We woke up this morning to…rain. We pulled out our rain gear, but more importantly, we realized we would need to alter our route. The trails we were supposed to be on today didn’t work if it was raining (mud). We had a tentative plan. I google mapped us to the beginning of the route. We would at least be able to do the route as far as Union City…so we thought.
We started on the route. It was raining, then it quit for awhile. We were riding solely on bike path, some paved, some crushed gravel.
By the time we got to the Dumbarton Bridge, it was raining pretty hard. Going over the bridge on the bike path, a truck went by and sent up a huge wave of water that landed smack on top of me. Catherine was a bit ahead, so she didn’t get quite as much as I did, but still a lot.
On the other side of the bridge the route came back around, under the bridge, to a shoreline trail. Jana, who had been a little behind had joined us. Catherine was concerned about the trail, but we decided to give it a go. It looked okay, but oh no, it wasn’t okay! Catherine rode past me and her rear tire was fishtailing in the mud. I had stopped, and as soon as I put my foot down into the mud I said, “Nope nope nope!” I managed to turn around without getting too deep. Catherine was not so lucky. She had a hard time getting her bike out of the mud. I just walked my bike back and forth through a big puddle that was under the bridge. It cleaned my shoes too. There was a bridge worker under the bridge at the same time. He let Catherine use his broom to get some of the mud off. Her drive train was so muddy that the chain wouldn’t stay on. The photo below is AFTER she had cleaned most of it off.
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Billy came out pretty clean
Below is the puddle I walked through. |
Once Catherine’s bike was functional again, we rode back to where we had come down off the bridge. I had seen a bike route sign to downtown Fremont. We figured we would work our way there, then to Union City. We were hankering for some lunch.
We found a diner in Union City, and had a hearty lunch. Over lunch we figured out what we wanted to do. First, we knew getting to Anthony Chabot campground was not in the cards. Jana called her friends to see if it would be okay if we came a day early (it is also forecasted to rain tomorrow). They were fine with that, so we set about deciding on a riding plan (the rain had let up for the time being). Jana and Catherine found some routes that went from BART station to BART station, but there was nothing in Union City. So, we decided to take BART to Hayward.
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| It’s really quite easy! |
We got off at Hayward, and loaded up the route on our gps units. It was a pretty good ride, through bike friendly streets.
After around 7 miles we arrived at the San Leandro BART station. We loaded up the next route from San Leandro to West Oakland. This one took us to the San Francisco Bay Trail (we had been on this trail early in the day).
We even went across the water on a dedicated bike bridge.
After 15 miles we arrived at the Merritt Lake BART station in Oakland.
We took BART to the station closest to Jana’s friends’ house. Jana had the brilliant idea to fire up the Garmin and have it route us to the beginning of the route from Crow and Sara’s house.
So, due to mud and rain, we finished a day early by riding 50 miles. It was a long day, but pretty interesting riding through parts of town on really great infrastructure.
This was, surprisingly, a very difficult bikepacking trip! The physical demands were pretty high, but the scenery was spectacular!
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