Bikes versus cars

I had a great ride down the SJ Guadalupe River trail from Hedding to Virginia the other day. I was riding to an appointment, but I was also checking out the route for possible use in our car vs bike race on May 3. Council member Sam Liccardo and Carl Guardino will race each other on bikes and race some unlucky person in a car. Will the bike triumph? We know it's greener, cleaner, and more fun, but not everyone realizes that sometimes the bike is also faster!

I learned some new things about the trail. The portion on the west side of the trail under 280 is paved and while not officially complete (they're still finishing up some detail work), the workers had kindly left the fences ajar in places that allowed through bike travel.

This means you can now travel most of the way through downtown SJ on the west side of the river without crossing over--with the exception of between Park and Julian, where you have to be on the east side. Yay!

It was fun riding this trail because I used to ride it into work 6 years ago when I started with SVBC. Riding it caused me to fondly remember one of our first successes: getting the City of San Jose to put directional arrows in the spots where the through path requires crossing the river.

I feared the worst when I approached the detour I knew I would find in between Coleman and Julian--but amazing! It was very well signed, and it was clear that some thought went into how to create a temporary path for cyclists. Nice job, Yves Zsutty! Of course, since it was drizzling, my bike got all dirty on the hard pack, but heh--at least the detour didn't add 10 minutes to my ride.

Riding through the Guadalupe River Park and Gardens (GRPG) I was reminded of how great this park is! San Jose people need to start taking advantage of it more, but in the meantime I like that there's not a huge crowd there.