The sights, sounds, and smells of the bay by night

I’ve been getting into the cycling of late. After a rough start where I had my bike nicked after only a couple of weeks of owning it and then the requisit wait to see if anyone would return the thing I got another identical model from the shop.

It’s a DiamondBack Sorento 2010 which is a mountain bike with front suspension and a fairly light frame. I did look at road bikes but I don’t like cycling on the roads and those flimsy tires would last about three seconds on some of the biking trails I’ve been trying out down here.

With the new bike in place I then had a period of various things falling off it. When in the shop I refused to pay for the extended warranty despite the guy saying bikes were almost impossible to repair on your own implying I would need a full machine shop, metal forming, cnc milling, welding gear, and a plasma cutter just to re-tension the gears (as it happens I have access to all of that through techshop). I kept refusing and eventually he aquiested and made some throwaway comment about never putting the bike in the topmost gear as it would break the chain, which seemed odd since the thing was designed to use the gears installed otherwise what’s the point of having all those cogs.

I think as revenge or just due to incompetence he set the bike up in the most shoddy way possible the brakes barely worked the gears didn’t shift or over shifted such that the chain came off. This resulted in the chain getting caught between the main peddle gear and the frame and then snapping when I didn’t notice and put my not insignificant weight on it to push off at the lights. It took me a few days some new tools and a new chain to fix these issues but eventually I got the bike in some sort of order so it was ridable and would stop. It still needs a few minor adjustments but now it’s tweaking rather than stopping the chain coming off or finding that when you want to stop as you roll at speed towards a busy intersection you can’t.

When I first picked up the bike it was getting dark around 8:30 9 pm so I could get home from work set off and be back in the light. Now it gets dark a lot earlier and unless I leave extra early it’s dark by the time I get home let alone get stuff together to set off. This is another reason for staying off the roads. As it happens there are some nice trails which are fairly level and fairly empty during the evening that stretch from my flat all the way into San Jose one way or out to the bay the other. This nice gravel path set alongside a stream makes for a good run and it also links up with the Bay Trail a 500 mile trail that goes round the bay.

As I’ve been getting up to more and more distance (last night I managed a 14 mile round trip) and managing more regular trips out I’ve been taking in more and more of the bay trail as part of my ride. The initial route that links up to the bay trail is basically along a stream in the middle of industrial and residential streets. Then you hit the bay and it’s somewhat different.

One side you have what seems to be  a nature preserve with lots of water birds (some of the less firm paths more designed for walking head out into the bay in these loops surrounding small separated off parts of the bay). I’m sure in the daylight it’s very very pretty but so far I’ve only seen it by the light of my bikes led lights which, though they do a good job of showing me the path so I don’t end up in the bay, don’t spread to the world around me.  This means you mostly see the other side which is made up of motorway, gas works, a waste recycling plant, and some sort of baseball field. The baseball field has thousands of watts of lights that are fine next to it and cycling away but completely bugger your night vision going towards it the other two add a more distinctive aroma’s to the local air.

Looking at the map the next place I will get towards is Moffet field, I’m not sure where the route goes to accomodate the airstrip there so I may have to cut inland. I guess it’s all part of the adventure.