Ken's favorite Silicon Valley road bicycle rides

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California Avenue has a grocery store for snacks and several moderately priced restaurants for post-ride meals. For last minute equipment purchases or repairs, try Bike Connection at the corner of Stanford Ave. and El Camino Real.

There are rest rooms, water fountains, and grocery stores along all these routes. Here are some of the more useful ones:

Santa Clara County foothills

Arastradero Preserve on Arastradero Road in Palo Alto has a water fountain and rest rooms



Foothill Park on Page Mill Road has water fountains and rest rooms



in Los Altos, Shoup Park and Mackenzie Park (both 2 blocks off Foothill Expressway) have water and rest rooms



in Cupertino, Rancho San Antonio County Park (Cristo Rey Rd. west of Foothill) has rest rooms and water fountains



Stevens Creek County Park at the intersection of Stevens Canyon Road and Mount Eden Road has water and rest rooms

San Mateo County foothills

at the corner of Alpine Rd. and Portola Rd., there is a water fountain behind the bushes

Woodside Store (museum) at the bottom of Kings Mountain Road has a water fountain and rest rooms (restroom has limited hours)



Robert's Market in Woodside has sandwiches to go



Pulgas Water Temple on Canada Road has water and portable toilets



Sawyer Camp recreational trail off lower Skyline has water (near the north end of the trail) and portable toilets (and is a scenic bike ride, especially mid-week when crowds are low)

Skyline area

near the top of Page Mill Road (at the 0.4 mile marker, about half a mile below Montebello Preserve) there is a water fountain on the south side of the road

on Skyline Blvd., there is water outside the fire station near Highway 9 and outside the store at Skylonda (intersection of Skyline Blvd. and Hwy. 84)



Skylonda also has a restaurant, grocery store, deli (with outside picnic tables), and portable toilets



there are many open space preserves along Skyline Blvd. with pit toilets, but none have drinking water



Kings Mountain store on Skyline Blvd. appears to be permanently closed

west of Skyline

McDonald County Park on Pescadero Rd. near La Honda has water and rest rooms



there are grocery stores with deli counters serving sandwiches, salads, Gatorade, and other goodies to go in Skylonda, La Honda, Pescadero, San Gregorio, Half Moon Bay, and Boulder Creek



there are several beach parks along Highway 1 with pit toilets, but no water

Weather

Danger

The City of Palo Alto offers a bicycle Street Skills course which I recommend for cyclists of all experience levels. The course is free to Palo Alto residents and inexpensive for non-residents. You can find more information on the City of Palo Alto web site. There is also a good on-line introduction to bicycle safety called Bicycling Street Smarts.

I tried to find routes that generally avoid heavy traffic, though traffic still happens, especially during commute hours. Most of the routes do involve freeway interchanges, which are often poorly designed for bicycles. Take care to merge carefully, but quickly, away from on-ramp areas. This is especially important at the I-280 and (westbound) Page Mill Road interchange where there are 3 on-ramps and a bike lane on the left side of the road. Children, please ask your parents to show you the correct way to navigate through these areas.

Resources

There are also several racing clubs in the area. As a non-racer, I don't know much about them, but many seem to be associated with local bike shops or universities. There is a list of California bike racing clubs on the Northern California/Nevada Cycling Association web site.

There are a number of bicycle advocacy organizations that lobby for improved bicycle saftey. The main local organizations are the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (for Santa Clara County) and the Peninsula Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition (for San Mateo County).

There are dozens of good bike shops in the area. I haven't tried them all, so won't recommend anyone in particular here (except for the ones near the ride starting point that I listed above). A couple of local shops with good web sites, however, are Chain Reaction and Palo Alto Bicycles. The web sites have maps and route descriptions for many good rides. Local bike shops also sell books and maps describing local bike rides.

If you're interested in Silicon Valley mountain biking, check out my mountain bike page.

Please send me your comments on this page.



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Copyright © 2003-2005 by Kenton Lee, Palo Alto, California, USA. All Rights Reserved.