25.5 + Bikes

A double post to make up for missing January.

February 28th is my adopted half-birthday, given that we are in a non-leap year. I am a half-leapling. Fun Fact: 10 years ago (2/29/16 was a leap day), I drafted an email to the student in the neighboring table at the county science fair. I was quite in awe of his project (some sort of algorithm for landing quad-copter drones)! In retrospect, I appreciate how I didn't feel bad at all with how my homemade poster (a bicycle-powered generator consisting of a bike wheel that spun a skateboard wheel coupled to a DC motor shaft that charged a 9V battery/LED) looked compared to his academic-journal-caliber display. He won first place, and I won honorable mention, and I was so excited that I wanted to email him to learn more about his project. For some reason (likely late-onset embarrassment), I never sent the email, but it remains the only draft in my inbox after a decade.

Speaking of bikes, I wanted to document a few of my biking adventures.

I learned to ride a bike on the street outside my house, during which my dad decided that I only needed one training wheel (as opposed to two). Once the training wheels were off, I was a bit of a speed demon, skidding and drifting with abandon. I have two scars on my hand and knee to this day from road burn.

Growing up, I stuck to biking on the Crystal Springs trail. I was quite proud of my bike (originally my brother's with foot brakes + no gears), and how I could speed up the hill to the reservoir while my dad labored behind me.

In my rebellious teenage years (before learning to drive), I had a brief stint as a juvenile menace when I gathered 2 other friends to bike on the streets to the neighboring city for Tpumps. Needless to say, we were uninitiated to the rules of the road and were honked at a few times. To be fair, I doubt we were as reckless as the present e-bike posses, but my interest in them has grown ever since attending a community e-bike panel hosted by our state assemblywoman introducing some new regulation regarding e-bike classification, output wattage limitation, and sale restrictions.

Anyway, in 2014, I was given a sleek hybrid Trek bike, which I used to commute to my summer job at the martial arts school. The thin frame and graphite exterior with pink accents was visually appealing and modern compared to the clunky profile of youth bikes, and I slapped a milk crate on the back and christened it Mercutio (we were studying Shakespeare in school at the time). 

I did not bike often throughout college, due to Berkeley's hilly terrain and penchant for bike theft. 

After joining the workforce and commuting 66 miles per day, I began to dread the mundane and restrictive nature of car travel. I turned to biking as my preferred method of exploring the Bay Area, as it was fast enough to cover reasonable mileage, but slow enough that Google Maps routed me into the nooks and crannies of neighborhoods I've driven past on the freeway but never entered.

Tangent: In 2025, I participated in the Bay Area Bike to Work Day. I truly thought that departing at 6AM would give me healthy margin to make my 10AM meeting, but dallying too long at the volunteer aid booths (they liked my custom bar tape job that matched the frame color) resulted in me frantically detouring on Caltrain from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale, then furiously biking to the office and entering the doors a sweaty mess just as my manager walked in.

Aid Booth, 8AM?

Bay Area Bike Rides (https://bayareabikerides.net/) was a pivotal resource for me, and I began to bike to the BART station, lug my bike up the stairs (this was before bikes were allowed on the escalators), and ride from Daly City through SF and even into Marin. I took a few friends on this route, and we savored the freedom of flying past traffic, not worrying about parking, and meandering from place to place without looking at transit schedules.

Angel Island with Julia + her coworkers

Tiberon

Borrowing Julia's MTB and Kiwi

Twin Peaks

On a whim in the fall of 2023, I wanted to see if I could complete a century ride. This was before I started training with the triathlon club, so I'd probably never biked longer than 20 miles at a time. I looked up a few routes, watched a single Youtube video on someone else's century ride experience (my takeaway was to pack a bunch of peanut butter sandwiches), and set off at 7:02AM. I had no expectations on the magnitude of 100 miles, so I was relatively undaunted and chipper for most of the day. My breakdown finally arrived at nightfall, when it started to rain and I was biking like a lunatic in circles around the local high school, trying to achieve the 10 final miles out of spite (I was too afraid to navigate farther north in the dark on unfamiliar roads, hence the psychotic circles). The biggest impression I had from cycling the Bay Area was how visceral the tax payer boundaries were from city to city. I felt it immediately from the road conditions (protected bike lanes vs barely there shoulders), the (lack of) sidewalks, the greenery, the politeness of drivers, the housing density, the RVs.

101.13 miles, 9:23:55 hr:min:sec, 1077 ft

After that century-ride experience, long distance biking became an interest of mine, and I joined a triathlon club to bike with a larger group and learn road biking skills. After a few months on my hybrid Trek, my clubmates (skewing middle-aged to retirees) cajoled me into upgrading to a road bike. I scored a very lucky deal on Craiglist for a $500 carbon fiber Felt (including egg beater pedals + clipless shoes) from a woman in Santa Rosa. She was moving and looking to downsize. The bike was practically new despite being ~8-10 years old, and she told me that her boyfriend had wanted her to get into road cycling, but she never enjoyed it much and he didn't help her learn very well. (As an aside, I've noticed a pattern of boyfriends dropping (presumably) their partners on bike rides, and I side-eye them heavily. That is not an encouraging way to introduce someone to your hobby!) Anyways, I christened the Felt, Basil.

I've been immensely enjoying riding Basil with the triathlon club, and I like to think my bike handling skills and endurance have improved. I still get dropped by people almost 3x my age, but I am optimistic that I can improve and make the B-ride. I'm signed up for my second century ride in the coming April.

Though road biking is my main genre of bike, I've dabbled in mountain and track cycling. My friend was originally a mountain biker and convinced me to give it a shot. I'm not too keen on falling off a cliff, but I got a cheap, used Trek mountain bike (Paprika) to share with my dad and we've survived the trails in the mountains off Highway 92 without too many bruises. A part of our routine after mountain biking is to stop by the famous Alice's Restaurant for lunch and car spotting. We've also been lucky enough to mountain bike in New Zealand (during which we learned that a New Zealand "easy" route is actually equivalent to an "American" intermediate/advanced). I'd like to explore the Santa Cruz mountains, as the route look a little gentler for beginners.

Skeggs Point

My old 2022 Corolla SE (6MT) next to the Trueno AE86 (aka InitalD car) at Alice's

For track cycling, I recently joined an introductory class at the Hellyer Velodrome, and despite initial hesitation at riding a fixie (no brakes or gears or coasting) on a banked surface (how do I not slide off the concrete), I eventually grew comfortable and understood the adrenaline rush of sprinting into a curve and feeling the banked road push back on your tires. Though I don't think I'll enter any races (I'm too crash-averse), I'd be excited to track cycle again and spectate the races.

Rental track bike

Ultimately, I've contracted the N+1 bike problem, but I've decided that Basil and Paprika are enough due to space and consumption limitations. I can always rent a track bike if needed, but if a vintage road bike (downtube shifters!) shows up at a garage sale, it may be hard to resist :)