Hi there ! I just returned from a weekend trip.
Yes, of course, come along. Here's the gist of what I posted on bikejournal:
LanceOldstrong & I cordially invite you to join us on a century ride, give or take, along the hills and scenic vistas of the San Francisco East Bay on Saturday Feb. 16.
LOS and I are still finalizing the route and we will post it here when it's ready, but here's what we have so far:
We will be departing from the Dublin Bart Station at 7 am. That's right, 7 am. LOS has an engagement that evening and I'm just slow, so that's when we're leaving. If you want to leave later, fine, we'll have route sheets posted. Most of you will have no trouble catching up to me.
We will head south from the Dublin BART station to Sunol, west along Niles Canyon Rd. and climb up Palomares Rd.
We'll then go thru Castro Valley (passing near the
Castro Valley BART station), and climb up Redwood, Pinehurst and Canyon Rds, then head up Moraga Way / Camino Pablo (passing by the
Orinda BART station) and then over Bear Creek Road, where we will climb the "Three Bears".
Then we'll head northeast on Alhambra Valley Rd., where you will reach a decision point :
you can continue up Franklin Canyon to Cummings Skyway into Crockett, and then take Carquinez Scenic Drive to Martinez and back towards Alhambra Ave,
or,
you can bypass that loop entirely which would eliminate 20 miles and an as-yet-undetermined amount of climbing (but also some really lovely views of the bay & the Carquinez Strait).
The route continues on around Pacheco and Pleasant Hill and heads along the Iron Horse Trail (passing near the
Pleasant Hill BART station), and Walnut Creek (passing near the
Walnut Creek BART station) and south along Danville Blvd thru Danville. Then we resume the Iron Horse trail back to the Dublin BART, or, if one prefers, along San Ramon Valley Rd to Foothill Rd to the Dublin BART.
Total mileage for the route, at the moment, is about 112 miles. This might change some as we work it out. Since Bikely's elevation function is kaput I can't give you an estimate of the climbing but my guess is for the entire route it's about 7000 ft. or less.
If you're concerned about the distance, there is the 20 mile loop you can bypass. Plus the route passes by several BART stations so there are multiple alternative starting/stopping points. You could even pull a Rosie Ruiz and hop on BART at some point to take you back to Dublin.
LOS posted a link to the route on RouteSlip, but Routeslip gives my computers grief, so here's the route on Bikely. We'll probably be fine-tuning the route sheet this week & will try to have the final version posted by mid-week.
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path...y-century-plus
Alas, the elevation gain function on Bikely appears to be no more ...