8 posts tagged “headlands”
On Sunday Beau and I rode up the Marin headlands to film a long skid from the top. Since we’re good at math, our calculations for how long the tire would actually last were, in fact, wrong. Physics was working against us and the skid blew early. Fortunately, we had enough footage to fit the tune and this is what we ended up with:
The end of Daylight Saving Time in San Francisco is an interesting event. My biological clock is still waking up at 7, but the physical clock says 6. My reaction this morning was not immediately to go back to sleep, but to get on a bike. I layered on a long-sleeved jersey, got on the Fix and took off through the fog. My companion was Blur, Digitalism and The Magnetic Fields. For every throbbing tech house beat there was a lyric like “there’s time enough for sex and drugs when we get to heaven, when our pheromones are turned up to eleven.”
The Golden Gate Bridge was miserable. After powering through Fisherman’s Wharf, Fort Mason and fighting the headwind through Crissy Field, the constant condensation of damp and cold on the joinery and my glasses were threatening to end my ride involuntarily. I was swimming through oatmeal, punctuated by raisins in Gore-Tex on skinny tires.
Then at the end of the bridge: Sunlight!
Not only did the fog just drop away, it dropped away and exposed the Marin headlands climb in the morning sun, peeking over the Oakland hills. I climbed to the top of the top of the headlands to a crunchy Digitalism track. A few minutes and grunts later, I’d reached an altitude above the cloud cover and saw this:
Sent from my iPhone
Pista battled the Fog today.
...or maybe just Cingular sucks. Or perhaps it's just my phone. In any case, having a shiny new tricked out Smartphone with the most expensive data plan available in an area that should have more cell coverage than flies on shit just goes to show you, it doesn't. Mean. Diddly.
Two beautiful pictures taken at 7 this morning from the top of the headlands, one click two and they're off! Or are they? Despite all my tries, pleas and harassment, my phone still refuses to email the messages I had intended for this blog.
Which I suppose is OK, since the two most interesting events of my ride weren't captured in pictures anyway:
- Riding down the back descent of the headlands I envisioned being passed by a Ducati with a dry-clutch motor. Sure enough, on the last 50 feet of the headlands road before it enters the one-lane tunnel back to civilization, a Duc Monster S2R with a ventilated clutch cover rumbles, clanks and clicks past. The fellow pulls up the light and promptly shuts off the motor (he's done this before). I mention my premonition to him, and he smiles (or at least I think he does, it's hard to tell under a full-face helmet). After which he informs me I can ride a bicycle through the tunnel despite the red light: "There's a bike lane!" I bid him good ride and drop into the tunnel. I did not see or hear the motorcycle again.
- Riding up Market street can be a scary thing for a novice bike rider. I've done it a few times (and had my share of almost-oh-shit-I'm-gonna-wipe-out-on-the-rails moments) on different bikes in all kinds of weather & traffic, so it doesn't really bother me. In the morning (around 8:30 or so) it tends to be clogged with commuters of various persuasions, including motorcycles, pedestrians, buses, trams, taxis, cars and cyclists. Including this one girl on a Cannondale, with iPod, blazing up at the front of the bikes-waiting-at-the-next-light mob. This goes on for a few blocks, she and I trading pole position, until I give it up on a techicality (a senior citizen in a Crown Vic shoulders me out of my share of the lane). This is going fine until we hit the beauty that is Market & 4th. There are about 10 cyclists now, and one poor driver stuck in the intersection. Well, not quite stuck enough to compel Ms. iPod to stop. So she tries an around-the-back, between-the-rail-and-bumper swerve around the Corolla. At which point Corolla stops to avoid hitting the more conservative cyclists going in front of her. Ms. iPod eats shit, slams into Corolla's bumper and does an inverted aerial, landing on her back right in the center of Market street. This happens about 2 feet in front of me. Everything stops for about 5 seconds while a few pedestrians & cyclists (including myself) query as to her condition. She gives me a thumbs up from the pavement, neither her hair, nor sunglasses nor iPod headphones out of place. I ride on, and when I look back, she's already on the curb putting her chain back on.
Reminds me, need paragraphs in <li> elements in this hizzie.
Update: Finally my phone synced. Sweet!
