This year we rode our 3rd annual bike ride to Brentwood, California to visit G&S Farms to go cherry picking in Brentwood. Our original ride to cherry picking was great, and we’ve wanted to continue the tradition every year. Getting there isn’t very easy by transit, but it can be a neat multimodal trip from Oakland and other parts of the East Bay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbpQBpZXD0U&feature=youtu.be Cherry Picking by Bike in Brentwood 2023 – Some stuff was different than years past. BART Bus Bridge This year, due to track work that was being done on the BART tracks between Rockridge BART and Orinda BART, there was what they call a “Bus Bridge” between stations. There was no direct train service, but there were free courtesy shuttle buses at both Rockridge and Orinda stations. This is normally a bit of a hassle, […]
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Riding a bike along the Bay Bridge from the East Bay is beautiful
You can’t bike across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, but it’s still a pretty ride. With Daylight saving time no longer in effect, the sun sets a bit later, and it’s easy to get a bike ride in with a dramatic sky against the setting sun. To get there and if you are coming from the north, you can enter the trail in Emeryville on Shellmound Street, sort of across from the Ikea. If you are coming from the south, you enter the trail on the east side of Shellmound street, just south of the Ikea. There’s a smooth, paved bike path the leads to the bridge. This is officially called the Bay Bridge Trail. There are usually a handful of people biking, walking, or running on it. The wastewater treatment plant can kind of smell sometimes. You pass […]
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Protected bike lanes on Milvia in Berkeley
Protected lanes in Berkeley! I noticed a lot of new construction activity on Milvia Street in Berkeley a few months ago, after visiting Sports Basement and Missing Link in search of a new bike rack. I was pretty excited to see that it looked like protected lanes were going to be installed. Recently, coming back from University, it was nice to see the construction taking place around Addison, Center, Center, and along Berkeley High. Why protected lanes? I’ve asked a lot of friends what would make it easier for them to ride their bike more. Most have answered that they’re scared of automobile traffic. While painted bike lanes can be helpful, there’s not much preventing a distracted driver from drifting or veering into a bike lane and harming a person on a bike. Protected bike lanes are great, because […]
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Bicycle infrastructure and riding with children
If you’ve been riding your bike for a while, you’ve probably heard some variant of “Get off the road!” coming from an irate driver more than a few times. (There are a lot of links out there that try to answer the question, “Why do people shout at cyclists?”) Though it can be at best unpleasant to hear, I do wish that it was easier to ride on a dedicated path that’s not shared by automobiles. Reducing the idea of bicycling to solely a recreational activity has made it harder for people to safely ride as a mode of transportation. And without a network of routes to reach areas where people can ride bikes for recreation, people often need to put their bikes in or on their cars, and drive to a destination. I think that many people want to […]
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