DeadheadSF

Sunnyvale resident, working in San Jose (for the moment). New back to road cycling after 12 years of minimal riding. "Back in the day", I used to ride metric centuries about once every 2 months, typically rode about 10-20 miles per day (up hill both ways?). Sadly, those days are gone...

These days, I'm still getting back into shape - it's only been 2 months. Longest ride so far was a flat 20 miles (last weekend) around the Los Gatos area. I'm aiming for 30 miles in a couple weeks (probably take Foothill up towards Stanford and back) and trying to get in at least 5-10 miles roughly every 2 days just to keep the blood flowing.

I figure once I can ride from home in Sunnyvale up Foothill to Stanford without too much pain, I might start trying some gentle hills.

alxndr

Welcome! Gonna watch the Tour of California stage end this afternoon?

diverkiwi

Hi, I'm Anthony (or Kiwi),
In near Sacramento. I recently got a hybrid and started riding this month.
I haven't really been on a bike in the last 20 years and I've almost logged 50 miles in the last few weeks.
I've lost close ot 10 lbs already.
So my idea to save money on gas and to lose weight is at least half fulfilled, cause money keeps coming out of my pocket... LOL

garciawork

I'm Garrett, but I go by Garcia, and I'm in Pleasant Hill. Just got a brand new Tarmac SL3 frame built up last night to replace my old Tarmac Elite that was hit by a car (cars fault). Going for a short ride after work to get my muscles back in shape after bedrest for a month!

jpadilla128

I'm Jay and I live in Lafayette. I'm 38 years old and have just discovered cycling and am LOVING it. So much, that I pulled the trigger on a Wilier Gran Turismo. I know...call me crazy for spending that much money on a bike considering I just started. I'm still building up my endurance but have been going on weekend rides averaging 25-35 miles. I would love to get together with other people on the board.

silentben

Congrats on your purchase! And I think your decision is quite rational and sane. Think of it as a prepaid gym membership for the next few years that happens to be a whole lot more fun.

ForSure

STOLEN FROM OLD SACRAMENTO 7/16/11

I know its a far shot to get my bike back, but I must try everything, the bike has been passed down to me and it means too much to just let it go without a fight.

Stolen!!! 7/16/11 approx 7:00pm, @ Old Sacramento. Really Heart breaking. Please Call the police if seen, or trying to be sold. Or e-mail me @ ExcellenceForSure@gmail.com Thank you.....

1998 S-Works M2 Specialized "Grabber Green" with RED "Answer:Manitou" Forks; APC/APR wide leather seat. Has red/blue/black stitching.
"Spring Preload knob does not work, has Specialized pouch mounted under Seat, Ritchey/Ritchey Stem"

(Just like this bike but in "Grabber Green" / Kawasaki Green")

https://www.bikepedia.com/QuickBike/B...20M2&Type=bike



-Sincerely WES

shepherd1

Hello one and all, my name is Bo and I have not started riding yet. As of last week, I bought a specialized allez sport triple from a co-worker. I look forward to riding a lot in the coming weeks.

shepherd1

OH, btw, I live in Oakland.

projectmayhem

hello northern california. i live in Orinda. someone gave me a trek 7300 hybrid that i started riding on the iron horse trail. then i started to realize just how small it was for me. sold the 15" 7300 and bought a 20" trek 7.3fx. its great and i am really enjoying riding, although at this point i am scared to death to ride near the street...

my significant other bought herself a trek 7.2fx and we've been going on rides together. we are going to monterey to do the bike trail from pacific grove to seaside and back on sunday. should be fun.

mainly doing this for exercise. in the last 6 weeks i have lost 20 pounds going from 227 to 207. i am aiming to be under 200 for the first time in my adult life.

vaara

Peter here. I live in San Francisco and recently started bicycling again after several years of not. (Before moving to the Bay Area I lived in Bike Nirvana, a.k.a. Amsterdam.) I got a fairly cheap Specialized Secteur Sport on Craigslist and have been riding 30-40 miles a week... which isn't much, I know, but that will increase significantly throughout the fall/winter -- weather permitting.

Mostly I ride in GG Park, sometimes down to Lake Merced, sometimes up to the Presidio. I live on a fairly respectable hill, so I'm climbing a lot whether I want to or not.

Oh, and I'm doing the AIDS/LifeCycle next year.

moneypit

I ride those areas often as well, especially GGP

AXCross

Checkin' in.
Alex, Redwood city, mostly recreational cycling.
Started a little while ago, and now try to ride every day for at least an hour and a half - hard to squeeze in the schedule, but doable.
Santa Clara Univ. grad student in daily life.
Prefer mountain bikes to road bikes, and recently upgraded(from pretty much nothing) to a "11 Specialized Stump Jumper.
My favorite routes - mostly due to the location/timing trouble - are Foster city trail, Palo Alto Baylands and whatever I can get in the nearby Atherton(no traffic in there - and only a couple of blocks away).

SignARama

Hey everyone,
Well my name is Tim, I live in Fremont. Well I have always riden bikes but never really been into bikes or knowing what I was buying/having my parents buy my bikes. Im 23, and im about to purchase a Trek 8.3 Dual Sport. I have done a little research on the bike and that bike seems to fit in my price range and my needs. Never done any long rides except hitting a few trails to a local fishing hole. I have always loved riding just never really gotten into it. With this bike I really want to get into biking more whether its the 5 miles to work or hitting some of the trails along the bay, and hopefully getting into bigger and better things later down the road. I am going to need people help here! I gues you can call me a bewbie but I hope to get out of that stage soon! I am picking my bike up next week after the store builds it. I plan to make it a fishing bike as well! Love hitting trails to a fishing hole! I plan to do some kind of rod holders, panieres or how ever you spell it and what ever else I feel the need to do! Well excited to ride! and hopefully will get to see some of guys and gals on the trails! take care!
By the way my parents own a sign shop so if you guys need any kind of signs such as banners, window graphics, vehicle graphics, building signs, neon, anything!!! We can help you out! Sign*A*Rama, Union City, CA! take care!

The_DK

Brian from Roseville. I'm in my early 30s and bought a Trek 7300 back in 03, but haven't really put any miles on it until recently. I've also just ordered a CAAD 10 5. I mostly just ride around roseville...

haysronnie

Hi I am Ronnie. Started cycling when I moved back to Ca about two years ago. I bought a Cannondale f300 put some slicks on it and peddled all over Sacramento for about a year. January of last year moved to San Francisco and bought a 09 Jamis Aurora Elite from the LBS in August, 2011. I love the bike. I am self employed and a student. I ride to work a couple of times weeks (2-3) From GGP/Sunset District to Levi's Plaza. I atleast get 30 miles in a week. I did my first 28 mile ride today to Sweeney Ridge which was a blast. I am 39, veteran and soon to be married. Goal is to do a century ride with my sister for ms.

zeronine3

Hi, I'm Chong, from Chico. Been riding for about 2 1/2 years now... mostly mountian biking. Just got a used road bike recently so I'm looking forward to doing more road rides. I usually ride in Chico/Oroville but have ridden throughout the Sacramento/Auburn area pretty extensively also.

blueduckxx

27/f/vegan/health freak

just started road cycling in August 2011, so super new.
ride is Bianchi Via Nirone 7 Dama Sora.
to say i am addicted to cycling is an understatement :]

all vegans, holla at me! I would love to discuss biking nutrition with you.

where I ride: https://app.strava.com/athletes/126583

Red Rider

Hey, blue, check out vegansaurus.com. My daughter and her friends own it & there are delicious foods on it. I'm not a total vegan but eat a lot of vegan foods (daughter temporarily lives here). Good luck!

blueduckxx

oh whoa small world! I follow them on Facebook!
I am a little vegan chef myself, but thanks for the heads up!
do they/she bike as well?

Red Rider

I wish. Meave used to ride when she was at UC-Davis, and the following 2 years when she lived in Germany, but rarely does she ride now. She said one of the contributing bloggers commutes by bike, but otherwise, they aren't cyclists.

oatmealboy

Hi, my name is Andrew, 32-years-old, and I'm from San Jose. I'm pretty much a late-bloomer/slow-learner, as I did not learn how to ride a bike until I was 12, when all the other kids in my neighborhood had learned at around kindergarten. I didn't really start taking cycling a little more seriously until two years ago.

I bought my first road bike in early-2010; a 2009 Scott Speedster S60, and used it primarily to commute to work and school, and for general fitness. For some unknown reason, I stopped riding in August 2010, and didn't really attempt to get back on the bike until April 2011. But then, I suffered an ankle/leg injury that kept me off the bike until last September. At the time I started riding again, I weighed in at 216lbs. As of this post, I am 195lbs, and my goal is to get back to around 175lbs (I'm 5'9").

I've been riding more than I've been driving ever since, and I haven't stopped. As a Christmas present from-me-to-me, I supplemented my Scott bike with a 2011 Cannondale CAAD10-3. Most of my mileage is accumulated via commuting, with some recreational riding on weekends. However, I have not done much in the way of climbing, as I tend to stay on the flats. I could definitely use some coaching/motivation in that regard. I tried to climb Calaveras one time, and didn't get very far before I gave up and turned around. I'm still not in the best of shape yet, but I also wonder if my bike's gearing (53-39t crank, 11-25t cassette) is also holding me back.

wktmeow

Hey there

Matt from Milpitas here, 24, picked up a 2012 CAAD 10-4 recently as a replacement for the old Schwinn Le Tour I was riding before. Mainly riding for fun and fitness. Rode bikes a bunch as a kid, mainly to school and around town with friends, but haven't spent too much time on a road bike yet.

Nowadays mainly riding solo along mission st, alum rock, or up Calaveras and back. I enjoy climbing but currently am not that great at it. Usually have to stop a few times on Calaveras in the anti-clockwise direction (though I turn around and head back up for the climb instead of going down Niles Canyon... too many cars there anyway) Still trying to decide if I want to go with a compact crank or keep the standard. Hoping 39-26 gearing will be okay when I get stronger

Loving the scenery and challenging myself. Trying to undo some damage done by smoking for 3 years. I used to play highschool soccer and was pretty fit, so I'm hoping I haven't completely ruined any potential I may have had... Currently looking for a group to ride with on weekends or weekday mornings in the area.

jbmadtown

Hi NorCal! Dipping my toe back into the forums after a couple years incommunicado. Moved here from Boston (not much riding there due to grad school. Before that I was in Madison, WI- where I picked up road cycling about 6 years ago. (I used to ride regularly with a group from the Great Lakes region of bike forums- good crew!). I'm mostly a road rider- with some mountain biking thrown in for variety, now living in Menlo Park and working in SF. I do most of my riding around the mid-peninsula area but exploring more into the South Bay and Marin. Hope to cross paths with some of you soon!

msvphoto

I'm a 54 year old clydesdale in Santa Cruz. I first started riding, mostly around the SF Bay Area Peninsula area (with Western Wheelers, Eric Peterson was my neighbor in my home town Menlo Park) in the early 1970s as a kid. I rode the Davis Double in 1973 with a partner, Tommy Hill (you out there Tommy??? wanna do it again 40 years later?) and was very involved in cycling all of my teen years. Got a driver's license when I turned 19 and didn't ride so much after that for a few years. In the 80s got a MTB and played with that a bit, but not as much as I hoped (the off road thing really didn't do it for me). Ballooned up and got the bug again in the 1990s when I began bicycle commuting in Santa Cruz. Lost a lot of weight, got pretty comfortable and treated myself to a couple of nice road bikes in that era. Got scared by cars and quit again. Ballooned even bigger this time (5' 8" ~280 pounds!). In the mid 2000s I got a Tidalforce "ebike" to commute to work (I work at around 860 feet and live at sea level). That lasted a year That got me back on a bike! After a year I moved to a commute bike I built up from a yard sale score 80s Stumpjumper (my commute bike to this day). In 2009 joined my local gym (24 Hour in Santa Cruz) and started doing spin classes with my wife. Now I hover around 200 pounds (my riding weight even as a teenager was around 175-180) and am on my commute bike 5 days a week, along with 3 spin classes a week. The garage is now filled with interesting bikes of various forms (none very new--I'm pretty old school). A month ago my wife and I bought an old Santana tandem and are really enjoying it! We hope to do a metric century next month (Strawberryfields). So, that's me, Mike (and Lena, my amazing wife and stoker) in Santa Cruz.