My Bianchi Volpe strapped to the back of my car at the start of my exploration of the San Francisco Bay trail in July of 2022. In the background is the San Francisco Bay, and to the left, the Dumbarton Bridge. The ten year old bike rack shown in this picture has since gone to the bike shop in the sky and has been replaced by a more modern rack, one that can accommodate all my bikes, something which the old one could not do.
I am far from the most fanatical of door to door cyclists. When I was an active randonneur, I used to read about those randonneurs who would bike significant distances from their home to the start of a brevet and then back to their home when it was over, making an already challenging ride even more difficult. There never has been a time when I didn't drive the start of a group ride. However, for routine training, I usually ride door to door.
Why would I ever want to do a training ride that was not door to door? I would want to in order to have access to rides that are not practical if riddent door to door. The value of such rides became much greater the day I moved from a house in a relatively flat neighborhood in San Carlos to a house in nearby Emerald Hills which was anything but flat. If I wanted a flat ride, and I did, then I would need to drive to it.
Since I restarted cycling back in 2008, the extent to which I have been willing to drive to the start of a ride has varied depending on my circumstances. At first, the only rides I drove to were group rides but in 2010 I discovered an uniquely valuable route that was not practically accessible from home, the Terry Hershey/George Bush park ride. What made this ride worth the drive was that it featured attractive scenery, was long, and was completely car-free. Thus, it lent itself to the riding needed to train for long group rides. This became important in 2012 when I started randonneuring, a version of cycling whose goal was to complete long rides known as brevets. By riding back and forth over the Terry Hershey/George Bush route a few times I was able to accomplish the 90 mile long training ride I needed to prepare for a 200 km (126 mile) brevet. When, in 2014, I decided to stop randonneuring, I decreased my riding on the Terry Hershey/George Bush route and my cycling returned to a more door to door pattern. This door to door pattern continued when I moved to California in 2017. However, I probably should have gone back to a more balanced mix of door to door and drive to ride when I moved into a hilly neighborhood in 2020, but the advantages of door to door riding and inertia delayed that rebalancing. However, by 2022, my pattern had started to shift.
The first thing, post-move, that caused me to ride something other than a door to door ride was my continuing efforts to ride my Hetchins. That Hetchins does not have very low gears so is unrideable door to door. As a way to work around that limitation, in February of 2022, I threw my Hetchins onto my bike rack and drove to the Bay Trail for a reasonably long yet flat test ride. Because that ride was successful, a month later I drove down to another segment of the Bay Trail with the Hetchins on the back of my car to ride with the local Classic and Vintage bike club. As it happened, that ride traversed some parts of the Bay Trail that I had never before ridden which made me want to explore the Bay Trail more on my own. One barrier to exploring the Bay Trail during a door to door ride is the steep climb that would come at the end of the ride to get me back home but another is the issue of time. If I started from home, by the time I got to the part of the Bay Trail I wanted to explore, I would be out of time and would need to turn around and return home leaving no time for exploration. Using the drive to ride strategy was a solution to both these problems. By taking this approach I was able to undertake a series of explorations of the Bay Trail that made my 75th Birthday Ride possible two years later.
What was good for my Hetchins was good for another antique bike I own, a 1963 Bianchi Specialissima. As is the case with my Hetchins, the very narrow gear range on my Specialissima makes it unrideable in my neighborhood, so I threw it on the back of my car, made the very short drive down to my old neighborhood in San Carlos, and the Specialissima rode again. Being willing to drive to ride has made it possible for me to enjoy this somewhat impractical but deeply nostalgic and totally delightful bicycle.
In addition to hills, another change that has impacted my cycling is that I have gotten older. These two changes exacerbate each other and together have caused me to continue to incorporate more drive to ride rides into my schedule, not just to accomodate an antique bike, but to accomodate my aging body. These days, it is more often than not that a week of riding will include at least one ride that is drive to ride, an approach which I very much hope will allow me to continue cycling for years to come.
