Resting Day and Legion of Honour

As today rainy weather was announced and in view of the Grand Fond Ride I will have on Saturday, I thought that after some 1400 km on the bike it would be a good idea to take a resting day.

After all the weather turned out not to be as bad, but still I decided that it was high time for some culture. The plan was to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). On the way there I wanted also to stop at the Legion of Honour to have a look inside, now that I have passed a few times with the bike.

This has been an excellent choice indeed. 

Due to my ignorance I discovered that it held an absolutely wonderful classic art collection. Which starts with a very impressive collection of sculptures, mainly bronzes, from August Rodin. The “Thinker” is placed before the main entrance in the Aula as you can see on the picture above.        

The collection is not overwhelmingly vast as in the Louvre or the Hermitage, but is absolutely exquisite and will take you from the Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek classic artefacts to paintings from the early Renaissance, Baroque to modern impressionists like Monet and modernists like Picasso.      

  

There were only very few people and the rooms are very nicely fitted with furniture of the epoch the rooms are representing. So the ambience was very calm and left you much time to stroll around and lose yourself in the watching of the exhibits.     

So the "short stop" turned out to last till mid-afternoon and no time left for the SFMOMA. Well I am not too sad about that, as I am a bit of a “classicist”. I then parked my car at the Embarcadero and headed over the Telegraph hill to Chinatown for some (excellent) Chinese food. As I forgot the camera in the car I will spare you with any further pictures.   

The rest of my stay here now is completely programmed and there are some 450 km on the bike which still wait for me and it will start off with another Club ride tomorrow starting at 900 at Sebastopol, which means getting up early. 

Club Ride SRCC V

Today things are again simple and I went for a ride with the Santa Rosa Cycling Club. This afternoon I will chill and watch the Tour de California which will end on Sunday here in Santa Rosa.

Golden Gate - Stinson Beach

Today I will ride the HW 1 from the Golden Gate Bridge up to Stinson Beach and the Stinson Laguna. Weather today is wonderful with a strong breeze as always in the Bay. After many shots of the GG Bridge from Fort Baker, now today the other way round. 

The ride goes through Sausalito and after a first hill descents to Muir Beach, where one can also go to the Muir Forrest to walk in a secluded grove of Giant Redwood trees. Actually the place is also famous for a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJpo-z2m3dI). Muir Beach is rather small, but well protected in a bay. 

Climbing a short while and the Hw now follows the coast line. 

As always the views are fantastic, spectacular, one of a kind...

Can it get any better than this? The ride is never level, but either climbs or descents. After some miles I arrive at my „destination“ Stinson Beach. 

I continued a bit further to Stinson Laguna, which falls nearly dry at ebb tide.

After the inevitable banana and a homemade honey-granola bar from the Stinson Market (they are great and pack a lot of calories) I got back to the Golden Gate and after getting out of the bike cloth I returned to Stinson Beach on my way home with the car for a walk.  

Incredible but after 4 weeks here it is the first time that I get my feet wet in the Pacific Ocean. 

The water is really cold and there were only two Kite-Surfer out in the water.

This must be the second best thing to do out here, behind road bike riding...

Novato - Point Reyes Station - Navato

Today I am a bit late for my ride as I had different things to do. So it was not until 11 o’clock that I could leave home. I decided to make an easy ride from Novato to Point Reyes Station, which is located at the south end of Tomales Bay.

There is not very much one can say about my starting point Novato. It is a town of may be 40’000 people about half way between Santa Rosa and San Francisco. Novato is not ugly but there is also not very much to catch the eye. Only about 4 Miles outside in direction North there is the Staford Lake Park. 

The park is inhabited by a large number of gooses, which makes the lake (which is an artificial reservoir) more picturesque. However the down side is that ever square meter of the lawn is covered by goose sh... ähm droppings. So it is really not easy to find a spot for your blanket if you plan a picnic here.

The route takes me to the junction with the highway leading from Petaluma to Point Reyes. The reason for this ride was actually the Nicasio Reservoir, who’s lake is embedded in a very particular prairie like surroundings.

Point Reyes station is a little, quite touristic spot on the Hw 1 with the inevitable restaurants, markets and gift shops.

At the coast the weather was really chilly and I soon was on my way back. Half way I stopped at this spot....

The stop was motivated by two reasons. First it has a nice little spot to rest and eat a banana...

Second, I am a bit of a cheese junkie and now “clean” since three weeks, except for the cheddar on the burgers, but that doesn’t count right? So I hope for a piece of good cheese. However I was not really impressed by the collection and so I needed to get the “stuff” at Safeway, where they have “Emmi” Emmentaler, Gruyere and Appenzeller. However the price is around 7$/100g which is about three times what we would pay back home. However, the urge was stronger...

The ride today amounted to some 60 km with 900 hm and was really easy except for the wind, which luckily was a front wind on the first go and a tailwind on the return. The great things over here is that you own the streets for your self... Freedom!

Mothersday in San Francisco

At the Weekends a visit to San Francisco is absolutely compulsory. I just love to stroll around the city with the bicycle, it is by far the best way of sightseeing. You can adapt your speed down to walking pace or speed up and get around many, many different corners of the city and you get this "IKEA" feeling of having it done by yourself. Especially San Francisco is great, you have all these hills and climbs, with sometimes absolutely insane grades and on the weekends traffic is not very intense and in the backstreets actually very, very calm. However these backstreet are full of pot-holes, my pore rims!

Actually I wanted to visit San Francisco already yesterday; however the weather forecast announced very persistent fog in the city. So I decided to postpone the city ride to today, where the weather forecast predicted, that the fog would clear very soon.

Well arriving at the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Baker round 10 o’clock, things looked not too good.

There was a very strong western wind from the ocean pushing the fog out on the sea into the bay. I strated the ride with a climb to the Hawk Hill, to make some height meters, to pass some time for the fog to clear and to have an overview on the situation.

There was a very strong western wind from the ocean pushing the fog out on the sea into the bay. However, it looked as if the Downtown area was already clear. I followed my usual route, which means I started with following the shore line to the western most side of the Golden Gate Park.

First stop was again the Legion of Honor Bulidingm this time in the fog. I was really happy to have my londsleved jacked with me as it is super windy and cold. This time I took more time and criss-crossed the Golden Gate Park more extensively. 

As you can see the more I get to the east, the more the fog clears away. Next up is the "Temple of Music". 

Here some good old "friends" can be found...

According to Schopenhauer only they would make life bearable of living, well I do not think so misanthropic... ... but they definitively make it more enjoyable.   

Beyond the church of St. Ignatio the fog finally cleared away. Today I had nothing to eat with me, not even the inevitable bananas I got really hungry. However on the bike I never really have the appetite for some big lunch, so it came in handy that a commune of hippies (in their twenties, with guitar, flowers painted on the cheeks and everything) made a bakery sale in the Buena Vista Park, may be to earn their rent for the week. Their cookies and brownies really looked very good and I bought some for my dinner at Union Square.

Arriving at the Union Square via Market Street and now being really hungry, I got a bit suspicious about my Brownies and I ask myself if they had not some “magic ingredient”. So I decided to eat first one and look on the effect. 

I continued on my way through China Town, Financial District, Columbus Street, Lombard Street, Coit Tower, and Embarcadero to finally arrive at the wharf. Indeed the cookies where straight and time to eat the rest of them. 

The benches at the end point of the Aquatic Park Mole are really very well designed. With a very high backrest made solidly out of concrete and put very close to the wall of the mole, they protect nearly completely against the really chilly and gusty winds.  

Just great to rest my bones and having again Otis Redding in the ear...

Now these signs are not there as a joke... There were a few guys swimming in Neopren Suits and one only in shorts!

The water is about 12 degrees cold and the wind was brutal, if you get a cramp or something you are really in a world of trouble there.

Back at the Golden Gate Bridge around 1430 the fog still prevailed. 

As I said the ride was about the same as on my last sightseeing tour, with some more twists and turns, however leaving out the headland loop so that the total distance may be 50-55 km. 

    

Easy Saturday

Originally I planned to visit San Francisco once more. But because of the weather conditions I decided to do an easy ride across and round Santa Rosa and to postpone my visit to SF to tomorrow.

This gives me time this afternoon for reading and may be a short Siesta. 
As you can see I changed the mapping tool as Bikenet.com created a complete mess with their "update"

Club Ride Number 3

Today was another club ride with the SRCC starting from Santa Rosa and up to Bodega Hw. and Ocidental. Only one Photo of the top of the Barnett Valley Rd wall (20% grade).

The rest stop was at the Wild Flower Cafe and due to a little detour I and another ride had to take (that’s the penalty for riding in front and having not much idea where to go) the ride summed up to some 85 km.  The good thing with the club rides, apart from the great company, is that they start early at 900 so that around 1300 we are finished and I have the afternoon for some shopping and housekeeping.

The track of the ride will be posted later as the Bikemap people decided to change to a new Beta Version (without leaving a possibility to go to the old version), which is completely unusable. The programmers might have previously worked for OMICRON.