It's that time of the year again, i.e., motivated to ride because of Tour De France. And I got a perfect reason for last Sunday: rode from home to SF for the Fillmore Jazz festival, where it's hard to find parking. Years ago I searched for published biking routes between the peninsula and the city. Found one using mainly roads West of 101 through residential and commercial area, which I thought was too busy with traffic and traffic signals. I googled again on Saturday and found a group named SF2G (yup, that G stands for Google) These folks have figured out several different routes and organized rides. The most straightforward one is called Bayway. I usually tried to understand the route as much as I can before I start. Ideally I would upload the route to my Garmin watch beforehand, which doesn't have a map but still helpful enough to find my way as the GPS would warn when I'm off course. The SF2G site only has routes on Strava and non-paying member cannot download them (which is understandable 'coz they need to pay their employees, I assume) Fortunately I found the same Bayway route on MapMyRide (which does allow download of GPX for free members :) Then I converted the GPX to the Garmin TCX format usable by my watch via the great Gpsies with the option of reversing the route (since I start from the peninsula instead of SF)
So, how's the ride? Interesting! The "Bayway" is mostly along 101 (on the East side until Brisbane) with a combination of trails and roads that went through industrial/airport/hotels instead of residential/commercial (until it reached SF) I crossed 101 using Willow Rd and stopped at Facebook for a selfie. Then I rode on the bike trail along the nature preserve area. Got back on the road at the Marsh road junction. Kept going and went pass the yacht club and the houseboats near the RWC Seaport area. Then it's the bike trail I see from 101 all the time. The next milestone is the San Carlos Airport (i.e., the Burger King with a helicopter) and then Oracle. Crossed the bridge which connects the main Oracle campus and their other buildings and got on the trail to Foster City. This was my commuting route years ago so I was somewhat familiar with it and knew the trail went along the coast all the way up to the Coyote point. However, the Bayway took a shortcut using Edgewater Rd which become Mariner Island Rd and rejoined the bike trail near the dog park. Once reached Coyote Point, instead of turning right, kept going (with the golf course on the left) and it reached the airport hotels (I rode this before when I went to the California audio show at Crowne Plaza a few years ago) Then I got on the "famous" McDonnell Rd at SFO to South SF, where they were more airport hotels on Gateway Blvd. The route went through the pharma companies at Oyster Point and the back of some hotels. Finally I rode under 101 to the West side at Brisbane. It's a bit confusing at the end of Tunnel Ave, which joined Bayshore Blvd. Instead of going up, the route actually went down and took a sharp turn up the less busy San Bruno Ave, which was the first climb of the ride. Took a right at Paul Ave (I only saw the sign of Dwight, which was the left part of the same street) and got back on Bayshore. Finally, turned left to Cortland (there's a Lowe's) for another climb and it reached Mission, which is the endpoint (or starting point!) of Bayway but my destination was Fillmore. I rode on Mission for a bit and found it's not really suitable for biking so I turned into Valencia when I got a chance, which was a more biking-appropriate road and the rest was straight-forward.
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