October 13th, SF to Fairfax and back.

The Marin County Bicycle Coalition has an annual Biketober Festival that happens about this time every year. Last year a bunch of the Bike Party birds raved about what a good time they had at it. I joined the ride this year. Most of a dozen of us rode up on the Caltrain, but I didn't get out my camera until after we'd started pedaling north from San Francisco's Ferry Building.

Previous to this ride, the farthest north I'd been on a bicycle was just across the Golden Gate bridge with some critical mass ride years ago. This time we were going to go a whole lot further north than that.

By the time we stopped after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge people were all friendly and interacting. I met people from all over the bay area. One guy had pedaled down from Sonoma to ride up to Fairfax with us. Another couple had come over on BART from the East Bay. A few more had ridden to the start from inside San Francisco.

The Octoberfest Thing had LOTS of bike stuff tents. The niner revolution has something to do with highly evolved dirt bikes. Being more the road bike type I didn't investigate beyond liking the idea of yet another pedal powered revolution. Beyond half a dozen different bike brands they had bike lawyers, bicycling clothing, Cliff bars, lots of accessory dealers, and a woman that would gladly make a custom clock out of any old chain rings you happened to have laying around.

There were lots of interesting tents set up. I spent a long time talking to people and trying different beers. The happy buzz of conversations ebbing and flowing around me like a river.

Katie told me the stories behind each of these coins as she gave them to me. The 50 ore Sverige is the Swedish fifty cent piece, worth about seven cents. She had accidentally brought it home with her from her trip there a decade ago or something like that. She'd taken it back to spend this trip, but when she tried the shop keeper told her "these aren't legal tender anymore." The Espara coin was a Euro she got in Germany. The Danish coin is worth a bicycle at the public bicycle racks. You put the coin in the vending machine and it releases the bicycle. You return the bicycle to any public rack in Copenhagen and it gives you the coin. Anybody with one of these in Copenhagen has all the access to bicycling capability they need.

I found out later that one of the Ooommpah Band's songs went something like "I don't want to go to heaven because they don't have any beer there." Clearly the day was about drinking beer. I wouldn't call them the best band I ever heard. They to were clearly in it for the fun, just like everybody else.

That race course was part of a project to give people a feel for how much they could get on a cargo bike. The idea was that there was a dumpster load of stuff that each team had to move 100 feet (load it on the bike, ride 50 feet down to the pole, turn around, ride 50 feet back, and unload the bike in the done square). I wish I'd taken a picture of a loaded bike. Not sure I could get that much on a station wagon.

I looked out the window and saw Alcatraz. I thought I could get a better picture by going outside, but by the time I got there it was already receeding into the distance.

We dithered about what to do, but ended up getting back to Caltrain in time for the evening bullet train to San Jose. By some odd coincidence Valerie was there to so we waited for the train together for a bit.

I heard later that Andrew ended up pedaling back to San Francisco, getting there after the last train had left, so it worked out that he had to pedal all the way down the peninsula to. Me, I was happy to get home after just 26 miles or so of riding.