sswc08 - day one

I waited until the last minute to figure out logistics. Bought my plane ticket a week out. Decided two days prior that I’m getting my own rental car. Friday morning I was up bright and early to catch a flight out to San Francisco. What was supposed to be a quick transfer in Philadelphia wound up being a two hour delay. Eventually we were on our way across the country to San Fran.

Saw this fixie in the Philly airport. Its carved out of wood.


Mid-afternoon arrival PST. I had to get my rental car, find Nic’s apartment over in the northeast quadrant, build my bike and get over to American Cyclery for the evening’s events and debauchery. Ran into Dave, from PA whilst on the tram over to the rental cars. At Avis I ran into Keith, Karen and the rest of the Dirt Rag crew. Said hello and said we’d catch up at the evening’s ride. Avis gave me a Subaru Outback. Perfect for lugging around my bike with. I then made my way over to Nic’s apartment. Got stuck in rush-hour traffic and couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere near his place. Wound up building my bike on the sidewalk about two blocks from the apartment. Upon bicycle assembly I realized I left a headset spacer at home. Doh! A quick call to Travis and he procured me a new spacer so my bike would be operational. All the while I keep getting text messages that the party is going down at AC and the beer is flowing.

The Motivator is built, bike box in Nic’s place and I’m enroute to American Cyclery. Lucky for me I found a parking spot on the street about half a block from the bike shop. There were tons of people hanging out on the sidewalk and boiling over into the streets. Singlespeed mountain bikes everywhere! This is good stuff. Immediately found Travis and Lisa from Colorado. Stumbled up on ThomP from Boston. Our friends from Dirt Rag and PA arrived shortly thereafter. Had plenty of time to chat and hang out with everyone while the motley crew was voting on the worst bike out of the lot. The winner was awarded a new Giant (or was it Redline?) 29inch wheeled singlespeed. What a hoot.


(photo: Thom)

Topher decided to join the fun.


Shortly thereafter we embarked on a nice urban romp through the streets of San Francisco enroute to the Marin Headlands on the northwest side of the Goldan Gate Bridge. Word from the street said something about a BBQ up there. Everyone that was hanging out in-front of American Cyclery partook. It was a mighty fun ride through town but I was not paying attention to where we were going. This would haunt me later. We made it to the bridge, made it across. The cloud cover was very low and it was chilly and extremely windy.

Travis and I enjoying the ride


It was fun to ride across the bridge. The only other fairly large bridge, like the Golden Gate, that I’ve ridden across is the George Washington Bridge in New York City. Upon arriving on the northside we climbed a little bit and then shot down a dirt road down to the water level. When not riding it was cold. Turns out there was no BBQ but a few cold veggie burgers and veggie bratwursts.



After hanging out for a little bit myself and a few others decided to ride back into town for dinner. Upon crossing back over the Golden Gate Travis, Lisa and I lost our ‘leaders’ and wound up running into trouble trying to navigate back to American Cyclery. Riding in circles in the dark. Fun..