5 people, 4 bikes, 1 film camera, multiple photo cameras and 1 pick up truck.
For the fixed gear movie shoot we went up to Twin Peaks. It was a spectacular view. More pictures.
Then we did drive over to Oakland for continued filming.
My friends Andrew and Chris stopped by for some „interesting“ chicken and waffles. Then we went out for some more fixed gear filming but we did not get to have any nice sunset due to the clouds.
Finally in San Francisco! I arrived last night and had gone for some drinks with Clancy and Jason and other cyclists. But what was this today? Heavy rain in the morning??? But luckily it did actually stop raining around lunch time. Clancy had put together a small fixed gear bike for me to ride on and do tricks on while I was here.With the mountain bike fork it was possible to do bar spins. The handlebar stem was really cool despite it being really heavy.
We then went to a basketball court to do some tricks. Clancy is getting really good at some, e.g. the Keo-spin.
We then changed place and went to a car park to meet Justin. There was a nice view from there.
Then we changed to a differnt basketball court. It happened a few times that there were some drops of rain, but nothing serious.
And then I did a shoulder stand in the saddle for the first time on a bike other than my trick bike. And Justin actually filmed it. That was the first time ever that I did that. It would be cool if he keeps that in his movie.
More pictures are in the webalbum.
What a nice start of a day. Today I had a sweet loaner road bike from Alison.
I met my friend Matin at 6:45am for an early morning ride with his friends. We went from Stanford westwards and up a little mountain. Then 2 had to head back but I continued to ride with Chris and Jamey up to Mount King. It was a nice flat climb through forests.
After reaching the top we road along the Skyline Boulevard for a bit before we did a beautiful decent. It was amazing to blast around the corners at almost 40 miles per hour (I did see some speed limit signs with 25mph, 20mph and 15mph but I assume that is for the cars and trucks, not for the horse driven carts nor the cyclists).
It was just such a beautiful morning again. And it was a nice view, even though most of the time the view was hidden behind the trees. And I did not want to take pictures at 30mph.
It was a short but really nice morning ride.
To get to the cycling we had to drive over the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge.
Driving back we could see downtown San Francisco from the other side of the bay.
We went to the Golden Gate Park museums. We first went to the California Academy of Sciences.
It is great that on weekends they close the traffic off so all the roads in the park can be used by cyclists, inline scaters, scate boarders and pedestrians.
From the observatory deck of the Art Museum we could see Mount Hem and the Point Reyes penninsula where we had been cycling in the morning.
I especially liked the installations of a local artist called Ruth Asawa. It was great with the shadows.
In the evening there was a dinner pary with barbeque at Faye’s house. Many important cycling people came and we had a great time.
My friend Gary had suggested to go cycling together. That was a great idea. What I did not really expect was that his 50 mile race yesterday was not a cycling race but actually a running race. That is a double marathon. But not more. That is why he suggested to do some cycling the next day. He is a real endurance person.
His friend Tim from the Marin cycling club had loaned me a nice Trek road bike with shoes and helmet and all.
The 3 of us started in Fairfax and cycled on nice backstreet countryside roads along the reservoir to Point Reyes.
We went to a small coffee shop in Point Reyes that was swamped full of road cyclists. It seemed like there were more cyclists there than the total amount of road cyclists in all of Beijing. Amazing.
Also on the road we met multiple cyclists. It was a very different feeling than cycling around Beijing where you hardly ever meet any other road cyclist.
It was a great ride with some small climbs and descents in a beautiful landscape. We only did about 35 miles because of me (as they were not sure if I can do more), not because of Gary. I uploaded a few snapshot pictures while riding to a picasa webalbum.
I held three performances on my trick bike today in Palo Alto for the NBG.
There was a great article in the Palo Alto Weekly yesterday by Rebecca Wallace that Faye scanned:
Today I was meeting some friends for a morning tea and for lunch. For that I was cycling around Palo Alto. The best way to go across town on a bike is to cycle down the „Bicycle Boulevard“ on Bryant Street.
It is named after a famous local bicycle activist Ellen Fletcher. This bike street has mostly right of way and has bridges over the canals.
I will be performing tomorrow for Martin Krieg and his non profit organization „National Bicycle Greenway“. This event is to fund raise for Martin Krieg who will set of to cross the USA from West Coast to East Coast on his reverse High Wheel (Penny Farthing) called Eagle.
He is doing this for the „National Bicycle Greenway“. That is a non profit organization trying to build a coast to coast cycleable green bike path through all the different states and all counties. Cycling is good for environment and good for each person. I hope more people will understand this and cycle more rather than using cars.
I will be doing trick bike performances in Palo Alto at both 4pm and 7pm tomorrow. So we went the venue for me to test the floor with my trick bike.
After that we went to a nice bicycle shop: Cardinal Bike Shop. The guys there are really nice and the manager Manny has a beautiful fixed gear bike with an old Schwinn frame that is artistically repainted.
In the shop they had a huge used chain ring.
Martin Krieg who has already cycled across the USA twice will soon set off to do it on an old reversed Penny Farthing called Eagle HiWheel. He has so many collected bikes and parts.
He has been training a lot to master the Eagle.
Before I go to the USA I had lunch with my good friends Fede and Echo. Echo gave me some things that I should bring to her sister in the USA.
