September 30, 2007
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Saturday, September 29
It’s already training ride leader again! I’m so excited because I love being a TRL and have so much fun doing the rides. I headed off to Sports Basement in the Presidio for the training ride session. Wilfredo was already there and looks a little more awake then me:
There were three groups milling about the Sports Basement on Saturday. Us, some boating groups (more on them later) and a rally against suicide. Did they choose the to stage the anti-suicide rally in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, a notorious suicide venue on purpose? Let’s hope they aren’t going to be staging the anti-drug rally at the corner of Goden Gate and Jones in the tenderloin….
The lovely and talented Julie Brown will be managing the training ride leaders this year. Which I think is a terrific thing because I know her and I think she’s doing a great job.
This is Susan Parish under the hat:
These are the guys from Mike’s Bikes who came out to show us some technical stuff. How cute are they??? Answer: so cute. They showed us a lot of simple adjustments. I’m more concerned with identifying damaged equipment because who wants to spend a half an hour fixing a chain only to find out that the chain took out the derailleur when it broke and that bike isn’t going anywhere. Jeff is the one in the hat and he’s the manger of the Sausalito store and I’d already met him when I stopped with a rider during the ride I swept a couple of weeks a ago and I totally made him blush and I’m not going to elaborate on how but I will say that it started with him telling me that one of his coworkers has a really big wrench:
Wilfredo tried to get a picture of me petting the dog but the dog was sick of the paparrazzi and took off leaving me looking like I’m doing some kind of jig. Because I am the last of the red hot cloggers:
The dog couldn’t evade me and my camera forever. She’s with the people who were out on the boats, but she doesn’t get to go:
I took a lot of airplane pics over the course of the day but this is the ONLY one that turned out. It’s practising for Fleet Week:
The boats have to be meticulously cleaned when they come in because of the corrosive properties of salt water. The guy in the red shorts is taking no chances and he’s hosing out his junk as well. And he continued to do so for a very, very long time. Shouldn’t he take that hose out for dinner or something??
When they’re clean, the boats are stacked up for storage:
This is a shot of one of the big cargo ships coming in under the bridge:
Here we are towards to end of the session:
It broke up about 2PM and I was ready for some biking. I headed over the bridge and up into Marin Headlands. I got some great shots of the bridge and the city from halfway up:
Even Oakland!
And one with me in it too:
This is the view from the very top looking South. You can see how high up I am:
And then I started to descend. I stopped about halfway down to take some pics of Point Bonita:
These are some fishing boats that were just offshore:
I headed down to Rodeo Beach to look at the surfers. The sea was pretty calm but I managed to get a couple of shots in anyway:
I headed up the canyon and went up Ike Turner Hill. There was a coyote lounging in the shade about halfway up. I asked some of the park rangers about her and they say that she’s too comfortable with humans and has been nipping at people so they’ve been shooting at her with paint balls which a more humane alternative to bullets.
The view from the top of Ike Turner Hill:
I headed back down towards the bridge. I stopped and took a few more pictures:
I headed down Sausalito Lateral and into Fort Baker. I stopped to take some pics of the Bay Bridge:
And a few of the city as well:
Neat catamaran!:
This is the iconic view of the Golden Gate Bridge from underneath taken at Fort Baker:
They’re doing this major construction underneath the bridge and they’ve erected this enormous scaffold that wasn’t there the last time I visited Fort Baker:
I headed back over the bridge and then up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor and then down to Sutro Gardens. I stopped at 48th and Sutro Heights to take these shots of the North Windmill in Golden Gate Park:
Then I headed home Lawton to 20th Ave to Kirkham to 10th Ave to Judah into Parnassus to Cole to Carmel to Clayton to Corbett and home. Mr. Poe and I took Rufus to the park where he ran around and had lots of fun. One of my favorite things about Rufus is that he doesn’t listen to Jeff at all. Because that drives him crazy:
Then I walked the dogs and went to bed early. Total bike mileage: 37.1
