Flutterby™! : Bridge to Tiburon

Yesterday, Charlene and I met up with some folks I'd run into on the Tandem@Hobbes mailing list to do a bike ride from Crissy Field, across the Golden Gate Bridge, down through Sausalito, then around Richardson Bay and out to Tiburon, catching the Blue and Gold Fleet ferry back to San Francisco.

Of course it was the folks who showed up early who ended up being the ones who rode the original route as planned. It was interesting to ride with other people. The first issue was that compared to two people on a tandem, solo riders on mountain bikes are slow. In fact, when we cut loose on the bike path north from Sausalito we were keeping up with the fastest of the road bikes; Charlene's knee bothers her after 20 miles or so, which has kept us from the long rides, but she's getting stronger, so over a few miles we're actually regularly cruising over 20 MPH, occasionally creeping more towards the 25 side of that when we can get a mile or two without stop signs or wayward kids and pets.

And Charlene's brother and his wife have decided to sell their tricked out, less than 500 miles, road tandem. He's my height, she's about Charlene's height, so this is a bike we could probably grow into, put together by people who are serious road bikers. They've offered it to Charlene first, at a fantastic price. With drop bars and skinny tires I see much higher cruising speeds in our future.

In Sausalito there was a mime with a macau running through a routine with passers-by. I didn't see a place to make a donation; couldn't tell if he was doing it for the exposure (which, alas, failed, because I've forgotten his name) or if the chamber of commerce is paying for free street theater.