Thursday, August 15, 2019

Riding around Lake Tahoe

I've always wanted to ride around Lake Tahoe. But I waned to do if off peak tourist season and mid-week to avoid as much auto traffic as possible as possible. With my school starting the semester later this I finally got a chance. I invited old friend Dan aka Lance Oldstrong to ride with me because fun is better shared.

We drove up on a Monday, stayed neat the "Y" in South Lake Tahoe and started our clockwise loop early enough to miss heavy traffic over the first climb between the stunning Fallen Leaf Lake and Emerald Bay. I've driven it, and it's terrifying. You feel like you're on a knife edge, ready to plunge off the road on either side. It's not so bad on a bike.

Though there's traffic along the North Shore it isn't horrible and I always felt like I had room to ride.


I was thrilled with the new bike path near Sand Harbor. That part of the road has been a dangerous very dangerous for cyclists. Now it's a delight, with smooth riding, no cars and stunning views.

I was enjoying myself right up until we got to Highway 50 to return to South Shore. I'm glad we picked a low traffic day, because there is either almost no room for cyclists or really no room for cyclists along that busy section. I was very concerned. Thankfully the drivers were kind, with many changing lanes to give us more room. But had I known how little space there was I might not have started this ride.

In the end, we made it back with not even a close call. But still...


Saturday, August 03, 2019

Pedalfest Oakland 2019

We missed last year's Pedalfest and sure didn't want to miss it again. The 2019 edition was even better than the previous ones we've been to.

It's a real cycling celebration. As commuters/roadies/tourists/commuters I generally think we're pretty up on all sorts of cycling. But we've missed all sorts of fun cycle sorta things. The festival had unicycles, big wheel unicycles, amphibious art bike races, amazingly cool lowrider bikes and bikes I'm not even sure what they are, all being ridden about by actual people, and not just on display. There were stunt demos to watch and eBike and cargo bike demos to test ride. They even had a pedal powered music stage where the amps were powered by stationary bikes. It was a delight to see all kinds of bikes and all ages and flavors of people enjoying the day and bicycles.


Plus, there were so many interesting booths, most cycling related. I got bike trail map from East Bay Regional Parks, and a Bay Trail map. And I heard about a lot of rides I may be interested in.


There were also more than a few vendors selling not-your-usual-stuff. Tricia and I both bought bags from EoGear that were "just right sized" for us. Tricia bought an interesting book — "Understand and Report the News in Your Community" — from the Microcosm Press booth a Portland-based publisher that puts out "Bikes in Space" anthologies and other feminist bike oriented books. I even got a couple of Continental Grand Prix All Season tires at an amazing price.

We also renewed our Bike East Bay memberships and got a bag of swag that included an Oakland A's ticket.

All in all, a wonderful event. The only snag was that we elected to ride to Antioch BART and take our bike to Oakland, then ride to the event. BART had work on the tracks delays so it took us over two hours to get there.

Usually this blog is all about the photos, but the light at noon is horrible, and I only had my phone. So...




A post shared by curtis corlew (@cccorlew) on
Unrelated to biking, we tried Souley Vegan right near the event. I give it a thumbs up!