car Adventuring, available here, here, and here for a mere $5.

Twelve bikes fill a parking space outside the Papermill Creek Saloon in Lagunitas. A short, trail ride away from camp, the saloon is a great place to stop on your way. Photo by Dustin Jensen.

Just saw this ad on craigslist.  This is a great deal, two bike friday new world tourist bikes (what the authors of this blog use on many trips) for only $1000.  For sale in Berkeley.  More on folder bikes and post-car adventuring coming soon.  Just back from a great trip to Samuel Taylor Park in Marin where we met some other great post-car adventurers from SF.

Transit and Trails

We’re excited about this new resource, available both online in a web 2.0 format and as a hard copy map.  More context, commentary, and reflection coming soon.

With the recent heat-wave, we were on the look out for a cool lake dip not far from home.  We found a great spot just a few miles from downtown Oakland, and about a fifteen-minute bike ride from Rockridge BART in Oakland–Lake Temescal.  The trip to the lake can be made by a slightly uphill bike ride from Rockridge Bart (1.6 miles) (route map) or by AC Transit bus 59 (see map insert).  Sunny beach, chilly but swimmable water; great place for kids in a roped-off shallow area, or more serious swimming in a sizeable section of the lake.  Lifeguard on duty.  See their site for more details.

snapshot from the Bay Area Open Space Council's Transit & Trails Map.

]]> http://bikeandhike.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/great-beach-and-lake-swimming-minutes-from-downtown-sf-oakland/feed/ 1 bikeculturetheory lakeopenspacemap http://bikeandhike.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/wine-country-harbin-hot-springs-bodega-bay-in-36-hours/ http://bikeandhike.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/wine-country-harbin-hot-springs-bodega-bay-in-36-hours/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:17:32 +0000 bikeculturetheory http://bikeandhike.wordpress.com/?p=151 ]]>

link moved to http://postcar.blogspot.com

Here’s a quick and dirty itinerary a few friends and
I had to scrap for a different one for a trip we’re
taking to Pigeon Point Lighthouse for New Years.
Pigeon Point’s all booked up for the 31st, you can try and find a nice spot at  Butano State Park, a few miles inland from HWY 1, close to Pigeon Point and An(~)o Nuevo State Park.  Butano used to have hiker-biker campsites, but appears to have discontinued them.  I’m not sure if this is a seasonal thing.  Will investigate and post when I learn more.

The PDF doesn’t specify, but once you get to San Jose Diridon, you can take a Caltrain back to the Peninsula or SF (anytime before 9pm) or catch
the Capitol Corridor to the East Bay.

Hot off the presses, the Zine/Book version of the blog is now available!

The book is available at these San Francisco stores (in many more stores soon, some outside SF, check back):

Modern Times Bookstore (Valencia and 20th)

The Green Arcade (Bookstore) (Market @ Gough)

Needles and Pens (16th and Guererro)

You can also order books online at the press website, postcarpress.org.

The zine/book features five trips, including Mt. Diablo State Park, Yosemite, West Marin hikes, Lake Tahoe, and Big Sur. In addition to a different medium, we’ve cleaned up the information and images for each trip from those given on the blog. The book is printed on a heavy card stock, each trip printed on a single sheet (front and back), about postcard size, and the binding is a functional screw post that enables you to rearrange the order of the pages or take one card with you on a trip without having to take them all. We’re pretty excited about the design, and have put a lot of time into both the functionality and aesthetics of the book. We plan to create and release additional volumes, including additional trips in the near future–in the meantime the book has something both for the novice and experienced post-car adventurer.

Be in touch if you have any questions. You can reach us here.

A jpeg of the first page.

Front of Mt. Diablo trip profile in the book

Come visit us near the intersection of Montgomery and Jackson Streets.  Friday, September 19th.

Rock City, just above Live Oak Campground, at sunset.

trip profile:
bart + bike
sf –> Mt. Diablo (biking (ascending, descending), hiking, camping, etc.)
easy overnight trip

starter kit:
Bart sf –> Walnut Creek
Bike

Walnut Creek –> mt. Diablo

Description:
It’s summer in sf and it’s foggy and cold (relatively speaking) — this trip is great for an easy night or two away from the city’s fog. There is a varying degree of climbing involved for this trip – The Live Oak campground is located at 1450 ft, the Junction campground is located at 2200 ft, and the Juniper campground, which is at 3000 ft, is approximately two miles from the summit. The view from the top is pretty spectacular and definitely worth the climb (plus the descent is sweet!). If you want to do minimal climbing on the bike, it is possible to take advantage of the network of trails and hike to the summit from the live Oak Campground.

Transit:
Hop on BART and link up with the Pittsburg-Baypoint line, disembark (approx. 40 minutes from SF bart stops) at the Walnut Creek station. Bike the easy 10 miles to the base of Mt. Diablo (along either Danville Blvd. or the Iron Horse trail) and begin climbing south gate road. (for zoomable map of the exact route, click here).

side trips:
Close to the live oak Campground is ‘rock city’ where there are some really amazing wind caves and rock formations.

Stop by the Rivendell bike shop in Walnut Creek, just a few blocks from the Walnut Creek BART station

particulars:
It gets pretty hot here during the summer — if attempting to do a lot of the climbing it is better to do it early in the morning or later in the evening,

Campground reservations: http://www.mdia.org/spcamp.htm