January 2011 Winter Ride by Brian Davis

Winter in the Bay Area.  What do you do on a typical Sunday?  See if anyone’s interested in a ride, of course!  Jeff Beam started sending emails and making phone calls on Friday.  The next night at the Banquet we finalized the plans.  And Sunday we hit the road.  There were three groups - South Bay, starting in Los Gatos; mid-Penisula, starting in San Mateo; and San Francisco, starting in San Francisco (go figure).  There were a few others that paired up or did a solo run.  We would ultimately rendezvous at Alice’s Restaurant, but each group had its own plans for getting there.  Approximately 12 riders made the journey.

The South Bay group met at Hobee’s Restaurant in Los Gatos with a planned 9:30 am departure.  Five  riders and one passenger actually hit the road sometime around 10:15. Our route took us onto Hwy 17 toward Santa Cruz to Black Mountain Road.  Black Mountain Road is a great ride, but today it was cold!  Things were warming up nicely by the time we hit Hwy 9.  We headed down 9 as far as Felton, where we turned off toward Bonny Doone on Felton Empire Rd. and Ice Cream Grade. Pine Flat Rd. and Bonny Doone Rd. took us to the Coast.  We headed up Hwy 1 to meet up with the San Mateo group at the San Gregorio Store.  We were supposed to meet them at at 11:00, but with the late start and a couple of minor issues along the way (you know, the usual spark plug wires falling off and running out of gas sort of stuff), we arrived a little late.  So our stop in San Gregorio was short and we skipped the stop at Apple Jack’s (most of us did, anyway).

The mid-Peninsula group took the Tunitas Creek route to Hwy 1 and met the South Bay group in San Gregorio.

We all ultimately met up at Alice’s and had a great time.  There are pictures of the South Bay and mid-Peninsula groups in the Picture Gallery.

Picture Gallery