SteveE

Hi Tim! We've met, of course. Since I'm the ride leader (though not always at the front. ) I'm usually there. Happy to hear you're liking the ride.

- SteveE

Tim Aiken

sorry, i should've remembered you

danec99

50/50
I subscribe to the 10 miles or less statement as well. Home base is Walnut Creek, so I can do a lot of "out the front door" riding. But this area is so great; Woodside, West Marin, Mt. Tam, Mt. Ham, etc. So I am driving quite frequently with my bike on the roof. No biggie - get out and ride. Same for MTB; Diablo is my backyard so ride I there alot (1 mile to access.) but all that Mid Pen Open Space is awesome.

jobob

Threads like this make me really appreciate where I live (even more than I already do). I live near the Fremont side of the Dumbarton Bridge, and excellent riding is very close by for me.

I can roll out of my garage and head east over the Dumbarton over to Woodside, Portola Valley, Los Altos and thereabouts.

Or, I can hop on the Alameda Creek Trail which runs near my home, and head west out to Mission Blvd. From there, I can take Mission Blvd to Paseo Padre and head south towards Alum Rock Park & Mt. Hamilton. Or I can head east on Niles Canyon Rd out to Sunol & Calaveras. Or I can head on Palomares Rd to Redwood Rd in Casto Valley and points north. And if I'm riding in the East Bay, BART can often get me to a start location, or take me home.

It's gotten to where I rarely drive to ride starts anymore (well, unless it's in Marin, there's no easy way for me to get there w/o driving).
Yes, I'm very fortunate, I know.


IdleUp, ACTC was already mentioned, but I want to give it another plug. Back when I belonged to it a few years ago, they had a very large number of rides every week, starting from a wide variety of locations, mostly in the greater San Jose area. I let my membership lapse a few years back because, surprise, I found it a pain to load up my bike in the car and drive down to San Jose for rides!

There's also Western Wheelers. They're based in the mid/south peninsula but I think they have of rides towards Sunnyvale, Los Gatos & San Jose. You might be able to get to some ride starts using VTA. Plus they have an online database of ride routes: https://www.dino.com/~susan/wwrides/i...i?page=catalog

There's also the Fremont Freewheelers, which has rides that go down towards Milpitas & San Jose.

You might eventually wind up like me, skipping the club rides and just heading off on your own.

genejockey 

When I lived in Foster City, I did. Too much nasty traffic between there and any nice place to ride. After moving to San Mateo near the Alameda, once I'd built up enough to do the (admittedly minor) climbs between here and Canada Road, I rarely drove to ride.

The exception is group rides, where as others have said, the start is >10 miles away. But I haven't been on any of those lately.

IdleUp

Thank you very much, this type of information is exactly what I'm looking for, a route database. I hope there are more like this out there.

SesameCrunch

Since moving to Half Moon Bay four years ago, I've only driven to a handful of rides. From my garage, I have unlimited rides/routes I can go on, depending on my mood. All these routes are gorgeous, most have very few cars. It's simply biking heaven here.

It's also the reason why I haven't joined the BF gang on rides much any more . Solo riding kinda sucks sometimes, but it's just too easy to ride from my house.

msincredible

Similar here since moving to Loma Mar a year and a half ago. Actually I didn't drive to rides all that much before (from Foster City), but I don't think I have once since moving here.

SteveE

I haven't driven to a ride in about 5 years. I've carpooled to a few races with at least one other person in that time.

My daughter did pick me up at the base of Mt. Hamilton last Thanksgiving after I rode from Cupertino, up Mt. Hamilton, and back to Alum Rock Road.

It's been awhile since I drove solo to a ride start and then back home again.

curbtender

I've got a few older riders that get together, mostly Am on weekends and sometimes afternoons during the week. Carquinez Scenic/Cummings /Alhambra, 3 bears, bridges, Mare Island, Point Molate/bay trail, Pinehurst/Wildcat/Arlington, Reliz/Happy Valley.... We do drive when invited to new areas and trade/sell bikes and parts. A good place to start and finish is the Powder Keg.

milliron

I regularly ride to rides that start ~15 miles from my apartment. I have to ride through some ****ty areas to get to good riding, but to me, it's better then the hassle of loading up the car and driving.

Pretty much the only thing I'll drive to is a race.

I basically don't ride my mountain bike for this reason.

silentben

The biggest problem with driving to the start of a ride is getting there only to realize you forgot the helmet (or sunglasses, gloves, front wheel)

TheHen

To quote a certain former Prez, "I feel your pain." While not the main reason I don't drive to ride, my absent-mindedness is certainly a factor.

1jacktripper

That's gotta be a pretty good story. :-)

deep_sky

I am a board member of the Western Wheelers (co-ride chair), and I can tell you that we are working on developing a standardized database of routes that can be accessed on our site. Several members have a database of sorts of their routes, but they are all different formats. Don't know how long it will take but it will happen. Eventually

Visit our site at https://www.westernwheelers.org , there are a few other lists. We are smaller than ACTC, so we don't have nearly as many rides. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me.

We typically start in Los Altos, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, or Sunnyvale as our top 4 starting points, so we might be a bit far north for you.

jobob

Almost forgot, there is a really nice program written by ACTC member Donny Axtell called BikeMaster. The software is very old skool but it's fabulous for mapping out routes, particularly in the bay area, especially in the San Jose vicinity.

Jobob sez check it out.

https://www.bikemaster.org/

Ed to add: If you're not inclined to mess with the program, the underlying route database can be found here: https://www.bikemaster.org/routes/index.htm

nthach

I'm 5-10 minutes away from the Powder Keg. When does your group usually meet?


I'm probably going to be several standard deviations to the left as far as age goes, too!

genejockey 

So, after baldly stating that I don't drive to ride anymore, today I had my wife come and pick me up at 92 and Canada.

In my defense, it was one of those days where you just don't quite have the snap in the legs, AND my heart rate was about 10 bpm higher than it should be at all levels of exertion, but still, it FELT like being self-indulgent.

Yeah, but you lead some nice rides a couple years back. I remember one with just four of us that was pretty nice - just tooling around in the hills south of HMB. Very nice!