Someone had the idea to ride from here to Berkeley, go up and cross the newish bridge across the Carquinez Straits (about 27 winding road miles north of here), then make a big loop over to the Sacramento River to the easternmost Bay Area bridge, in Antioch. Then we’d catch a BART train and come home. The mileage for the total ride was advertised as 110 miles — definitely an all-day excursion.
Weather: Cool, clear, and breezy. It’s the area along the waterways that flow from the Central Valley out to San Francisco Bay is always windy. Usually it’s a westerly wind that starts to pick up at midday and howls in from the ocean to the inlands valleys. Today, the wind that made the air so clear the we could see the Sierra rising up more than 100 miles to the east was coming from the northeast — in our faces most of the day. The route turned out to be a bit longer than advertised — more like 120 miles. While the Super Bowl was happening, we were pushing our way down the highway next to the Sacramento, crossing the big bridge over the San Joaquin, and enjoying the post-industrial beauty of Pittsburg, without the h, that was named after the other one when U.S. Steel built a plant there many years ago.
Home in one piece. A little windburned. More than a little road-weary. I got to see the fourth quarter.
‘Night.