Bivy in the Backyard – Findings

I slept out in my bivy in the first big rain of the season. Be sure to get the full story here! The East Bay Bike Camping group on Facebook snowed over yesterday with a flurry of posts. The discussion was over whether to go with a bivy sack or a lightweight tent for bike-packing. […]

Bivy in the Backyard

It was raining steadily around 10:30pm last night. Perfect weather for testing how my ultra-light bike camping equipment performs in the wet. I decided my experiment wasn’t about how wet I got setting it up — a test of technical skill and decision-making. The test was about how wet I get sleeping in the thing […]

Fairfax All-Terrain Stage Tour

This post is ONE BIG HOLLA to my speedy, game and adventurous friends, Peter and Becker. At a bbq last week, Peter let on that he was looking for a bike adventure in the coming weekend. He suggested that we ride Tamarancho, a Boy Scout maintained single-track mountain biking trail in Fairfax. Later in the […]

Fairfax All-Terrain Stage Tour – Day 2

Be sure to catch up on Day 1 of the Fairfax All-Terrain Stage Tour. Becker and I woke up Sunday morning in the 6am dark. The search and rescue training group gave a rally cry in the distance and tromped by again, a line of them in headlights. We crouched by the creek like Sam […]

Fairfax All-Terrain Stage Tour – Day 1

Saturday morning, I threw my bike-camping gear on my mountain bike and met a crew at MacArthur BART. After arriving on the San Francisco side of the bay, we crossed the Golden Gate bridge and rode north to Fairfax. During this leisurely 20 mile, I could not help but unleash to chase down roadies. I […]

North Bay Runabout

The Revolution is the annual fundraising ride for BORP, the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program. My friend Greg Milano runs the cycling program, which gets people with physical disabilities on bike. They also have a tandem cycling program, and for the past two summers, I’ve volunteered as a tandem pilot for visually impaired and […]

Solo Bike Camping: Part Two

Be sure to read about my first solo bike camping trip, in Part One of this post. Along the way, I saw this church slogan in South Hayward: Milan Kundera writes about coincidences in The Unbearable Lightness of Being: “[Human lives] are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a […]

Solo Bike Camping: Part One

I am fallen in love — with my new bicycle. She is gorgeous and made of carbon with brushed aluminum lugs. Swift, but old school. I purchased her as a birthday present to myself, impulsively deciding that I needed a go-fast bike. The Naming We took a ride up Tunnel Road the morning after purchasing […]

Fourth of July Ride to Santa Cruz

Since moving to a new house in May, we had spent nearly every weekend packing, unpacking, DIY home improving, and hauling load after load of manure for the garden. In short, cabin fever had set in for good. Nevermind that I had a deep, chesty cough and Amory was getting over yet another episode of […]

Half Moon Bay Overnight

A couple months ago, I read Harriet Brown’s write-up of her Paris-Brest-Paris ride, where she brought along a whole roast chicken in her handlebar bag. Inspired, I made a Brooks-look-alike handlebar bag for myself…a boxy old-style camera bag secured to my bars with a piece of belt, pop-rivets and a velcro strap. I had already […]