I do travel sometimes for my day job and most of the time when I do, I don’t take a bike. I do feel bad for leaving Blue, Bullitt or Roscoe II at home (yes, I name my bikes, don’t you?) but alas, when I’m off on a business trip, it is after all, about business. Add the fact that I often fly, and even when I don’t I’ve got, as I did on this most recent trip, several wardrobe changes, it just makes it a bit difficult to bring one of my faithful steeds and the gear that goes with it.
A good time to spend some time off the bike
But…it forces me, as I suspect it may with some of you, to focus on something else. If you’re like me, and most of my cycling/riding friends, than jumping on the bike is what we do. It’s easy, it’s familiar and most of all it’s what we love doing (almost more than anything else, I’m afraid). So, on this last trip, a pilgrimage from my home turf here in the California Alps, across the state to the North Bay, I made the best of it and partook of the local walking path near my hotel in San Rafael.
Near enough to the Pacific…
…to reap the benefits of fog, gulls — and their oh so familiar, and for me comforting, chortels, calls and caws. I grew up in the So. San Jose/Los Gatos area so gulls were always there it seemed. The smell of seaweed often hangs in the air too. Add the warmer temps, humidity and slow moving creeks or sloughs and that’s the environment where I found myself last week.
Urban yet wild
Off I went to enjoy what the locals get to enjoy every day. I was close enough to the Marin Civic Center to see the iconic spire (Frank Lloyd Wright designed the building) yet it felt like I was in the country, too. Every now and then, though, I was reminded that I was in the big city.

Funny, after three-plus years in Markleeville I now refer to the areas where I lived as “the big city” and my family and I often joke that we’re hitching up the wagon to go into that big city.
The walk, though, was great reminder that no matter where one lives there are some wild things about and a chance to escape city-life, even when you’re in it.
Now that I’m back home, and the snow is coming tomorrow, I’m thinking snowshoe this weekend. It’s all about balance, right?