SF Bay Trail: Bayfront Park (Menlo Park) & Dumbarton Bridge

Sunday 8-10, 2010

SF Bay Trail: Penninsula - Bayfront Park & Dumbarton Bridge
9.7 miles SF Bay Trail, plus 7.4 other miles


Sunday was a beautiful, tumultuous day, too many unplanned things competing for my attention, and a fundraiser to get to as well.  I ran out of the house, grabbed the bike, and hit the road--accidentally leaving all of my Bay Trail maps and my camera behind.  (I "borrowed" these pictures off the web until I can take some of my own.)  I headed south of my last ride, and my first one, looking for a good place to start.  I thought I would hit the Baylands in Palo Alto and took a likely exit from Highway 101, ending up back at Bayfront Park in Menlo Park.

Five or six weeks earlier I'd been there, when I first started thinking about how to get in shape.  I was going to hike both the Bay Trail and the Ridge Trail and was scouting Foster City.  I thought it a little boring for a walk, and wound up at Bayfront Park where I hiked the 2 mile+ perimeter and over the top.  Even that short a distance on pavement in hiking boots convinced me to crosstrain by cycling the SF Bay Trail segments while hiking the Ridge Trail ones.  Almost the entire trail is paved and I'd be doing each one twice, out and back.


In my truck I scouted the route from Bayfront Park south to the Dumbarton Bridge, to make sure it was long enough, and realized that the Baylands I had been trying to find are actually south of the bridge.  I've really been filling in gaps in my knowledge of the Penninsula with these rides.  When I got home and looked at the maps, I saw how it all fits together, and made the area south of the bridge my goal for this coming Sunday.  The Dumbarton Bridge is accessible, though, with a bike/pedestrian path, so it seemed like a cool idea to ride over to the East Bay and back.


Changing the World...

The root of most environmental problems is over-population. Ironically, the solution to a lot of these issues is density: enough people nearby that a critical mass develops, enough people fall in love with a place that they become its champions, or are concerned enough by a problem that they become its solution. Most of the time it happens the same way; a few people get together, become leaders, and start a movement. My organization was formed in a similar fashion nearly 40 years ago. One visionary, recognized by a nuts and bolts guy, who then gathered others. Today we have more than 7000 members.


The park, at the foot of Marsh Road, is a convenient place to park and there are bathrooms.  Like many of the hilly parks along the bay, "Bedwell" Bayfront Park in Menlo Park is an old garbage dump capped in the mid-1980s and turned into a park.  It's not as well designed as the parks in San Mateo, or even as manicured as the shoreline strips in Foster City or Redwood City.  Just grassland slopes and some mostly non-native trees.  What it really strikes me as is a blank canvas, a quarter section (that's 160 acres, or one quarter of a square mile "section") waiting for something.  It's "new" land so there really are no historical precedents, it comes down to what the public wants.  I imagine native plant introduction and slopes of bunchgrass, seed wands blowing in the breezes.

So I google the park name, and there they are:  http://www.friendsofbayfrontpark.org/ They have a brochure, too:  www.friendsofbayfrontpark.org/BayfrontBrochure.4.6.09.pdf .  The first big decision has already been made:  the old dump becomes a park rather than some other form of development.  That's not unusual with old landfills, they often leak methane and are still 'settling.'  But what kind of park?  "Various development proposals have threatened the park’s open space and wildlife, including development of a golf course and playing fields. These proposals have since been withdrawn or defeated by voters, and the park today remains as public open space."  Evidently there are burrowing owls and lots of other birds. 


There's also an interesting art/cultural installation.  "THE GREAT SPIRIT PATH - This unique art installation in the park is a stone poem in four stanzas inspired by Native American pictographs and designed by Menlo Park artist Susan Dunlap. Installed along a 3/4-mile long trail in the park, the Great Spirit Path is composed of 53 rock sculptures grouped into clusters, each representing a phrase in the poem. The largest sculpture of its kind anywhere, it is made of 892 rough natural stones weighing more than 505 tons."


The "Friends" will work for awhile, gather strength and expertise, defend the park, raise money.  I'd be willing to bet that eventually they'll start introducing native plants, if they haven't already.
 
Bayfront Park to Dumbarton Bridge

It's 2.3 miles on the paved path around the park, part of the SF Bay Trail, past an old sewage plant, with salt ponds east and west, and marshland to the north (the shoreline has curved at this point so what seems north is actually west.) The park is surrounded on three sides by the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which was established in 1974 and now includes around 30,000 acres, or 47 square miles.
 
A lot of that acreage is made up of salt ponds, another nearly blank canvas, and they really dominate the south (and north) parts of the Bay Trail.  You may have seen them from the air, like large rice paddies, surrounded by sinuous levees and multi-colored with algae and brine, from blue to green to red.  They've transformed a natural landscape of tens of thousands of acres of marshland interspersed with open water ponds, to tends of thousands of acres of salt pond fringed with marsh.  They have some wildlife value but mostly they represent hope.  Nearly 90% of the bay's original 187,000 acres of marshes have been lost, and a third of its area, but it's doesn't have to be permanent.  16,500 acres of salt ponds were purchased 5 or 6 years ago--for $100 million--with plans for restoration.  It will take decades.

The ponds were located where salt was naturally produced in shallow areas.  Salt collection by Indians and early settlers for spice and to preserve food evolved into a hundred years of industrial salt production for all kinds of chemical uses.  Salty water was moved from pond to pond as it evaporated, concentrated and collected, leaving behind a toxic briny concentrate called bittern. 


Imagine reassembling Yosemite, or the Everglades. It's not an easy task.  You can't just break the levees and let the bay water in; the brine concentrate would poison the bay.  In some shallow ponds, letting in more water just continues the process of evaporation, and makes the ponds even more salty.  Restoration has begun a piece at a time, slowly, starting with pilot projects which are monitored and from which lessons are learned to apply to the next project.  Some are allowed to return to marshland or mudflats, some to remain as open water.  There's not just one kind of marsh either, there are many, influenced by tides, by freshwater creeks and springs, by sewage outflows, by differences in elevation of just a few feet, or even inches.  Salty, brackish, fresh.  The ponds and marshes have conflicting functions too, from managing flood waters and extreme tides, to providing recreation and wildlife habitat, all at a time when sea level is rising.

There are historical influences; during the gold rush huge quantities of sediments decreased the bay's depth by a half to two-thirds and layered in from then on were heavy metals like mercury and other pollutants. On the other hand, some of the ponds have subsided as much as ten feet.  There is a balance to be achieved between enough tidal flow to keep sloughs open and enough sediment to raise the bottoms of the ponds to elevations at which marsh plants can grow.  Blank canvases don't just get filled with art, either.  Ponds recconnected to tidal flow are vacuums which can be filled with aggressive, invasive non-native plants and animals too. They have to be controlled.


You can read more about the salt ponds and the restoration at:  http://www.southbayrestoration.org/pdf_files/BayNature%20Oct%202004.pdf


It should be no surprise that preservation of 30,000 acres of the National Wildlife Refuge and addition of another 16,500 acres was the brain child of just a few people, just like the Friends of Bayfront Park.  In the late-1960s Florence and Philip LaRiviere formed Citizens’Committee to Complete the Refuge.  Sure there were many others involved, and organizations like Save the Bay, but there are always a few catalysts who lead the way.

Reminds me...I nominated the two co-founders of my organization for a national conservation award a few years ago and they won, and went back to Washington D.C. to get the award, where there was a presentation about them.  The Awards organizers called for photos, quotes and other information. 

One founder was the visionary and we had lots of great quotes from her.  The other, the nuts and bolts guy, was arguably more important.  He's a taciturn mid-westerner; even though he had accomplished many great things, he'd never said anything all that memorable.  So I was trying to prompt him into giving me some pithy summaries of all that had happened.  The best I could get was "the squeaky wheel gets the grease," and one that has really stuck with me:  "if you do anything for 30 years, you'll make a difference."  So it is with him, so it is with the LaRivieres, so it will be with the Friends of Bayfront Park, if they last that long.

All this a long winded way of describing a bike ride with potential.  I left Bayfront Park headed east paralleling Bayfront Expressway.  There's a long strip of grassland (what they call "upland habitat") mowed and studded with ground squirrels, along a slough--one of those marshland fringes seperating the trail and slough from salt ponds waiting to be liberated.  It's been a rare Bay Trail ride that didn't include feral cats among the wildlife and I saw one with a mouse in its mouth--hopefully not an endangered Salt Marsh harverst mouse.

The trail wraps around Sun Microsystems, then parallels Highway 84, jogs across the about-to-be freeway at University Avenue to the south side, sandwiched between more salt ponds, then climbs onto the Dumbarton bridge.  It's low rise, and at 1.6 miles only a little longer than the much higher Martinez-Benicia bridge near home.  Its 1927 draw bridge predecessor was the first vehicular bridge across the bay, and the shortest; parts of it remain at either end as fishing piers.  An old railroad bridge is just south; together they bound the smallest part of the bay, circled with salt ponds. 

I dropped to more salt ponds and, just past the KOIT radio towers and building, turned around and headed back.

Week 5: Fitness this Week & Giving Back

Aug. 7, 2010: End of Week 5

This week I did well on exercise and not as well on diet but I continued dropping in weight down 2 or 3 lbs and 16 total to 229.  Hit the gym three times, cardio, abs and stretching each time along with chest-tris, legs, and shoulders.  For my biceps surgery recovery this was the first week of 4 with single arm lifts at 15 lbs and double-arm at 25-30.  I had several early mornings and one late night and I think getting enough sleep is a problem. But, besides gym cardio, I started the week with a Bay Trail ride, and ended it with a Ridge Trail hike; I also got in a little hike on my new property.

I've been wondering when I would be able to see a difference; this morning I did.  My face seemed skinnier.  That's normal. Now the remaining fat will redistribute and the belly should shrink some.  This will sound silly, but I also tried the scale at the gym for the first time in a year or two.  Tuesday I was at 231 on my home scale, and I was starting to wonder if it was a magic scale, always trending downward.  I figured if I tried the gym scale I'd break the spell but Thursday I did, and it was down below 229.  Corroboration!

The early morning meetings meant I was more rushed, and more tired, so I didn't eat as well at breakfast but I still stuck to coffee, a canned protein shake and a piece of fruit, and took quinoa/vegetables and fruit to work for lunch.  But Wednesday we had an organizational potluck picnic, Thursday I went home early and ate everything in the house but the kitchen sink, and a couple of hours ago after my hike was my real splurge and the only meat this week, a couple of cheeseburgers, and fries, at In-n-Out Burger.  I've been having some strange cravings. 

I did get back on the Ridge Trail today, though, for the first time in weeks, and I over reached.  Some serious steepness and 1200' gain, at six mile my longest hike since the beginning of May.  Not sure if it was the week's exercise or the hike but I was tired throughout, I'm wiped, and my feet are sore.

My Goals
• Write about the outdoors.
• Get in shape; current goal, drop from 245 to 200 lbs.
• Experience joy more frequently.
• Cycle and Hike, and Popularize the San Francisco Bay Trail & the Bay Area Ridge Trail.
• Leave things a little better than I found them.
• Donate 5% of my income to worthy causes.

Aug 7, 2010
229 lbs (current weight on August 7, 2010); 245 lbs (weight July 5, 2010)
Bay Trail cycling miles: 19
All other cycling miles: 32.7
Ridge Trail hiking miles: 6.6
All hiking & other cardio miles: 35.2
Gym visits: 12

Finding Joy
Joy was almost daily this week; a good part of it is clearly related to exercise in cool fog weather and being by the water; it was nice being up at the Russian River last weekend too--great stars in the night sky.  I was smiling while cycling in San Mateo Sunday, my gym workouts were good, I got the go-ahead for two significant projects at work on Wednesday morning and was on one of our properties for a Board potluck Wednesday night.  We're restoring it and it's always a thrill to see how fast the native plants we've reintroduced are growing.  There were bats flying overhead in the night sky too.  I tested out my lighter weight running on the treadmill one day--I'm still not in running shape but I'm feeling encouraged.  Prop. 8 was over turned the other day and Elena Kagen was confirmed to the Supreme Court.  Hiked my new property Friday and up to the big oaks on the knoll top--serious beauty--and lay on my belly looking at stickleback fish in the stream pools at another property.  Today's hike was tiring but the descent was almost ecstatic, gravity doing the work, the fog topping the ridge in waves of white, and the wind was gale force but cool.  The colors of the water in San Pablo reservoir, the dense green woodland and the golden meadows, the white fog against the bright blue sky--it was almost crystalline beauty, when everything clicks and it's so beautiful your heart stops.  Even the two cheese burgers I ate this afternoon.  I'm making so much progress so fast, I can see my goal and it seems much closer than I imagined.  I'm sure there will be setbacks.

Giving Back
I'm picking up a little trash on each bike ride and hike--my price of admission to the parks I visit.  I'm also donating about 5% of my income to charity.  I was wondering which cause to help this week, when a direct mail inquiry came in from Save the Bay. It was a no brainer given how much I've been enjoying the bay every week.  Work might not count but I assigned staff and volunteers to finish up cleanup of a pot farm we found on one property and made a note to check another 4 or 5 nearby canyons annually, we're continuing to water plants we've installed on two properties, continued planning native grassland restoration on several properties, construction of an outdoor shelter, scheduled a work party to remove thistles from the new property and began thinking about collecting acorns there to get some some young trees going near the big ones--after nearly 200 years of over grazing there are only big old trees on the property, when they die there won't be any unless we lend a hand.

Donations this year
Save The Bay
Sonoma County Food Bank
Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at Tilden
To a friend
PAWS
Save Mount Diablo
Bay Nature magazine

Bay Area Ridge Trail: East Bay - Kennedy Grove to Inspiration Point, Tilden

(August 7, 2010)

4.4 miles Bay Area Ridge Trail, 6.3 miles total.
This blog is all about getting in shape, and centers around the gym, cycling the completed segments of the SF Bay Trail, and hiking the segments of the Bay Area Ridge Trail.  Martinez, where I live, is one of the places where they meet.  For variety I decided to start hiking near home, hoping ridges overlooking the bay would be cool despite the summer, and to start cycling on the penninsula.  It's working but after a good first week where I hit both trails, I hadn't gotten in another Ridge Trail hike.

Yesterday I did (August 7).  My last Ridge Trail hike was on Sobrante Ridge.  Even though I started near home, there are a few hikes I'm skipping for now because they're so familiar.  Some good new segments are nearby too, on Muir Heritage Land Trust lands.  This week, however, I decided to start tackling some of the EBMUD watershed lands, near San Pablo and Briones reservoirs.  For those you need a permit, which is available online:  http://www.ebmud.com/store/tup_default.cfm  You can get maps there too, but they're not very good.  There's a better one at:  http://www.ridgetrail.org/images/interactive_map/maps/KennedyGroveToTildenRegionalPark.pdf

San Pablo creek

The East Bay Municipal Utility District is a public water utility formed in 1923, in part to secure a Sierra water source on the Mokelumne, which is piped to various local terminal reservoirs.  EBMUD bought out local water companies with tens of thousands of acres of lands and various reservoirs, then proposed selling excess lands along the Oakland-Berkeley hills.  Members of the public suggested that the lands be retained for recreation, EBMUD refused, and the citizens formed the East Bay Regional Park District in 1934 to acquire the surplus lands.

The lands of the two districts combine along the Oakland-Berkeley hills to form a great chain of parks and early on a regional trail that would later become one of the first links in the Bay Area Ridge Trail was created:  the 31-mile East Bay Skyline National Recreation Trail.

1960s' design meets 9/11

Although both districts are heavily influenced by the liberal politics of bayside cities, water districts generally have a different flavor than park districts--they're often run by empire building engineers, they're growth inducing, they have the freedom of secure water revenues and the criticisms of rate payers, despite which they often get little public scrutiny, at least when related to resource protection and recreation. 

Luckily EBMUD was formed during the height of a Depression-era citizens' revolution demanding secure municipal services as population grew, but one in which people were also demanding multi-use recreation.

San Pablo reservoir

Recreation is a sideline for most water districts, something they like to showcase as a reason for support, but about which they're not very good providers.  Watersheds often lack the variety of trails found in parks, and they're not as well designed--their managers are often focused on control, not surprising when your mission relates to water quality.

Park Districts are often run by conservationists and are focused on public use and resources--on attracting public use rather than limiting it.  There is a topographical difference too; in rugged areas parks are often located on peaks and ridgelines.  There may be a climb but once you get to the ridgetop the hiking is often easy.  Watershed lands are often by definition focused on rivers and canyons where dams can be located.  Other than trails along reservoir edges, most of them are steep, climbing up away from the water.

EBMUD lands fit all of those characteristics.  There are fewer trails open to the public; they're less well designed, more steep and the loops are longer; and you're required to get a permit ahead of time.  (It's a little easier now; you can pay for and print the permit from the web.  It's cheap too, $10 a year for a family, $20 for 3 years, or $30 for 5).  All of those things decrease public use.  Ironically, they also probably make the watershed lands better wildlife habitat and they provide more isolation.

On my hike yesterday I left the Park District's Kennedy Grove, crowded with hundreds of people, followed the San Pablo reservoir edge and saw a few, climbed up one EBMUD trail and saw no one, crossed into Wildcat and Tilden Regional Parks at the ridge and passed dozens of people on the way to Inspiration Point, then dropped back onto another EBMUD trail for the descent back to San Pablo reservoir and once again saw no one.  The park district ridgeline often has great views but yesterday the fog obscured the views and it was frankly tedious.  The water district trails on the slopes of San Pablo Ridge were harder but transcendent, breathtakingly beautiful.

Eagle's Nest Trail

I've hiked EBMUD lands in the past but other than Lafayette Reservoir, where recreation is handled very differently, it's been years.  More than twenty years ago I helped stop proposed reservoirs in the Pinole Valley watershed and at Buckhorn Canyon, and to elect a first-time environmental majorty to the Board of Directors.  EBMUD's empire building has been greatly reduced since then.  I'd never hiked the San Pablo reservoir watershed lands, I've simply looked at the heavily wooded slopes dropping east from Tilden and Wildcat while cycling or driving past on Bear Creek or San Pablo Dam roads.

Kennedy Grove to Inspiration Point, Tilden
I started in mid-afternoon and had sketched out a 9 or 10 mile loop including a 4.4 mile stretch of the Bay Area Ridge Trail.  I wanted to get in some hills and steepness--it's about a thousand foot gain, 600' in one mile--and to build up my endurance.  I accomplished my goal but ended up hiking 6.3 miles instead.  Still, it was my longest and steepest hike since the beginning of May.  I've been gearing up cardio at the gym and I was tired and sore even before I began.

Mt. Diablo view

Really, the only part of Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area I experienced was the parking lot, $5 fee, and a quick drop to San Pablo creek before heading south into EBMUD lands and along the edge of San Pablo reservoir.  218-acre Kennedy Grove was a pet project of one of the early Park District proponents, a union representative, and was named for the late president.  A railroad ran through the area; if EBMUD hadn't been created development might have stretched the entire length of San Pablo Dam road from Richmond to Orinda.

You climb up past San Pablo Dam and along the reservoir for 0.8 miles on wooded, shaded Old San Pablo Trail, with lots of views across the reservoir to Sobrante Ridge, a mosaic of chaparral, grassland and oak-bay woodland, and Scow Canyon, one of the reservoir's major coves.  Up through madrone and across San Pablo Dam Road which replaced the windier old road.  Then you climb the Eagle's Nest Trail and 600' gain in a mile through fog drip eucalyptus groves and grassland meadows to San Pablo Ridge and Wildcat Canyon Regional Park.  As you climb you get views north and south, and east to Mt. Diablo.  It was on this climb that I got an inkling of how out of shape I am.  Although it was clear and sunny, it was also cool and crisp as I had hoped.

Nimitz Way, Wildcat/Tilden Reg. Parks

When I lived in Berkeley, and in the years since, I've hiked, biked and run Nimitz Way at the ridgeline a thousand times.  There was a time when it might have been one of my favorite trails and, when the views over the bay are clear, it is quite beautiful.  At one time I knew it like the back of my hand.  Starting at Inspiration Point on Wildcat Canyon road, the first couple of miles are paved, then it continues as a fire road.

Yesterday I crossed out of the EBMUD lands near its midpoint and headed south toward Inspiration Point.  The paved trail rise and falls, passes through a eucalyptus grove and overlooks the interior of Wildcat and Tilden toward the bay.  It's in bad need of a fire, overgrown and crowded with coyotebush.  The fog was filling the bay, the views were clear to the next ridge then obscured, my feet were getting hot spots from the pavement, and there were just too many people.  Like the Bay Trail, it's a better run or bike ride.

view toward the fogged in bay

The EBMUD trails just on the east side of the ridge are parallel, unpaved and softer on the feet, and have wilder views to the east.  About a half mile before Inspiration Point there's a gate and you can cross back into the EBMUD lands, and take the Inspiration Trail south to Inspiration Point, or descend east back to the reservoir.  Of course the EBMUD map doesn't make that clear.  I continued all the way to crowded Inspiration Point, my feet increasingly sore, then crossed back into EBMUD, and doubled back on the suddenly solitary Inspiration Trail.

After 0.6 miles I reached the gate I'd seen but not understood while on paved Nimitz Way, and began dropping back to San Pablo Dam road and the reservoir.  This 1.3 mile drop was the best part of the hike, despite even more steepness than Eagle's Nest Trail.  In the reverse direction it would be a killer climb.

fog cresting San Pablo ridge

The fog had filled the bayside and was topping the ridge, swirling into the warmer air and dissipating.  Later in the day it would repeat the battle over Briones and the still wamer Central Contra Costa air.  The views were incredible and the the winds had strengthened to almost gale force.  I almost felt like if I jumped straight up I'd be carried far down the hill.  The trail winds and drops, but by now, despite my sore feet and trepidation about how many miles remain between me and the loop's end, I'm experiencing sheer joy.

When I reach bottom, and cross San Pablo Dam Road, my hike is over.  It's four miles of trail back to Kennedy Grove but I stick out my thumb instead.  I guess I didn't look too threatening.  Five minutes later I have a ride back to the start.

Inspiration Trail

San Francisco Bay Trail: Ryder Park north to Broadway, Burlingame

(8-1-2010)
cycling 4.1 miles San Francisco Bay Trail, 5.0 additional miles.

I didn't expect to be back at San Mateo's Ryder Park so soon, its overlapping concentric rings of concrete defining different parts of the park, and its arched bridge over the small slough to the south.  I'd been there on my first ride, on July 10, headed south to Foster City and Oracle, and I struggled back north against the evening wind on the return.  This was another late evening ride, a short one though longer than the previous Sunday's along the northern San Francisco shoreline, and I was headed north so the wind would help me on the return.

just south of Ryder Park

But what a difference a month makes.  The beginning of my 5th week getting in shape and I'd cycled 36 miles and done another 27 miles of hiking and other cardio, and lifted at the gym 9 times.  I'd changed my diet significantly.  Nothing compared to many athletes or even my past - there have been times in my life when I ran 20 miles a day for weeks, or cycled 200 miles in a single day.  I weighed much less then.  My current efforts don't compare but they're worlds better than in recent years.  Bottom line, my weight has dropped from 245 to 231 in a single month.  Compared to my ten year, 50 pound weight gain--five pounds a year--I'd turned the clock back to 2007 and as I write this six days later, I'm in 2006.   Psychologically I feel lighter but physically I have to be doing much better too--what's the effect on your health of losing that much fat even while adding muscle?  At the very least I'm putting less stress on my joints.

Ryder Park, San Mateo north to Broadway, Burlingame
Ryder Park is part of San Mateo's Shoreline Park.  It's amazing how interesting the Bay Trail is and how much its character changes miles by mile and city to city.  My hiking is interesting too but despite habitat and topographical changes, its variety isn't nearly as complex as the urban landscape I cycle through along the Bay.  Post-industrial, redeveloped, manicured or neglected, the trail today passes residential areas, golf courses and PG&E sub-stations, restaurants and hotels. 

It reminds me of kayaking on the Bay.  We all have our daily views of the cities we pass through but for me they're dominated by freeway perspectives.  When you kayak the shoreline you get a completely different kind of view.  Cycling the Bay Trail is similar; it knits together areas that would require many detours to get to by car.  I'm really enjoying getting to know more parts of the Bay Area, and from multiple perspectives.

birds south of Coyote Point

San Mateo deserves a lot of credit.  They've invested in their shoreline parks and made them attractive.  There's a lot of great design evident, lots of restoration going on, and the north end is anchored by Coyote Point, a former island and susbtantial park.  Foster City was pleasant but much less interesting, a long strip of ice plant stuck in the 1970s.  Burlingame is a work in progress, change evident, some shoreline areas showcased near hotels, other prime Bay Trail segments along rusty, weedy lots waiting for redevelopment or missing, pieced together along streets and sidewalks.  The Trail is interrupted again at Broadway.

Coyote Point Museum

But back to the beginning.  From Ryder Park you head northwest on a long levee, houses at left across a strip of water, the shoreline marked by high tension power towers, the view ahead dominated by the rise of eucalyptus covered Coyote Point.  I could spend all day exploring Coyote Point, a 670-acre county park including a golf course, marina, and a nationally recognized natural history museum of the same name.  Coyote Point was an island seperated from the mainland by Samphire Marsh, which was filled in and is now the golf course.

A recently constructed section of the Trail crosses through the park a little inland; the shoreline is too rugged for the trail.  I checked out the marina area, and climbed the hill to the museum, too late to visit.  You can see where they've started thinning the eucalyptus and planting oaks and other native species.

Coyote Point from the north

At both ends of the point there are strips of shoreline, mudflats, beaches and sand bars, and good birding.

I rejoined the trail on the north side, where there's a big beach and wind surfing area.  Then the trail gets sketchy as you pass into Burlingame.  The relatively natural shoreline is gone; I use Google Earth to help reconstruct these rides and from above you can see just how constructed the Burlingame shoreline is, a big rectangular island waiting for something, then another long rectangle that's been developed for hotels and other commercial uses, much of it related to SFO, the airport to the north.

Burlingame shoreline view of San Bruno Mountain

The shoreline temperatures are often crisp and breezy, and the views beautiful but you're sandwiched between the descending flight path of the airport with highway 101 not far to the west.  There's a too strong smell of fuel and exhaust.  One of the little known things about jets is that they sometimes dump fuel into the air to lighten their landing load, especially for unscheduled landings.  Whether that or just the sheer number of jets landing--as you watch they descend one after another, maybe a minute apart--the airport dominates this section of shoreline much more than further south where the jets are higher. 

Still, the ride is fascinating.  At Broadway the Bay Trail is interrupted; there are short segments further north and then the airport really interrupts things, a trail design problem still to be solved. 

I turn around and head back.  The sun is setting, but without the Coyote Point detours, I'm back at Ryder Park in half the time.

Week 4: Fitness this Week & Giving Back

Aug. 3, 2010: End of Week 4
The changes have been dramatic. Despite what was a bit of a lackluster exercise week I think I'm getting the diet really keyed in. It's actually hard to believe how much weight I've lost in just over four weeks. Maybe I'm dehydrated, maybe I was carrying around a lot of extra weight in my gut, maybe I'm still losing muscle mass from atrophy after my surgery. I've checked my scales repeatedly but each time I weigh myself the jump downward is startling. I was at 245 on July 5 and am balancing at 231 this morning on August 3. Fourteen pounds! I'm actually feeling lighter, both physically and psychologically.

When I started this effort, I went out and bought 4 of 5 pairs of shorts--all my others were too small or thrashed. It was one of the things that shocked me into motion; they varied in fit but some were 38 inch waist, and some 40 inch. I couldn't believe I was wearing 38s, let alone 40s. I remember my first 36 inch ones from a Hawaii trip Christmas 2007. Easy to explain away as being different clothes fitting differently but I was kidding myself. Well, just four weeks later the 38 inchers, buttoned, fall off if I don't cinch the belt.

The physical differences aren't obvious, though. I've lost weight plenty of times in the past, even from winter to summer. Usually it shows in my face first, then the remaining fat redistributes and I get a second bump of being thinner. Other periods of weight loss, though, I was losing maybe a pound a week. If this monolog seems self-absorbed, credit it to my disbelief. I keep waiting for the drop to slow down.

The major change this week wasn't exercise, although I've been doing enough to get my metabolism revved up more. I think it's the switch away from processed foods and especially from refined grains. I had no idea how much white rice, crackers and bread I was eating. Last week I switched over to brown rice and I've almost eliminated white rice. I'm hitting whole oats more in the mornings, and have basically eliminated Starbucks and snack foods.

This week I set up a bunch of meals around quinoa and vegetables. I was looking for variety so that I don't get tired of the brown rice, and saw quinoa on the grocery store shelf. I looked it up online and was pretty surprised - it's a "pseudo-grain," seeds from a South American spinach like plant. 'Its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, like meat or eggs, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest but it also has a coating of bitter saponins which are often washed off during processing, otherwise it can be a laxative.' Pretty tasty too. You treat it the same way you do rice, and I used my rice cooker to make it.

From daily bad food choices, I really only had two or three this past week. My stomach seems to be shrinking and I'm not eating as much. I think my body is finding a balance between feeling more full on higher fiber foods, and feeling a little hungry, after which I eat some fruit. My blood sugar has to be swinging less too.

Once again, this week began with a short Bay Trail ride Sunday evening. I'd danced a fair bit the night before. I was tired Monday and only hit the gym once this week, given evening work meetings--I bought a 5-acre property online at auction for my organization on Monday, valued by the tax assessor at $582,000 and I won the auction with a bid of $80,000 plus a $4,000 auction fee.  Also because we headed up to the Russian River Thursday evening. I got in a good hike Saturday on the Sonoma coast.

It was my 4th week at 10 lb single arm weights and 20-30 lb double. Last night I started with 15 lbs and 25-30 for the next 4 weeks, more stretching and supersetted with ab crunches, and increased the machine cardio from 30-35 minutes to 40, five or ten minute segments between exercise supersets so that I don't get bored.

My only regret is that, although I'm getting on the bike and the San Francisco Bay Trail at least once a week, I haven't made progress hiking segments of the Bay Area Ridge Trail. Still, I got in a good hike on the California Coastal Trail. My first month's average for gym visits has been only a little over twice a week, 9 miles cycling per week and 7 miles hiking and other cardio. I'm home the next two weeknds with no major plans, so I'll try to do better.

My Goals
• Write about the outdoors.
• Get in shape; current goal, drop from 245 to 200 lbs.
• Experience joy more frequently.
• Popularize the San Francisco Bay Trail & the Bay Area Ridge Trail.
• Leave things a little better than I found them.
• Donate 5% of my income to worthy causes.

In my head I know that I'll gain weight as my weight lifting continues, but I started with the idea of dropping from 245 to 200 lbs. Bottom line, in a little over four weeks, I'm down 14 lbs from my starting weight--a third of my initial goal--and my diet has improved significantly.

Aug 3, 2010
231 lbs (current weight on August 3, 2010); 245 lbs (weight July 5, 2010)
Bay Trail cycling miles: 14.9
All cycling miles: 35.9
Ridge Trail hiking miles: 2.2
All hiking & other cardio miles: 25
Gym visits: 9

Finding Joy
The week started with joy, cycling along the Bay Trail and the north San Francisco waterfront, hiking along the Sonoma coast, hanging with friends over the weekend, making donations to a couple of charitable causes. It was low key but nice.

Giving Back
I'm a lucky man with no dependents, little debt, and a pretty good salary. I save a fair bit for retirement. My goal is to leave things better than I found them on a day to day basis so, besides my work for a conservation organization, I'm picking up a little trash on each bike ride and hike.

I'm also donating about 5% of my income to worthy causes. This week I joined the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at Tilden (not entirely altruistic; I want their quarterly newsletter Manzanita) and I made a donation to the Sonoma County Food Bank. I've made plenty of donations over the years, but making them on a weekly basis feels better than getting a gift. I've started thinking about it more, but then natural choices seem to arise during the week.

Donations this year
Bay Nature magazine
Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at Tilden
PAWS
Save Mount Diablo
Sonoma County Food Bank
To a friend

California Coastal Trail: Sonoma Coast - Shell Beach to Goat Rock

7-31-2010 - About 6 miles round trip

A couple of miles south of the Russian River on Highway 1, skip the Goat Rock Road and park at Shell Beach.

This blog is meant to concentrate on fitness, cycling along the San Francisco Bay Trail, and hiking the Bay Area Ridge Trail, but man was not made to live on bread and water alone. This past weekend I was up in Guerneville, and went on a great hike with friends from Shell Beach to Goat Rock, the southern edge of the mouth of the Russian River. It's all part of Sonoma Coast State Park.

It's also part of the California Coastal Trail, a hiking route along the 1200 mile California coast. The trail is about half complete. (my photos continue to be mediocre; a year and a half ago I took pictures in a sand storm at Wind Sands, New Mexico and I'm still wiping gypsum crystals from the lens every time I turn on the camera. I think a replacement will happen soon.)

The first part of the hike follows the Kortum Trail, a trail and board walks through marshy areas clumped with big bunchgrasses, Festuca californica I think, California fescue. They dominated grassland before European non-native grasses like wild oats were introduced. Many are perennial and they have huge root networks that sometimes extend thirty feet down. As a result they stay green longer into the dry season, hold more water in the soil and extend organic matter deep into the topsoil. That makes them attractive to grazing animals. Most of the non-natives are annuals, prefer disturbed soil, and have short life spans in which they use a lot of water and quickly produce large numbers of seed.

It's only recently that it's been found that some of these clumps of grass are hundreds of years old--literally "old growth" grasses. I've been working on native plant restoration on some of my properties and Festuca californica is also distinctive because its seed are very expensive, about $300 a pound.

The trail is named for Bill Kortum, a Sonoma county conservationist and former county supervisor. "A native Petaluman and a veterinarian by profession, Bill Kortum is recognized as the dean of Sonoma County environmentalists and is known statewide for his conservation efforts. Kortum began his environmental activism by helping to defeat a proposed nuclear power plant in Bodega Head in the early 1960s. He was a key figure in developing the county’s first General Plan, helping to avoid urban sprawl, and crafting the 1972 Coastal Initiative that established the California Coastal Commission and prevented commercialization of the coastline, a model that has been adopted nationally."

me

The trail edges gullies dropping off the bluffs, crowded with wildflowers, buckwheat, Indian paintbrush, etc. but stays level for much of its length.

At about the mile point you travel west of a large rock outcrop, a visual relief from the grassland, covered in a mosaic of shrubs and wildflowers like a sloped tidepool. The rock is more sensitive than most of the terrain but inescapably attractive. A detour leads to the base, and a well worn path leads to the top.

Further on you pass a smaller outcrop then parallel the park road, climbing to the hike's high point for the views of the rocks rising out of the Pacific, and Goat Rock to the north. 

It's a short hike down through fragrant tarweeds back to the park road, another parking lot, and down to the beach.

the rock

nice tarweeds

the rock

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the beach near Goat Rock

the return

more bunchgrasses

(Struggling, as you can see, with the picture formatting)

San Francisco Bay Trail: Fort Mason to Fort Point, SF

7-25-2010
5.8 miles, 2.9 SF Bay Trail


Fort Mason to Fort Point in San Francisco is one of the Bay Trail segments I walk or ride the most--I love the Crissy Field lagoon and restoration area.  This particular Sunday evening I was feeling both chagrined and encouraged because I'd danced until early in the morning then slept much of the day away.  I had to drive to the city in late afternoon and rushed to fit a bike ride in, despite the gathering dusk.  I'd started my Bay Trail rides down near Foster City but compromised this time on a closer segment.

The choice wasn't an accident.  I'd been to Crissy Field the day before as well, at a memorial for Rex Sforza, a friend who died in his early 50s, far too young.  He was a graphic artist at Apple and coach of a softball team with whose members I've been becoming friends.  Rex was more a friend of friends than someone I was close to but I'd attended to be supportive, then gone dancing for balance.

Fort Mason

While I was at the memorial, a big group of mostly guys, lots of dogs (Rex couldn't pass a dog without stopping to pet it), I stopped in at the "Warming Hut" at the west end of Crissy Field.  Lots of groups of picnicers, lots of the barbecues despite the chilly foggy weather, and I was moved by the smell of hotdogs and hamburgers past my routine vegetariansim to get a hot dog.  Very San Francisco, it was grass fed beef.  I've heard that you have to get used to less fatty beef; this one was underwhelming.

The Warming Hut is a restaurant/gift shop and I snagged something I've been trying to find for several weeks.  It's a folding packet of six San Francisco Bay Trail Maps produced in 2007 by The Bay Trail Project and ABAG (the Association of Bay Area Governments).  It's also the most up-to-date version of the Bay Trail other than the Bay Trail Project website.

Alcatraz Island

Fort Mason to Fort Point
Across from the Marina Safeway I parked below Fort Mason, the headquarters of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and followed the shoreline west along the Marina Green.  Fort Mason includes old World War II warehouses turned into non-profit spaces along with Greens, a famous vegetarian restaurant.

It's a completely flat route and the evening weather was crisp.  The views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin, Angel Island and Alcatraz are world class.  You wind past the Marina then curve right toward the water at the edge of the Presidio, marked by a wall of Monterey cypress, the most recent addition to the National Recreation Area.  Besides the salt air I could also smell pearly everlast near the cypress.  It mystified me for years because it grows in urban areas as well as open space, but it's unmistakeable, a scent of maple syrup and nutmeg.

Dune restoration at Crissy Field

Already I was feeling joy.  Great views.  Crisp air.  Setting sun.  Every other person I passed was smiling.  The others were chatting with friends or lost in thought.  Rex's death is tragic; you can't help be reminded that life is short.  My best friend, photographer Bob Walker, died young too, in 1992 at age 40.  It's right to feel sad but it's just as right to attempt joy every day, because life is short.  Anyone who's not living each day to the hilt or who's deferring happiness to some later date is taking a big chance of missing it entirely.  I've known that for years but it's easy to let day to day busy-ness distract you from it.

Face it, we're lucky to be alive, and those of us who live in first world countries lucky in plenty of other ways too--I didn't earn being a white American male with a significant income, though it has allowed me tremendous freedom.  That's part of the reason that I'm using this blog to remind me to give back, in addition to my fitness goals.

Crissy Field Lagoon

The path crosses a flat bridge over the mouth of the Crissy Field lagoon.  San Francisco was once mostly sand dunes and associated dune vegetation.  Before California's huge water diversion system was built and its dams started retaining sediments, the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system dropped huge loads of sand out the Golden Gate.  Longshore currents carried the sand south, and wind and waves deposited it at Ocean Beach and points south.  The winds carried the sand back to the east, all the way across the city and spilling over Nob Hill into what's now the financial district.  99% of the city's dune habitat has been paved over and built upon, but like the bay itself, in the last few decades we've started reclaiming and expanding the habitat.  Even before the lagoon was created, dune restoration had begun at the Presidio.

The "Warming Hut"and the Golden Gate Bridge

Much of the Marina District was wetlands until filled in for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition "a world's fair held in San Francisco, California between February 20 and December 4 in 1915. Its ostensible purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. The fair was constructed on a 635 acre site in San Francisco, along the northern shore now known as the Marina."  The only remaining part of the Exposition is the Palace of Fine Arts.

Crissy Field served as a dump for debris from the 1906 earthquake then had many more lives, as an early airfield, a parade ground, then a parking lot popular among wind surfers.  Between 1997 and 2000, in a project coordinated by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, a 100-acre area was restored and a 22 acre tidal lagoon created.  Volunteers installed more than 100,000 dune plants.  The Conservancy operates five nurseries in the parks, among many other projects.

Fort Point and the Golden Gate Bridge

According to its website:  "Each year:  •We collect over 1 million seeds.  •We propagate over 400 of the 622 species native to the park.  •We grow 90,000 to 170,000 plants for up to 50 different habitat restoration projects throughout the 75,000 acres of the park. •We have now begun propagation of replacement trees for the Presidio's historic forest and are propagating the unique historic roses and plants of Alcatraz."

It's a short distance beyond Crissy Field to reach Fort Point, a Civil War era fort built to protect Caliornia's gold and San Francisco bay.  Golden Gate Bridge was constructed directly above the fort.  A few more pictures and I turned around and retraced my route.  It was only about 40 minutes round trip but the perfect beginning of a new week.

The Palace of Fine Arts, at dusk