So Em and I thought we had carved out this great plan for day 3 of our trip to San Francisco. We would rent bikes and bike across the Golden Gate Bridge... which should be exciting, then bike on down to Sausalito (a quaint little town just north of the bridge) and eat lunch. And then bike a little bit further north to Muir Woods and experience all the greatness of a Giant Redwood Forest. Only one of these items actually amounted in a good experience, which is very sad. Even sadder is the fact that the other two items were, for the most part, quite miserable.
So we woke up and had a quiet little breakfast in the room, then proceeded to walk down to Pier 39, where we would rent our bikes from the "Blazing Saddles" rental bike company for the day. Side note - the people at the bike place make it seem really fun and easy to just "bike the bridge" into Sausalito. We found out the hard way that "biking the bridge" is neither fun nor easy. In fact "biking the bridge" is an experience where you fear for your life. Riding across one of the most historical landmarks in American history should be a great experience, however, there were two things that we did not plan for: fog and Lance Armstrong/Casey Anderson-type bikers flying past us. Not only did we have these professional cyclists flying past us, but the bike lane for the bridge is about 8 feet wide. So we were just calmly biking across the bridge and would hear someone shout "LEFT" and immediately quiver and fear for our lives as these cyclists blew past us on this 100 ft tall structure. As the day progressed we realized that we were among the minority riding our mountain bikes in and around the bridge/Sausalito. Here is a snapshot that we took on our ferry ride home that will show you the immense fog hovering over the bridge.
Fog
So after we made our death defying bike across the bridge we then shared the road with cars to get into Sausalito. Sharing the road with cars was not one of Emily's highlights during the trip. Upon arriving in Sausalito we enjoyed a nice lunch in the small, quaint village which is pictured below.
Sausalito
After eating lunch, we started our trek to Muir Woods. Just so you know, the bike ride from the Blazing Saddles rental store to Sausalito was an 8 mile ride...this will be important to know towards the end of the post. As we continued our biking up to Muir Woods, we started to become quite weary of getting passed by the bikers. Here is somewhat of a comparison of me on my bike from Blazing Saddles and the people that were passing us all day.
Me on my Blazing Saddle
Similar picture of the people passing us all day (yes that is actually Lance Armstrong)
If you only really knew how similar this scenario was throughout our day.
As it turns out, the 10 mile trek up to Muir Woods was going to take too long to bike there and back from Sausalito, so we settled for Oak Mill Park which was 4 miles shorter in total. We were told by the Blazing Saddles folk that we could see some great Redwoods here. Upon arriving at the entrance to Oak Mill Park, Emily exclaims in a very disgruntled voice "Is this is it?" Obviously this is a rhetorical question to let me know her disappointment in the park. Well just so happens that right as she says this a random older mountain man walks out of the entrance and proudly answers "yup, this is it." I kid you not...we laughed about that one for a while. Emily's disappointment in the park stemmed from the fact that there were no giant redwoods. There were redwoods...but giant they were not. Here is a picture of me in front of one of the redwoods in Oak Mill Park showing my disgust....
Boo small redwoods
After such disappointment, we begrudgingly rode our Huffy mountain bikes back to Sausalito village and then took the ferry back to Pier 39 to return our rental bikes. In total we biked 20 miles for the day. Arriving at the hotel that evening we were exhausted and also disappointed in Blazing Saddles. Yet, we continued on Blazing our own Saddle throughout the remainder of our trip. Stay tuned you Fain Family Blog enthusiasts for Day 4 of our trip out west.
For your viewing pleasure here are a few more pics...one of me showing off my bike and the other is Golden Gate Bridge without the fog.
2 comments:
haha! very funny!
Are you guys gonna blog about the 1/2???
Hilarious/amazing. How did the half marathon go??
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