August 1 Crossing America

San Francisco YAWM – GoldenGate Bridge Distance 15 miles, of course I rode them all. Total distance traveled Stage 1 of Crossing America 3,920 miles, rode 3,254 of them on my bike.

Golden Gate Bridge

As a crew we all arose with the anticipation and excitement of completing the final
celebratory ride to and over then Golden Gate Bridge and dipping the front tire of our bikes into the Pacific ocean or more correctly into the San Francisco Bay.  All of us old geezers rode together yep they rode slow enough for me to Grassy Pointe, about a mile east of the bridge, for dipping our tires and taking final pictures of the event and crew.

Old Geezers made it

Riding across the Golden Gate Bridge is something I can say I did but would never do again.  Too damm many people as there must have been a 1,000 folks on the bridge most walking some on bicycles.  When you have that many folks in a small confined area, the pedestrian/bicycle portion of the bridge is maybe 6’-8’ wide, you are going to have chaos.  Folks gawking at the sights and not paying attention to where they are walking or backing up to get pictures and some of the worse were folks on bicycles.  There are a couple bicycle rental stores which rent to anyone, even allowing some of their riders to ride without a
helmet which I would have thought would be a requirement.  I was dumbfounded with the magnitude of ignorance and stupidity of a few folks.  As an example; parents allowing their youngsters who could barely be five or six year old and quite obviously brand new riders to ride in the chaos.  What were they thinking?  I was so very relieved to have completed the
ride over and back across the bridge without having someone crash or walk into to me.  No thank you, I won’t be doing this again.  My original plan was to ride from the San Juan Islands back to San Francisco crossing the Golden Gate Bridge as my final leg of Stage 2 down the Pacific coast.  I’ve decided I’ll ride through the California redwoods ending before the traffic gets heavy and too crazy for this country boy.

Dipping of front tire in Pacific, I made it!

Once back to Grassy Pointe, I loaded up Spirit, changed clothes and made ready for my ride north to Seattle.  Aaron arrived on my S-Works and loaded it onto my bike rack.  It was only then he discovered I had been riding Spirit with a bent handlebar.  He said had he known that he wouldn’t have accepted my offer to allow him to use the S-Works.  Aaron that is why I didn’t mention it, you’re a good guy and deserved to complete your journey across America riding a bicycle every inch of the way just as you had planned and worked so hard to do.  I’m humbled and admire your accomplishment.
My final task before heading to Seattle was to take Lee and Rachel back to Winters, CA to
pick up Lee’s driver’s license at the post office there and deliver them back to Vallejo where they would catch a ferry back to San Francisco.  Like Aaron I admire and respect these two
youngsters and being able to help them was the least I could do.  They are also like poetry in motion when they ride their bicycle, smooth, fluid and fast.   Great job Lee and Rachel!
Whew!  You can’t get to Seattle from San Francisco or at least it feels that way.  I hadn’t
been driving a couple hours and my hips and back began screaming in pain which made the drive all the more difficult.  I can only assume riding a bicycle 61 days my muscles were not used to the upright seated position of riding a long distance in a car?  By 10:30 PM I was too whipped physically to continue driving and pulled into a rest area.  I moved all my stuff to one side in the back end of my mini-van, aired up my mattress and threw down my fleece liner and sheet and slept for 7 hours ending a very long day.

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