On Fathers Day, Roger and I rode on Point San Pedro Road through China Camp State Park. We were scouting a route and dining possibilities as a prelude to leading a club ride. The result unfortunately is that I was not impressed by the route; in fact it was like the scales fell off my eyes and I saw these roads for what they are and not what I had remembered or imagined.

Since most Spokers live in the City, getting to China Camp involves trekking across the Golden Gate Bridge and making one’s way north through San Rafael to the State Park. But we were planning to start in the East Bay in Point Richmond and traversing the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in order to avoid the mishegoss on the GGB on weekend afternoons. The general route was to take the RSR, get through San Rafael somehow, go around China Camp, and then get to downtown San Rafael for midday refreshment. There were several possibilities for a return depending on the length.

The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge (RSR)
It’s been an unexpected gift to be able to cycle across the RSR to Marin. The novelty of it hadn’t worn off. Until now. The RSR path opened on November 16, 2019—just four and a half years ago. In that time we’ve probably used it about a dozen times and always on weekends. It’s marvelous to be able to get to Marin just by bike and I was tickled pink at the prospect of being able to cycle over and catch the SMART train to get to Santa Rosa to do some of the roads on the Wine Country Century and then return without using a car.

As you know there is controversy about the bridge with car drivers and their lobbying groups wanting to eliminate the multi-use path and have it revert to (just another) car lane. I won’t bore you with the arguments pro and con. (As if you cared anyway.) But I will say this: the experience of crossing the RSR is generally an experiential bummer. The MUP is a converted car lane and if you use it when there is substantial traffic, ie. daytime, you are exposed to a deafening amount of car noise. It’s louder because vehicles are passing at freeway speeds, 60-80 MPH, rather than normal street speed. Yes, it’s no different in kind from any of the other bridges. But the proximity and being on road level seems to make the noise even louder. The only thing that would help—besides less traffic—would be a delightful traffic jam that forced everyone to slow down. Of course then you’d get to relish the extra vehicle emissions. Sunday the traffic was forceful and unremitting when we started at 9:30 AM. Our return in the afternoon was only slightly less wearing simply because by then the toll plaza on the eastern side was jammed and backed up, which seemed to reduce the traffic somewhat. Whatever past bliss I experienced by skimming along the surface of Richardson Bay in the early morning was completely obliterated by wrenching car noise.

I can’t think of a single time that our return eastward on the RSR has not had a grinding headwind and today was no different. How can that be? Well, on a typical day the prevailing wind is westerly and comes through the Golden Gate and turns north to go up the Delta into the Valley. So on the RSR the wind is primarily a crosswind, which as you know feels like a headwind when you’re cycling. On top of that, the grade on the bridge is a grind. Oh, and the bridge is hella long. So, headwind plus uphill grade plus mega length—you do the math. By the time we were heading home I was already a bit tired and having to slog uphill into that wind had me reaching for a lower gear, hunkering down, and gritting my teeth. Like a castaway sailor I was ever so glad to reach solid land!

All of this had me thinking—heresy!—that if the Bay Conservation and Development Commission eventually decides to end the MUP experiment on the RSR, I’m going to be disappointed but I won’t be shedding copious tears. In other words I like the idea a whole lot but the reality is not so great. Still if you haven’t ridden across the RSR I strongly recommend that you do it if only to have the experience once before it is taken away from you.

One more thing: on Fathers Day the toll plaza was absolutely jammed to the gills in the afternoon. I don’t know how long the backup was but it was not a short one. If you think for a moment that a possible RSR multi-use path compromise might involve removing it only during the work week, you have your head in the sand. The jams are there on weekends too and car drivers are going to lobby for the MUP to be removed completely regardless of whether the MUP is actually the cause of the jams or not.

Getting Through San Rafael
Highway 101 transects San Rafael and whether that was the case before 101 was expanded or not, de facto the eastern side of 101 has a lot of light industry and low income development while the western side is the “suburban” side. Heavy truck traffic and speeding rule the roadway on the eastern side. And that’s the side you have to get through to get to China Camp. The fact that the area is littered with ejecta from trucks and cars as well as general neglect makes this section of the route feel you’re going to the dump to get rid of your garbage.

The problem is that there’s no short way to get across San Rafael Creek to get to China Camp except by going all the way west to 101. But your Calvary isn’t over yet. After you cross Point San Pedro Road, which follows the north shore of San Rafael Creek, is a four-lane boulevard with cars zooming by at 40+ MPH. Literally the saving grace is a bike lane, which is where several drivers delightfully parked their cars in order to go about their Sunday business forcing us to repeatedly hop into the vehicle lane and pray we weren’t smashed.

Back in the day I rode to China Camp, or at least I think I did. I have two recollections. In preparation for an AIDS Bike-A-Thon I did a club ride from SF to go around China Camp; this was probably 1990. I’m pretty sure this is a memory of a real event–I’m not always sure these days!–because I have the recollection of riding with Jamie Henderson, an old club member, and probably his now-husband Ray O’Loughlin and my partner at the time, Tom Walther. I recall us getting lost in San Rafael trying to figure out how to get to China Camp. But as we rode on San Pedro Point Road, which is the only way to get to China Camp, I had absolutely no recollection of any of the scenery. Was it possible that 30+ years had erased everything recognizable? What I do recall is that the road was semi-industrial (which it is at the beginning) and had car traffic (which it still does). But it seemed all different now.

China Camp State Park
My memory continued to be faulty as we rode towards China Camp. None of it was recognizable, which is probably a combination of change over 30 years plus my increasingly creaky memory. Until we hit the first real hill with ugly bumps on the downhill side. Then it came back to me: I was here before. That was immediately eclipsed at seeing picturesque Bayside Park, which is a long, narrow esplanade by the shore. Something so captivating and it was like I had never seen it before. (Maybe I hadn’t!) This continued all the way around the Park. I was drawing a complete blank. Nothing looked familar.

My second recollection is that I rode on the dirt trails in China Camp with someone in the club many years ago. Most likely we had driven up to China Camp rather than riding on our mountain bikes. Yet seeing China Camp did not provoke a memory even when we went by the Visitors Center. Where exactly did we ride our dirt bikes, I wondered. At some point in the 1990s the club decided to move the annual picnic to China Camp State Park probably because everyone was tired of the fog and chill in Golden Gate Park. It was there for quite a few years yet I never attended one of them. Consequently I never rode or drove up at any other time and thus have no other recollections.

Sunday the traffic was very light through the park. Point San Pedro Road is in pretty good condition. But what struck me was the multitude of mountain bikers at China Camp. The trails are easy to get to and considered good for beginners who are trying their hand at singletrack riding. The one time I rode there I had a blast. Of course it’s all different now: there were no full suspension bikes back then and today that was practically all we saw being unloaded from cars. And there were lots of them!

Eventually we made your way out of China Camp to the Marin Civic Center and then somehow we had to get over the hill to San Rafael. Back in the day the main way was an odd path that was immediately next to 101. If you’ve ever wanted to avoid taking Camino Alto over to Corte Madera there is a similar bike path next to 101 that dumps you on Meadowsweet Drive. This one was like that. But now it had changed apparently due to the construction of the SMART train whose right-of-way sits adjacent to the path. It certainly is much more developed because of it and is in great condition. This trail takes you right into downtown San Rafael where we were going to get lunch.

San Rafael
I’ve never, ever spent appreciable time in downtown San Rafael. It’s always been a dot I’ve gone through trying to get out of or back to the City. But today we were looking for a lunch stop for a club ride and it had to have an outdoor patio. Fourth Street seems to be the main drag and has a lot of places to eat. There’s a Crepevine on 4th with a small patio in front. Even though we were arriving well before lunch time, the warm, sunny weather and Fathers Day meant it was full. Just around the corner was a Mexican joint, Taqueria Bahia. It had an outdoor dining area and it was completely empty. So we ended up stopping there and despite my trepidation at its run-of-the-mill demeanor the food turned out to be quite good. The plus was the portions were large; the minus was the portions were large.

This part of San Rafael had a little bit of everything. By that I mean a crazy dude screaming profanities, cool millenials looking for a bite, some tie-dye (hey, it’s Marin!), Central Americans hanging out everywhere, and plenty of Marinites doing what they do best, ie. shopping or dining while trying to ignore the crazy dude screaming profanities. At least the area is fairly well-kept and didn’t reek of urine. Or feces. And I didn’t see any tents on the sidewalks. Like some other city we know.

Lovely Wolfe Grade
By now it was getting hot—not atypical for San Rafael at this time of the year—so we skedaddled. I had in mind three different possible returns. The shortest was just to head east and make our way under 101 until we got to Francisco Street, which is the frontage road to 580, and take it to the bridge. But coming over in the morning we saw that a big portion of it was currently under reconstruction, all for the better since there seems to be an extra-wide sidewalk/MUP being put in. Francisco gets a lot of truck traffic, so having a MUP really makes sense. We decided to skip it and take a longer route going over Wolfe Grade, avoiding Francisco entirely. I hadn’t been over Wolfe since the early 1990s. This is a straight up and down road to get over a hill; it’s ridiculously steep but short. It’s not particularly pleasant and has no redeeming feature other than being direct. The shoulder varies between tolerable to nonexistent and it is moderately trafficked. (Which is why I’ve ridden it maybe less than two or three times altogether!) Coming after a big lunch Wolfe was a regrettable decision. It is short but if you’re lacking the horsepower it’s just a grueling ordeal. I wasn’t so quick anymore with a burrito bomb in my stomach. But we got over it and then it was simply making our way back to the RSR by the pleasant Corte Madera Creek MUP and then go past San Quentin. This section we’ve done many times and it’s pleasant and strangely bucolic for something in the middle of the suburbs.

Who’s Zoomin’ Who?
Once past San Quentin you climb a small hill and take the entrance ramp to I-580. A lot of cyclists ignore the signage and don’t realize that the entrance ramp is the bike path and instead they attempt to cross over SIr Francis Drake at Andersen Drive to catch the separated bikeway coming from the bridge. Besides being unnecessary it’s a dangerous maneuver because there is no stop sign for oncoming traffic just exiting the freeway at high speed. Some cyclist is going to get killed there one day if not already. In any case we merged onto the freeway and it’s a hoot. It’s one of the few places in California that legally allow cyclists to ride on the freeway. The bike lane is marked and part of it has plastic bollards. But there is no physical separation between cyclists and car traffic. So maybe one day some cyclist is going to get killed on the freeway.

The RSR, Part 2
By now I’m tired and it’s headwind city. It’s a steady climb for about two miles with no relief until you get to the top of the span. There is no protection from the wind. The only thing worse would be if the winds were unpredictably gusty. (That happens too!) The RSR MUP is a bidirectional path with just a painted dashed line separating eastbound and westbound cyclists. It’s not very wide. Westbound cyclists get a crazy fast descent, almost like a bobsled chute. Which means eastbound cyclists get to contemplate a moment of doubt each time they espy a downhill cyclist: is that cyclist really in control, are they going to bean me, and how fast are they going anyway?? The positive is that unlike the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a heady stew of hordes of cyclists blasting past each other in tight quarters with nary a care for safety, the RSR has so little bike traffic even on a weekend that the risk pales. I sure hope there isn’t a Strava segment on the RSR! There are occasional walkers; the other obstacle is people fishing off the bridge (!). Some people think the RSR MUP is a pier and they might as well go out on a sunny Sunday, park their butts on some crates along with their coolers and gear, and spend a nice morning trying to hook some mercury-laden bay fish for dinner whilst humming along to the freeway music in the background. I suppose they’re no worse to crash into than the copious furniture on the GG bridge and certainly a bit softer. Today there was just one group of people fishing on the bridge and the total number of cyclists coming at us could have been counted on one hand.

They weren’t there today but at other times we have also seen the Couple Taking Photos As If No One Else Was Around Them. You know them, right? They’re the ones abruptly stepping backwards into the middle of the narrow MUP too preoccupied with their phone to realize that they are about to be beaned by a cyclist. Fortunately the walk across the RSR is very long so pedestrians are a rarity. However we did encounter the Cyclists Taking A Selfie…and they were doing it on the south side of the bridge! Think about that: the south side has the scenic view of SF, the GG Bridge, Alcatraz, etc. And it also has no sidewalk. To get there they had to run across all the lanes of cars travelling at freeway speed to stand on a narrow ledge to take their selfie. And then somehow get back to the MUP. We saw them sprint across the lanes and leap over the barrier just in time not to get killed and high-fiving themselves smugly. I bet the drivers’ adrenaline also went up.

Grumpy
As with any ordeal it’s merely a matter of time before it eventually ends. We were back in Point Richmond and at the car. Why was I so disappointed with the planned route? I think part of it is a change that’s been happening slowly to what I expect out of a ride. These days I’m more interested in riding rural (or “semi-rural”) environments and away from cars. Much of this ride is quite urban—the RSR and the east side of San Rafael. I also realized that the reason why I’ve hardly ever ridden to China Camp State Park is because getting there isn’t as pleasant as going to other parts of Marin, even other suburban parts. Will I go back to China Camp by bike? I’ll have to let time kill more memory cells…

Bob used to live in San Francisco and rode with the club in the early days until he relocated to LA about 30 years ago. He’s an old fart like me and has been riding bikes since forever. His latest N+1 is a Pinarello gravel e-bike that he purchased this past winter. He’s one of the few club members who’s regularly riding a gravel bike. Here are his comments on “gravel”.

“Hi Tony, I’ve been having a great time with my new bike and now that summer is here, the longer days are giving me more time to ride. After the first several weeks of exclusively riding the Pinarello I started mixing in rides on my road bike and was happy to find that I had gotten stronger and found the routes that had become challenging now a bit less so. My search for suitable off road gravel trails has not been very successful, however. There just aren’t good ones close by (i.e. within riding distance from home) and removing the battery so I can hoist it (still heavy) into the back of my car is not something I’m often motivated to do. But it’s OK. There are a couple of tame rides in the arroyo by the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena that keep me entertained for now.

When I saw the email about a DSSF Dirt Curious ride and your footnote about it perhaps being a good excuse to get a gravel bike, I thought I would offer a few observations that, if you think the club members might find useful, you could add to one of the club emails.

Before I settled on the Pinarello gravel bike I bought this past January, I rode an assortment of gravel and mountain bikes. Mainly I wanted two things: a more upright position on the bike (to give my neck and shoulders an easier time of it), and my first e-bike. I’ve been really happy with the Pinarello even though I have not found many suitable trails for it. The first thing to know about a gravel bike (e- or otherwise) is that it is decidedly not a mountain bike. The narrower tires, even when deflated to about 25-30 psi, simply do not have the same mountain bike tire contact surface with the ground to give you a sense of confident control. Another thing is that unless the gravel trail you find has a fairly high ratio of hard surface to gravel (or sloppy sand), you need to be very careful with sudden, sharp course corrections—much more so than with fatter mountain bike tires. That being said, however, if you are so inclined and are fortunate to have more money than you know what do do with, you can buy another set of wheels to broaden your choice of trails. Most good gravel bikes can accommodate wider tires.

But here’s the second kinda big thing: gravel bikes don’t have suspension. That also makes control on an uneven surface a bit of a teeth-chattering added challenge. I may get a shock-absorbing handlebar stem—I have one on my old hardtail mountain bike and always found it quite sufficient, even on the gnarliest Marin trails.

Oh, and regarding the e-bike part—you only have an easier time (i.e., cheat) if you so choose. Otherwise, if you ride as hard as you did before, you just go faster. Plus, you get the added feeling that you just turned back the clock a few decades. Pretty sweet.”

Bob is right: today’s “gravel” bikes are not mountain bikes. At least they’re not like mountain bikes as we know them today. Bob hits the two things that make “gravel” bikes different: tire size/type and lack of suspension. Note that both of these are blurring these days with experiments in adding suspension to gravel bikes and making gravel bikes that accept mountain bike sized tires. I wholeheartedly agree with Bob about riding on dirt: mountain bikes generally feel a lot more planted on dirt than does a typical gravel bike. Those fatter tires usually with more aggressive tread and lower pressure just provide more traction and cornering confidence. However unlike riding on asphalt where tires going sideways is a rare—and usually dangerous—occurrence, riding on dirt involves getting used to the tires moving laterally under you. Yes, drifting is for real. Since I don’t ride a mountain bike with suspension I don’t have anything to add to what Bob has said about that topic. But I do ride a road bike—okay, it’s an “all road” bike—with front suspension and it definitely makes life a dream when I roll over pavement incongruities with nary a worry.

So if you’re looking into a “gravel” bike as your N+1, keep that in mind: it’s not a mountain bike even if it gets you about part way there. For many of us that’s all we need. You’ll find riding a “gravel” bike on pavement familiar to riding your road bike and then you’ll be able to ride some dirt with more confidence and comfort. Maybe it’s more appropriate to think of a gravel bike as a N-1 since you can live pretty well without a typical road bike. But a gravel bike is not going to be much fun on gnarly trails and going through rock gardens. It’ll be fine on most fire roads and unpaved roads around here and you can ride to the dirt instead of having to drive.

Once considered a rite of passage for recreational cyclists—riding one hundred miles in a single shot—the century ride is gradually becoming a relic of another era. Century rides no longer seem to captivate cyclists’ imagination the way they did during their heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s. General interest has been trickling down in the Bay Area and probably elsewhere in the US as well. That is reflected in Different Spokes too. Greg Lemond’s wins in the Tour de France in the 1980s and then Lance Armstrong in the late 1990s and 2000s really propelled interest in road cycling. Next thing you know cycling is “the new golf”. It seemed there was a century ride almost every week in or near the Bay Area from April through early September. Although many have survived, there is a trail of defunct rides such as the Hekaton, the Banana, the Holstein, and Mt. Hamilton, which are fondly remembered. Centuries were regularly selling out and each year clubs were striving to increase the number of riders they could accommodate. A ride with 2,000 cyclists wasn’t unusual. Although some centuries still seem to have good numbers; for example, the Wine Country Century regularly sells out its 2,500 spots but instead of selling out in a matter of days as it used to it’s now taking months.

Century rides are/were usually put on by local cycling clubs. But we know from the experience of putting on the AIDS Bike-A-Thon for ten years in the 1980s and ‘90s that running a big event like a century ride is a substantial amount of work even when you have it down to a formula. A lot of volunteers is absolutely essential not only for planning but for pre-event logistics and day-of-event work. If your club doesn’t get burned out from doing all that, you at least need a year to recover! Keep in mind that the bigger the event, the greater the number of volunteers you need. If you’re a small club, this is a real stressor. When we were putting on the AIDS Bike-A-Thon the club was somewhere just under 300 members at its height. But many of those members were passive, ie. donating a paid membership but not doing much else to support the club. The clubs nearby that continue to put on century rides all have memberships that are much greater than ours, which currently hovers near a hundred. Although they manage to pull it off, even large clubs like Valley Spokesmen and Grizzly Peak Cyclists have to beg their members pitiably for volunteers.

On top of that onus—declining interest in volunteering—is the increased cost and effort of putting on an event on public roads. Permitting, police time, venue reservations, and portable toilets all have increased in cost and difficulty in getting arranged. Food isn’t cheap anymore too. Insurance costs for events have also gone through the roof. That the registration fee for a century can be $100 shouldn’t be a surprise anymore; that’s a long cry from the $25 back in the day!

Amateur racing clubs have it a little easier. Licensed clubs are supposed to put on a race annually. Where do they get their volunteers? From their members who, if they want to race for that team, have to put in drudge hours to support the club. Since they want to race (or at least hang out with the cool kids in cool kit), they have to volunteer. No such luck with recreational cycling clubs. Requiring volunteering as a condition of membership is a fast way to zero out your membership. I don’t blame you all. Let’s face it: life is stressful in the Bay Area no matter how well paid you are. Traffic sucks, work hours are often ridiculous, and affording a place to sleep practically involves submitting to indentured servitude. The last thing you want to do is fritter your precious me-time on helping a broke-ass cycling club put on a century even if it’s just one or two days of unpaid work in a year.

And on top of all that, road cycling has other kinds of cycling competing for your interest. Bike touring is still lurking in the background (no one in the club does self-supported bike tours anymore except Phil and David). But the trends du jour are bikepacking, gravel riding, and even mountain biking, which is getting long in the tooth. And don’t forget “gran fondos”, which are just competitive centuries in that you get a timing chip so you know exactly how slow you are. By the way did you know that Levi’s Gran Fondo in Sonoma asks $295 for the pleasure of riding in its event?

While recreational cycling clubs may be backing away from putting on century rides, other entities with more enthusiastic members may be taking up some of the slack. First you have professional businesses who look at big riding events as potential cash cows. Event promotion is a way to earn a nice living as Dan Pallota can tell you. Apparently Levi Leipheimer, Jens Voight, and George Hincapie would agree as well since after their pro racing careers they’ve gone on to put on gran fondos. But other charitable organizations have noticed the turnout and our willingness to fork over dollars to ride a road bike for a day. Best Buddies, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, American Lung Society, the Alzheimers Association, and many others put on day rides for road cycists and you can either pay the money upfront or promise to raise a minimum amount of money to participate. Another organization that has tossed its hat into the ring is Rotary International. This service organization with local branches all over the world has a number of small fundraising centuries around northern California. What’s nice about them is that they are on the small side—a turnout of 500 is considered big–and locally sponsored. Rotary in Santa Rosa sponsors the Giro Bello—that’s pretty close to the Bay Area—but Rotary in Yreka sponsors the Siskyou Scenic Tour, a much smaller community and quite far away. The Almaden Lions Club has been putting on the I Care Classic for many years. What I like about the newer and smaller rides is their homey and community feel as well as a chance to throw a little bit of money their way. Of course these organizations exist in order to serve, so finding volunteers to run their events is less chancy than pleading to your cycling membership.

You may not realize it but regardless of whether a century is put on by a local club or by an organization like Rotary or the Friends of Feeney Park, it’s really a fundraising event. Clubs like Valley Spokesmen and Grizzly Peak Cyclists plow the money they pull in into donations to local charities after they’ve paid their not insubstantial bills. But keeping your volunteers jazzed and willing to come back year after year takes some secret sauce. And when you’re a club that’s basically devoted to me-time and having fun and when helping other people involves more effort than submitting your credit card number, that is a hard sell! Some of the fee money that other clubs collect is plowed into the general fund to pay for their club events like picnics, club meetings, and travel that benefit everyone in the club even if just a small percentage volunteered. I think one of the reasons that the AIDS Bike-A-Thon practically killed the club was that we took NONE of the money that was collected—all the millions of dollars went to beneficiaries. What we were left with was the momentary high of pulling off a massive charitable event and the awesome burnout afterwards that slowly drove the volunteer base down and the club was still broke with never more than about $1,000 in our treasury (if that). Dedication and commitment can get you only so far. And then you need me-time. We’ve always been a broke-ass club and we continue to be to this day, depending on the kindness of its members to dig a little deeper into their pockets to keep the bills paid. Part of what sustained our motivation was that this was all before protease inhibitors came on the scene. Prior to Crixivan in 1996 HIV medications were of limited effectiveness. Raising money for palliative care, treatment, and research was literally a way to stay alive and to keep hope alive. That was a powerful motivation to keep putting on the Bike-A-Thon!

The history of Different Spokes and centuries is mixed: although the club was founded primarily by bike tourists, as the club was forming in 1982 the club leaders ended up doing the Sequoia Century and according to Bob Krumm had a bonding experience as well as enjoying it. As the club grew a new cohort of “avid recreational cyclists” came on board and they routinely did centuries around the Bay Area. Of course back then there were quite a few to choose from. That generation of Spokers were the ones who entertained Walter Mitty fantasies about riding with Greg Lemond and Andy Hampsten (and perhaps doing more than riding with them!) This was always a small group within Different Spokes but it happened to contain many of the club leadership through the years. That shouldn’t be a surprise because we had the AIDS Bike-A-Thon, a club event, and this regularly became the goal for the year. Even members who weren’t preternaturally interested in riding a hundred miles would gird their loins and participate in the Bike-A-Thon.

Today the Spokers who show up at the local centuries are the same faces I’ve seen for years minus those who’ve aged out or who realize that paying $100 to ride roads you ride anyway is kind of stupid. I’d rather think of it as a contribution to another local cycling club or a charitable donation to a non-profit so that they can fund their programs. I just hope their volunteers stay happy and jazzed to put on a whole-day event year after year.

I’ll still keep showing up at the start even if I’m down these days to riding metrics. At least until I age out as well. Riding centuries has long been akin to a religious ritual for me. And going to church is what some of us still do.

I’ve pondered why more members are not leading rides. My own trajectory to leading rides was slow. I joined the club and—if my recollection is accurate—I didn’t attend a club ride until maybe a year later. Part of it was time: I was in graduate school and working part time. I was also mainly into running at that point but did lots of errands in SF on my bike. But I kept getting running injuries and decided I had to get back to cycling. I can’t recall if I attended one of the monthly club meetings or a ride first. On one of my early club rides I met Ron Decamp, a member who lived in the South Bay. We talked about riding on the Midpeninsula and eventually we agreed to colead a ride since the club didn’t ride there often enough despite the area’s marvelous cycling routes. Neither of us had led a club ride before. After that first time coleading, it was easy to lead on my own even though I still didn’t lead often.

Making friends in the club led to doing more club rides and often we just got together to ride when there wasn’t a club ride (or a club ride that appealed to us). We also had the now vanished Decide & Ride: show up at McLaren Lodge on any Sunday at 10 am. Whoever came would decide where to ride. There almost always was a small group who showed up when there wasn’t another club ride. That all led to leading more rides. But I rarely led more than maybe three rides per year—usually less—unlike in recent years when I’ve led or co-led a couple per month.

We used to have monthly club meetings back then and I think they helped draw out some ride leaders. Those meetings always involved exhortations from the ride coordinator as well as a preview of next month’s rides and the slots in the calendar that needed filling. (We printed a monthly newsletter, the ChainLetter, which included the ride calendar for the month. So rides had to be gathered at least three weeks in advance.) At the meeting ride hosts would talk about their rides to encourage participation and informally members would talk about where they were interested in riding and get encouragement from others to lead a ride. Everyone was gently encouraged to lead a ride they liked and I think hesitant members got enough positive feedback at those meetings to step up and lead their ride.

Of course we no longer have regular meetings and most of our communication has shifted from in-person to the Internet. This I think makes it harder to foster ride hosting. Personal contact makes a difference in persuading members that they can lead a ride, and that other members will indeed show up. The most commonly mentioned reason not to lead a ride is “but what if no one else shows up?” and that fear was assuaged by people telling the potential ride leader’s face that they were interested in that ride.

Believe me I’ve posted rides and been the only person to show up. But I’ve made it a point to post rides that I wanted to do. So if no one else showed up, I still got to do a ride I wanted to do. It was hardly a burden if I was going to ride anyway.

I’m not sure why there is reticence today to lead a ride. There are the usual reasons: not wanting to be “obligated” to do it (FOMO??); being shy (as if we were going to judge you based on your ride); and “I wouldn’t know where to lead a ride”. At some level it is a matter of personality: some people are afraid of being in a leadership role. Is that due to lack of self-confidence? Chris Thomas is one of the shiest people I know and yet he went from volunteering to lead a ride in Fresno, where he lived at the time, to leading a zillion AIDS Lifecycle training rides and then Double Bay Double training rides. (Incidentally when he did list that ride, we drove all the way to Fresno to do his ride and support him as did a few other Bay Area members.)

But I don’t believe ride leaders are born even if personality makes it easier for some people to make the move. Ride leaders are made and we don’t yet have a proven recipe for developing ride leaders despite 40 years of existence. We are indeed slow learners! One thing I do know is that I cannot recall a single case of someone new to the club showing up and then leading a ride very shortly thereafter. Someone new to the club comes on a ride, checks us out, and decides whether to come a second time. If they like the experience, then maybe they come on a few rides and make friends in the club. Only at that point do they offer to lead a ride. That rarely happens nowadays. Coleading a ride with another member makes it easier to step up. Also, having a coleader means that someone else is guaranteed to show up!

I also suspect that we rely too much on self-volunteering rather than directly asking, “Hey, would you be interested in leading a ride for the club?” We replicate what we know and in my case no one needed to ask me to lead a ride. I haven’t started cold calling members but maybe that’s the next ride coordinator’s decision.

Stepping up to leading a ride is surely a sign of some emotional investment in the club. When you make friends in the club, leading a ride becomes much easier. We certainly don’t expect every member to lead rides (although that would be wonderful!) But at our membership level we should have about 15-20 active ride leaders in any year and we’re below that.

David Goldsmith asked me that question years ago. I can’t remember exactly what it was in reference to but I do recall being amused and of a lightbulb popping up in my head about the cultural zeitgeist behind that question. There was a time when people did most everything around the house whether it was house cleaning, fixing the car, installing a new garbage disposal, gardening, or wiring a new outlet. It was just understood that we could do that and we only hired someone to take on tasks that required a professional such a lawyer, doctor, architect, etc.

Certainly part of the ethos of 1950s and 1960s was that boys learned from their fathers (or that shop class in high school) and girls learned from their mothers (or the home ec class in high school) how to do these kinds of things. Boys grew up learning how to do household repairs and to wield as many tools as their dads could afford to store in the garage workshop. Is that still true today? Perhaps less so. Today boys’ spare time is devoted to a myriad of after school activities instead of helping their dads with household repairs.

When I was in high school I hung out with a small group of budding bike fanatics and yet none us had anything remotely special for a bike. (I had a Schwinn Continental with steel rims and an Ashtabula crank!) One day John suggested we take our bikes apart, clean them, and put them back together. On his backyard patio no less. Before that I had only a vague idea of how bikes worked and were put together. John knew only a little bit more then I did. That experience was revelatory if hard and frustrating. It was a bit over our heads but we managed to take apart our bikes right down to the ball bearings including the freewheel and reassemble everything. It took all day. And yes, we did have a couple of parts left over. But by that point we were exhausted and our bikes appeared to work fine anyway. The end result was that I was never intimidated by working on a bike again.

Until now. Taking apart a downtube indexed shifter is as “contemporary” a repair as I feel confident to do on new technology. Shimano shifters—thank god!—are not intended to be disassembled and if they fail you just replace them. But other technologies give me the heebie-jeebies: suspension forks, hydraulic brakes, and electronic shifting systems. I have managed to learn to use a torque wrench and live with tubeless tires. I know that at some point I’m going to bite the bullet and learn how to do those repairs, make a shitload of newby mistakes, but eventually get competent enough to handle my own repairs and maintenance. But I am avoiding it as long as possible, ie. until something irretrievably breaks.

But beyond the higher technological skillset necessary to take care of these repairs—it really isn’t that much more complicated than before—there has just a cultural shift in bike repair: find people to do ALL your maintenance and just throw money at your problems. The inability whether it’s due to lack of time, lack of interest, or just ennui is much more acceptable these days. We all understand when someone hires someone or uses a convenience instead of doing the work themselves. Instead of preparing a meal we go out to eat. It’s easier especially when you’re tired after a day’s work. Fix your bike? You’d rather be riding it instead of wasting your precious Me time wrestling with a recalcitrant tire. How many of us still clean their home instead of hiring a cleaning service? Dry cleaning? Nowadays we can send out all our clothing for washing and it’ll be returned nicely ironed and folded too. There is no shame anymore in not knowing how to do things ourselves; we just understand that we hire others to do things for us. It’s just more things than before.

When I was a teenager I took car repair classes at the local community college. I am probably the last person with any kind of abiding interest in cars. I’ll drive anything as long as it’s cheap and can get me from point A to point B and is reliable. But I thought I should know something about our car and feel less marooned when it came to an unexpected failure. Working hands-on on my car was just as revelatory as working on my Schwinn. After those classes I didn’t work on my car very much but I certainly felt competent and could talk to my mechanic. As with bikes, auto technology has quickly advanced and now nothing can be done to a car engine without a diagnostic computer to tune it. So I’m back to square one again: ignorant and completely in the hands of auto mechanics.

We are embodied beings so knowledge we acquire through our bodies and not just from reading or watching YouTube videos can take us to another level. The experience of using our hands especially to learn about the world is valuable knowledge. How much torque do I need to apply to snug up a bolt? What does that feel like? How much to turn that adjustment screw to quiet the rattle in the rear derailleur? You learn that through your body. It is felt knowledge. Buddhists say that you don’t give a starving person a menu, you give them food. That is to say, talking about enlightenment is worthless; one has to experience it directly to know. So it is with bike repair. To understand your bike intimately you have to work on it. Yes, mechanics can make your problem vanish. But will you be “fed”?

Has it felt like there haven’t been many club rides recently? Maybe you hadn’t noticed because you’re not riding much. Or, at least you’re not riding much with Different Spokes. And we know one begets the other: fewer rides results in less interest and expectations, which results in even fewer rides. This has been a bad year for the club partly due to the record rainfall for the first four months of 2023. But we didn’t rebound once the weather improved for riding. As some of you know this has also been a bad year for illness, injuries, and accidents and not just among the usual ride leaders. Both David Goldsmith and I have been derailed this year from leading many rides (although David is doing a lot better than I!) Whether it’s a home remodel, Covid, accidents, or one’s aging body letting one down, life has a way of interfering with cycling.

There is also usually a lull in rides before AIDS Lifecycle as some members focus on that event. But honestly we don’t support AIDS Lifecycle anymore as we used to by offering training rides. Lifecycle has its own robust training ride schedule and doesn’t need any help from us. (We’ve outlived our usefulness to it, it seems.) This year the rebound post-Lifecycle didn’t happen for some reason and we had very few rides offered.

What has been revealed in glaring clarity is that there is little interest in leading rides in the club right now. The Jersey Ride, which by the way has been the most popular and well-attended ride in our history, does not have throngs of members eager to lead it. It’s usually a board member or an ex-board member who finally relents and volunteers to lead it after much exhortation and prodding from Yours Truly. Do I like beating the bushes to find a JR ride host? No, it’s a minor chore but the fact that I have to do it rather than having a member spontaneously step up before I even ask, saying, “Hey, I’d like to lead next month’s JR? May I do that?” reveals the lack of volunteerism and ennui we have now. I find JR hosts and often with a response such as, “Oh, I’ll do it but only if no one else does.” Apparently leading the JR is also viewed as a minor chore by others. And perhaps that says something about the JR itself. Maybe it was a good horse in its youth but it’s outlived its time and should now be put out to pasture. If no one is jumping for joy to lead the JR, then perhaps we should just stop offering it in its present form. If you like the JR, then maybe you should do something about preserving it by leading it once in a while because frankly that burden has fallen on an extremely small number of members who likely would prefer to be riding somewhere else. Or maybe the JR needs to get away from the Tib loop and go elsewhere as a breath of fresh air?

The shitshow on the GG Bridge in the afternoon doesn’t help. It’s one of the reasons David now leads the Short & Sassy Tib loop since it starts and ends in Marin and he doesn’t have to risk life and limb on the Bridge. It’s also the reason Roger and I no longer lead it: after two JRs where we were nearly hit we will no longer ride southbound on the Bridge in the afternoon and prefer to lead the much safer East Bay Tiburon loop. Maybe you feel the same way and that’s why you don’t want to lead or participate in the JR? But your silence tells us little. Speak up and let us know.

One could argue that the resistance to leading the JR is idiosyncratic. But we’ve had a glorious summer almost devoid of oppressive heat waves and wildfire smoke and yet we’ve had less than half the number of rides we usually have had. For at least a couple of years we’ve averaged about one club ride per week throughout the year. This year it’s going to be much less than half that.

This isn’t to say that no one volunteers to lead rides. There are still a few members who without urging will occasionally post rides from their repertoire. But the ride leader cohort has been dwindling and not replenished at the same rate, so it’s fragile right now. When two or three of the main leaders can’t lead rides, the calendar suffers greatly. This might be tolerable for a month or two. But at some point I would expect members to think, “Gee, there haven’t been many rides. I’ll lead one next month.” This was actually my thought process when I volunteered to be the ride coordinator back in 2016. The ride calendar was dismal and we hadn’t had a ride coordinator in over two years. So at first I led more rides and then in the vain hope of having a multiplier effect I volunteered to be the club ride coordinator. It clearly had some effect since the numbers went up. But now rides are dwindling again and frankly I’m not sure what to do to rectify it. Perhaps there is no rectification needed and this is just part of the natural up and down cycle of the club.

Over the past five years the board has worked to structurally make it easier to lead rides. The club RideWithGPS account has a curated library of rides throughout the greater Bay Area including a Most Popular selection for each county. This should make it easier to peruse and find interesting rides without having to generate a cue sheet, map, or GPS file for participants. Some rides even have ride notes and ride history information in their files. Posting rides on the ride calendar is easy through the “post a ride” link and usually are up in less than a day or even faster through the QuickEvents method. There is a dedicated ride leader forum for those who lead rides to discuss and problem solve issues pertaining to ride leading.

I suspect the common reaction amongst you to the dearth of rides is at best very mild disappointment. It’s so easy to get on a bike and ride by oneself; you don’t have to do any work to arrange or coordinate it, you can leave at whatever time you want, and you can do whatever ride you want including changing your mind midride. Leading a ride does involve a time commitment at an appointed date and time. Why bother when it’s easy just to text a friend or two and see if they want to join your personal ride than it is to organize a ride for the club? I would like to say that it’s easy to find another ride at any of the non-LGBTQ clubs. But that is becoming harder too. Larger clubs such as the Valley Spokesmen and even Grizzly Peak Cyclists have diminishing ride calendars and they periodically plea for more ride leaders. So it’s not just us.

The idea behind leading a club ride isn’t to put members through an ordeal. If that is your reaction, then don’t do it. In all the years I’ve ridden with Different Spokes leading rides has been about wanting to get together with your friends to ride. If that’s not enough to get you warm and fuzzy about leading a club ride, then don’t do it. You should feel eager to lead a club ride, jazzed about it and not repulsed. If that is not the reaction of most of the members, then it’s time to shutter the club. Don’t lead a club ride if you don’t feel like it. On the other hand, as a member you should feel that giving back to the club is something you want to do. Those who take should also give. Or have we forgotten the moral of the childhood story of Stone Soup?

At this juncture of the club, the real question is why members don’t want to lead rides because not wanting to do the most vital function of our club means there is something radically wrong. The culture of the club should be one of excitement, fun, and sharing. And sharing means sharing the “work” of making the club a continuing, viable organization. If there aren’t enough members who want to contribute to the club, then we will wither and vanish just as Different Spokes Seattle, Rainbow Cyclists in San Diego, and River City Cyclists in Sacramento all did.

Well, if you don’t care, then you don’t care. But I know some of you do and now is the time to act rather than sit back in the in the draft and let others plow into the wind. You know what cyclists say about wheelsuckers, don’t you? I’m flicking my elbow at you. Yes, you.