Category: santa cruz

San Lorenzo Valley Critical Mass

Richard MasonerMay 17, 20084 Comments on San Lorenzo Valley Critical Mass

Over 500 cyclists participated in the 4th Annual Rail and Trail Day on Saturday, May 17 2008 to celebrate rail and bike travel and support local efforts to create a 31 mile trail along the Union Pacific rail corridor that runs along the Santa Cruz coast from Davenport to Watsonville, California.

The cyclists met at Santa Cruz Depot where they loaded bikes, trailers, and other gear onto a train chartered from the Roaring Camp Railroad. Adults and children had fun as they talked and shared snacks on the ride up the San Lorenzo Valley through redwood groves to the Roaring Camp depot near Felton. After they got off the train and unloaded their bikes, they cut over to the Henry Cowell State Forest visitor center parking lot and lined up for the ride down Highway 9 from Felton back to Santa Cruz.

Fish Taco

The purpose of the ride is the drum up support for a proposed rail trail along the Santa Cruz Coast. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Agency has agreed to purchase the rail right of way from Union Pacific, but funding is not available. According to Friends of the Rail Trail (FORT), the county can use Proposition 116 funds, and to get those funds the county must implement public transportation service along the corridor. Ride organizers encouraged participants to contact the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to express their support for the coast railroad acquisition.

Micah Posner, director of the bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group People Power Santa Cruz, joked that there wouldn’t be a “5th Annual Rail Trail Day because we’ll have our trail by then!”

My children and I had a great time on this ride and we topped it off with a visit to Marianne’s Ice Cream on Ocean Street afterwards. Yum!

Posted In santa cruz

Crazy bus passenger

Richard MasonerFebruary 4, 200810 Comments on Crazy bus passenger

Santa Cruz metro bus crashed into hill - taken from santacruzsentinel.com A whacked out bus passenger on the 91 commuter express between Watsonville and Santa Cruz, CA grabbed the bus steering wheel and crashed the bus into the adjacent hillside in Santa Cruz County.

The unnamed passenger saw his girlfriend’s car in — get this — a suspected DUI accident on the side of Highway 1 south of Santa Cruz. He demanded to be let off immediately, but when the bus driver told the passenger he would be let off at the next exit, the passenger grabbed the steering wheel and steered the bus into the hill. The passenger was arrested almost immediately, I’d guess by law enforcement officers who were already at the scene of the earlier accident. What a piece of work. Read more in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

I had a nice quiet ride home on my commuter bus this evening 🙂

Posted In santa cruz | transit

Windy in Santa Cruz, Bay Area

Richard MasonerJanuary 4, 200810 Comments on Windy in Santa Cruz, Bay Area

The moderate rain is causing some local flooding, but the wind is causing some real problems. The announcer during the radio traffic report marveled at the almost complete absence of bicyclists in San Francisco this morning while she reported which SF Muni lines are closed because of weather. The ferries also aren’t running today. 40 mph winds in some areas gusting to 100 mph might have something to do with that.

There are tree branches and palm tree husks all over the roads. Here’s a photo from Santa Cruz this morning.

Coastal flooding, power outages, overturned trucks, bridge and road closures, transit shutdowns and fallen trees are making things a little more challenging than usual. If you’re out in this on a bike, avoid the power lines; they hurt. Flying twigs in the face hurt too.

Posted In california | santa cruz

Santa Cruz short bar green fixie

Richard MasonerJanuary 3, 200811 Comments on Santa Cruz short bar green fixie

I’m pretty sure I saw the fixed gear bike described here just a couple of weeks ago. I might even have a photo of this bike around somewhere.

The bike is a silver and green road bike with short handle bars and no brakes with black tires and green rims. The main bar is wrapped with green and black checkered material.

This is from a news report of a cyclist death. It was a hit-and-run — a FedEx driver apparently hooked the cyclist and possibly didn’t even know about the collision.

Update: The kid who died was a student at San Francisco State, home with his parents over the holidays. Lucian Gregg was apparently going downhill on his brakeless fixie when he struck the FedEx truck. What a shame. East Cliff Drive at the site of the collision is fairly steep and narrow; a sign is posted along this section of East Cliff Drive for cyclists to take the lane.

Bikes May Use Full Lane

Posted In santa cruz

SF Bay Area: rain Rain RAIN RAIN. And wind, too.

Richard MasonerJanuary 2, 20089 Comments on SF Bay Area: rain Rain RAIN RAIN. And wind, too.

This is for all of you bicycle commuters who neglect to check the weather forecast (and you know who you are) — three storms systems are barreling down from Alaska with two to four inches of rain forecast in Santa Clara valley and up the Peninsula into San Francisco beginning Thursday at noon. On Friday, 20 to 30 mph winds gusting to 50 mph are expected throughout the Bay Area and coastal areas. Up to ten inches on rain is expected in the Santa Cruz Mountains (where I live) over the weekend, with snow falling as low as 2,500 feet.

bicycling in the rain

As the storms move east over the Sierra Mountains, the snow is expected to fall in crippling volumes. “They could see up to eight to 10 feet [of snow] by Sunday,” Weather Service Meteorologist Steve Anderson. “It’s going to be a major winter storm with white-out, blizzard conditions, winds up to 100 miles per hour on the peaks and around 50 miles per hour down on Interstate 80,” he says.

Although big swells are expected through the storms in Santa Cruz, surf conditions will be too choppy for it to be any fun.

Before you break out the bikes for your commute to work on Thursday morning, break out your rain gear.

Photo: “Cycling through the rain” by Annemiek van der Kuil. With expected high winds, an umbrella is not recommended this week.

Posted In news | san francisco | santa cruz

Santa Cruz surf

Richard MasonerDecember 6, 20076 Comments on Santa Cruz surf

This video shows what the surf looks like right now where I live. To keep it on topic, you can see some cyclists toward the end of the video 🙂

My Santa Cruz surf photos are here on Flickr. Most are of my son’s middle school surf team. The surf team coach sent an email to the team this week telling everybody to keep out of the water this week. The current surf report tells us the waves are a little more manageable today.

I see quite a few folks carry shortboards under their arms while biking to the beach. A few others have sidemount surfboard racks. I also found this DIY surfboard rack made from PVC pipe. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone haul a longboard by bike, though photos on the web show that it’s doable.

Posted In santa cruz