Ride Recap: Three Bears and a Bit(e)

I had a fabulous time on Cathy and Nancy’s Three Bears ride this past weekend. Since this ride is in my town it’s hardly new territory for me. That said I tend to take it for granted as it’s generally a ho-hum ride for me since I’ve done it a zillion times. The Three Bears is the East Bay’s Tiburon loop. For out-of-towners Tib loop is wonderful. But if you live in SF it’s such a go-to route that it fades into the background of your awareness and even becomes dreadfully boring. But doing a ride alone and doing it with friends makes all the difference in the world.

It’s also one of our lucky, stuck-in-the-middle-of-the-suburbs rides that doesn’t feel like that at all. It’s mostly rural road because development isn’t allowed to happen. A big portion of the ride abuts East Bay Municipal Utility District land and its watershed so it’s essentially unblemished. Having San Pablo and Briones reservoirs as scenery doesn’t hurt either. The rest of the adjacent land is ranches—a scattering of cows, horse stables, and scattered homes. The one oddity is a Jewish cemetery stuck between two ranches. It’s always rather quiet and peaceful, disturbed only by the sports cars and motos who use Alhambra Valley Road and Bear Creek Road to practice laps. You can ride the Three Bears for relaxation, for training hard—it has a series of short, challenging inclines for long intervals or threshold workouts—or to get away from civilization.

The Three Bears loop is not without its blemishes. The most distressing is that San Pablo Dam Road is slowly slumping into the reservoir. The wet winter of 2023 caused more serious damage to the roadway including one big slump, and although some of it has been “repaired” it’s immediately apparent to any cyclist avoiding the plethora of obstacles—big cracks, uplifting, roadway debris, broken bollards—that the road could use some love from a paver. But the county doesn’t have the dough for such a major repair, so this is our new normal. The second bit of ugliness, which we didn’t have to abide this past weekend much to my amazement, is that sections of the Alhambra Valley Road and Bear Creek are dumping grounds for household furniture and appliances. I’ve counted as many as 15 big piles on one ride. But this time I didn’t see any. I did notice that there is now a big sign posted with phone numbers to report illegal dumping; at one point there was a security cam placed at one location that was often the site of a truckful of crap time after time.

In addition to the co-leaders Cathy and Nancy, were Stephanie, Michelle, Chris, Peter, and I. The weather was partly cloudy but it soon became full sun and the temperature never strayed from comfortable. I almost didn’t make this ride due to hosting guests from Germany for the past week, leaving us with a raft of delayed household tasks. But a half-hour before the start I decided to take a break from being rushed and dutiful and instead indulge in the company of fellow Spokers after a week of non-riding.

I had a chance to chat with almost everybody at some point. I really appreciate the effort Nancy and Cathy are putting into leading rides this summer. They’re testing out routes and if they like them, they’ll post them on our ride calendar. You should definitely keep your eyes open for more of their enjoyable forays! Cathy now has more free time to ride so we should be seeing more of her. Peter’s sporting a new bike full of the latest greatest and apparently is able to ride more now that his hip seems to be somewhat under control. Apparently that is why he has rejoined the club too.

For me this was a social ride full of conversation and with little intent to go fast or keep up; in fact much of the time I was in the back. Back in the day my rides with Different Spokes were “social” in the sense that the animals all went fast but we chatted when we occasionally slowed down. Being in grad school and working part time wasn’t conducive to hanging out much after rides since I always had to be somewhere or hit the books. I’ve slowed down considerably in both senses and riding amiably and chatting are one of my favorite pastimes now.

Despite being contradicted by other riders I am not convinced that the one short but steep hill on Castro Ranch Road is not Baby Bear. Yes, it’s not on Bear Creek Road. But the other little lumps sandwiched between Mama, Papa, and San Pablo Dam Road can’t all be Baby Bear even though bears actually can have litters of three cubs. In order not to do damage to the story of Goldilocks, my vote is still for the ugly lump on Castro Ranch Road as the one and only official Baby Bear.

We stopped on Alhambra Valley Road so that some could remove excess wardrobe and there I noticed how striking the few oak trees stood against the now dun colored hills and the blue sky. Usually I’m enamored of the lush green grass and poppies we get in spring. But even the dry season has its beauty. While on Mama we stopped to take in the view of Briones Reservoir, which is currently full to the brim to get ready for the summer heat.

For a change Cathy and Nancy added Old El Toyonal after the Bears. To get there of course you have to go up Wildcat Canyon Road, which is currently still closed to cars but open to bicyclists. But that will end this July when the county finally will begin the repair of the collapsed section, at which point the bottom of the road will be closed completely until construction is done. The bottom of Wildcat is fairly steep but not horrible. Without cars it’s a dream. If only we had more roads like this! If you think Wildcat is steep, try climbing up the only other alternative, El Toyonal, which has multiple sections greater than 15%! At Old El Toyonal we cut left by the horse stables, which was bustling with activity and continued up, again without cars. Nancy remarked that OET reminded her of Morgan Territory Road and that is indeed an apt comparison (especially now that Morgan got a long needed repaving a couple of years ago!) OET is quiet, almost completely hidden under tall trees, and a challenging uphill climb as well. Once we turned onto El Toyonal we dropped by the manse where I bid the group “tata”. What a nice morning! To those of you who forwent this ride, please join Nancy and Cathy for their next social adventure!