Tom Hood

Every weekday before dawn, teams of cyclists gather all over San Francisco, shivering at street corners and in parking lots. They synchronize their watches to leave precisely on time, often as early as 4:30 a.m. When the appointed minute hits, they charge through city streets , a pack of Lycra-clad, gear-shifting machines, avoiding the despair faced by drivers on U.S. Highway 101, the soul-killing sclerotic artery that connects San Francisco with Silicon Valley. Who are these cyborgs who brave the long, harrowing 40-mile ride every morning? They’re a club, a band of techy bike commuters called SF2G, shorthand for San Francisco to Google.

It began in 2005 as a way to avoid the 30- to 50-mile bumper-to-bumper car ride between San Francisco and Google HQ, but the participants now head variously to Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, and Nvidia. Most could drive, take the commuter rail, or hop on one of the private, WiFi-enabled commuter buses that ply the highway between town and work. But they choose to ride.

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SF2G is the brainchild of former senior program manager Scott Crosby, 48, and designer Brett Lider, 41, who met as young Googlers via rbike, the company’s internal mailing list for road bike aficionados. Part of their motivation for creating the ride was simple. “See, the food at Google is incredibly good,” says Crosby. The hellish commute up and down 101 meant that they weren’t spending much time on their bikes, and both found themselves bearing the dreaded Google-15. “Within six months, we were like, ‘Shit! We’re getting kind of fat.’ ”

But optimism was in the air. With their powers combined, they figured, they could solve their commute and fitness problems: They would bike to work.

Their first attempt was less than a success. Six people—five guys and one woman—met on a cold morning in the Mission District. The ride was direct, about the same mileage cars cover, but it was also traffic-y, slow, unsafe, and ugly.

First Friday Friendly Frolic meets at Kahnfections Tom Hood

“It kind of sucked,” says Lider.

Cue months of research. Lider went to work on what, in Silicon Valley, is known as “a hairy multivariable optimization problem.” The variables are thus: X = speed; Y = safety; Z = scenic appeal. It took obsessive mapping and weekend rides, but finally Lider solved for X, Y, and almost Z. He called his speedy, safe, 40-mile creation “Bayway,” and as expected, the route hugs the San Francisco Bay.

On Friday, April 19, 2006, after nine months of beta testing, Bayway went live. With the route set, they also wanted new cyclists to join. Their belief was that the group should be welcome to riders of all levels in order for the movement to grow. They eventually initiated First Friday Friendly Frolic (FFFF), an event on the first Friday of every month for newbies. The only rule is that no one gets dropped.

“It’s for the ‘bike-curious,’” explains Crosby. “A place where people could feel it out and see if we were too weird for them.”

Peter Colijn, 34, jumped in his first FFFF in 2009. He’d never completed anything near 40 miles and was overweight, and had plenty of nerves on his first ride out.

“I didn’t sleep the night before,” says the Waymo software engineer. “I didn’t know what to expect. About halfway through, I was uncomfortable and starving. The route is never obvious, so I was happy to have people waiting for me.”

Along the way, experienced riders told Colijn that they did the ride two or three times a week. “I was wrecked all day afterward, so them doing it multiple times per week seemed wild at the time,” he says. “But I wanted to do it again.” He wanted to be part of the group’s elite, wanted to join in on the time trials and record-breaking attempts. Aside from that, the cheerfulness and camaraderie drew him in. Riders shared baked goods along the way, and that was a plus, too.

Nowadays, Colijn likes to pedal double-centuries on the weekend, and even 400-mile, no-sleep “days.” He’s something of a crazed bike commuter who has forgone air travel in lieu of his bike. “Work often takes me to Phoenix,” he says. “It’s an 800-mile commute, and it takes me about 49 hours.”

Rolling out of San Fran. Tom Hood

More than 10 years in, SF2G is less a quirky, diehard movement, and just a normal way to get to work—part of the fabric of Bay Area life. A multitude of new routes have been created, some as long as 60 miles with up to 4,000 feet of climbing. Despite the extremity of even the easiest commute, a typical ride might bring 30-odd people. Or it might be closer to 600, complete with news helicopter escorts, on Bay Area Bike to Work day. The group has seen steady growth, increasing by an average of 330 members per year. Based on Lider’s analytics, there are 3,743 people who’ve made the journey. The Google message board is alive with ride calls written in SF2G’s shorthand:

SEX Style 4 0630 PCR

Bayway Style 3-3.5 RRR 0640

SEX Style 1-ish 0600 PPR

SEX stands for the “Skyline Express” route. Style 4 is no-drop, Style 1 is no-mercy pace. The other letters are abbreviations of meeting spots—mostly coffee shops. The numbers designate departure time. As a language goes, it’s pure data—the grammar of code—designed to be downloaded with caffeine and to get a few laughs: Sex in the morning, anyone?

On this particular morning, 30 riders meet at Ritual Roasters, coffees in hand. The sun is rising, the temperature mild. Two new faces stand in the group, shifting their weight from one foot to the other. At 6:30 exactly, the riders take off in a pack. They rumble through a back alley, to a parking lot, and eventually end up on a street. A different group starting at another coffee shop shows up and the ride swells to a pack of 40. The new riders have expert guides by their sides, and the pack waits for them when they fall behind. It’s complicated to make it through, with more than 90 separate turns, leading past four city dumps, five golf courses, seven city parks, and 12 water crossings. Finally, they reach a bike path along the bay. The leisurely pace continues, the group quiet and low-key. The end of the ride is near, and the workday is about to begin. But first, breakfast.

About 10-miles into the Bayway coummute on Sierra Point Parkway in Brisbane, CA. Tom Hood

The commute by bike has become a bona fide, only-in-the-Bay-Area subculture. “We worked on it kind of obsessively,” says Crosby. “It went from being a small group of nut-jobs to something that has a life of its own.”

Even with the sizable growth SF2G has seen, the club members ensure it stays true to its start-up roots. It’s bike culture, sure. But in its infancy this group was designed to be open in the same manner that open-source software projects are open: Everyone involved was encouraged to contribute and build something together and make it grow. Anyone can call a ride, make a route, and—most importantly—anyone can ride. Their pitch, an easy sell: Skip the traffic. Skip the gym. Add joy. Join us.

