Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail Bike Ride - 8/17/14

Not sure what I am going to do with this blog yet, but I figured I should start on writing something, anything, eventually. Yesterday, Sunday, I went on a bike ride. A couple weeks ago my husband got Bay Area Bike Rides Deck from Chronicle Books. We decided to give one of the rides a try.

We decided to start with card 14 the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail. It is a 14-mile route that goes from street to trail. It wasn't too bad, but the card was a little misleading. The card shows what you are driving on, roads, incline, etc. The incline suggested it would be all downhill on the road, and then when we hit the trail it would be all uphill. Not so. It actually started uphill and then switched about halfway on the road portion to downhill. It was the same for the trail part of the route, starting with an slight uphill climb and finishing up with mostly downhill and flat. Not a big deal, but was kind of surprised the card was wrong. Many of the cards have histograms, but this one does not. Maybe the writer didn't get a chance to test out the route beforehand?

The ride went pretty well, but I don't handle other bikers very well. They make me nervous, so I spent a lot of time hugging the edge of the roads/trails. A couple times I got too close to the edge and was worried about skidding so I would just go with it and ride right off the trail and get back on when I could. One of the times was pretty messy, lots of sticks and rocks. Not long after that little mishap, my front tire went flat. Very discouraging. One of the passing bikers let us know that there would be a bike shop ahead about a mile and we were only about a mile from the end, so we lucked out there. I had to walk my bike and Ian walked along with me and then got me a new tube at the shop. The shop let him use their equipment and he got my tire all fixed up.

This is the second time I have had a flat while biking. The other time was a while ago when Ian and I biked with friends from San Francisco to up and around down to Tiburon. When I got the flat that time it was my back tire, it was instant and I have no idea how it happened. This time it was the front tire, so I like to think it wasn't anything I did, but that it was because the tubes that came with my bike were faulty. Guess we'll never know.

Despite the mishap, it was a fun ride and I would like to try it again. Or, at least, I would like to do the trail part again. Not a fan of biking on the road. We also noticed that our card had us end at the Lafayette BART, but when we turned we noticed we could continue on the trail and head to Walnut creek so we might try that one of these times too. That trail isn't on a card, so we might have to start some cards of our own.