Biking the GO Road The California Lost Highway

The Gasquet-Orleans (G-O Road) is one of the most infamous paved highways in California history. Originally built for logging trucks in the Six Rivers National Forest, it has gone through a whole series of court actions and eventually wilderness protection before Congress all the way into the 1990's

Most of the local people who lived there or still live there and had anything to do with it consider the GO Road one giant mistake and it will forever lie there slowly deteriorating because it's not maintained, almost nobody goes up there except to hike or have native religious ceremonies

A map of the GO road is here and it starts on the South Fork of the Smith River, the last major undammed river in California. Very few people have really gone into the unpaved section of it which is no longer a road, but a trail. At the end of each part of the paved section they have a pile of rocks to prevent any motorized vehicles and in some places you have to carry a bicycle over tree stumps

One of the few blogs to have photos from 'up there' is this one - Walking the Lost Highway, and for the first time, this blog publishes one the biggest collection of photos from the GO Road from September 2013

The GO Road is basically the ONLY road within many miles and there's not even that many trails, so if you go up there, you are likely to not see any other people the entire day, until you make it either to Orleans or Gasquet (Smith River). It is true wilderness, stunning views, quiet solitude and well worth the effort

I can't say that I'm the first person to bike the GO Road, because I saw previous tire tracks on the trail, so somebody else did it before me, but I am one of the few to bike into the interior, and this is possible to do it all in one day

Very quickly after leaving the Smith River you go uphill for a few miles and already get some great views of the coastal range bordering on Redwood National and State Parks

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Critical Mass 20th Anniversary

Lots of cameras at the 20th anniversary of Critical mass in San Francisco. This video is at Grant and Market and doesn't show the whole thing, but it's 20 minutes long. It took 30+ minutes for everyone to pass, so it gives a pretty good idea of how many thousands of bikes there were. The time on the video is off by one hour. It should be 7pm, not 6pm The photos are from Justin Herman Plaza just before it began

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Critical Mass 10th Anniversary, September 27, 2002

my own photos from the Critical Mass 10th Anniversary, September 27, 2002. Published for the first time, 10 years later. It will be the 20th Anniversary this Friday, September 28, 2012

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Critical Mass 20th Anniversary stickers

Coming soon to a bike post near you. This one in Mid Market

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San Francisco’s first bike protest

San Francisco originated the bike protest 'critical mass' in 1992, and September 2012 is the 20th anniversary ride

But the very first mass bike protest in San Francisco was almost 100 years earlier on July 25, 1896. This was published in the San francisco Call, July 26, 1896 and can be viewed at the Library of Congress

There's also a nice write up at The Great Bicycle Protest of 1896 (PDF) and is during the great bicycle craze of 1896

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biking for meteorites in the gold country and gold rush history

Biking the South Fork of the American River Trail, hunting for meteorites in Coloma, and visiting Sutter's Mill and Placerville

With the slowly evolving quality of public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, a big question I always have is 'how far can you go without a car', either on a day trip or short weekend camping or maybe a little more, with only a bicycle

It is possible now to get to Folsom or Placerville from San Francisco without a car in four hours. This has been described a few years ago in the Bay Guardian and now there's updates.

You can take Amtrak with a bicycle from Oakland or Richmond BART to Sacramento in under 2 hours on the Capitol Corridor for 37 dollars. From there you have two choices close by in downtown Sacramento. You can take the Folsom 507 train to Folsom which has bike racks on the train (unlike Muni) or there is a commuter bus from Sacramento to Placerville on weekdays, or you can transfer at Folsom and use the Iron Point Connector to travel all the way to Pollock Pines which is at 4000 feet up in the Sierras. All of this is on El Dorado Transit You can also bike along the American River from Sacramento to Folsom. There is a bike trail the whole way

But what I did was take the train to Folsom and biked all the way up to Folsom Lake via Salmon Falls road to the Salmon Falls Bridge. The newly opened South Fork American River Trail which is the heart of gold panning country along that river and where gold was discovered in 1849. This is also the same area where parts of the Sutter's Mill meteorite exploded and landed

The South Fork of the American River get's the 1989 Marin Pine Mountain steel frame San Francisco bike messenger trash bike treatment. The same trash bike that was stolen and recovered in South of Market

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Mayor crushes cars in bike lane with a tank

Ah, no, this isn't San Francisco, it's Vilnius, Lithuania. Let's find out what the San Francisco mayoral candidates think about this

From the New York Times

Fed up with the number of luxury vehicles parking in a bike path along a main thoroughfare in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, the city’s mayor, Arturas Zuokas, released a video in which he uses some military-grade machinery to crush an illegally parked Mercedes Benz.
“Mayor Zuokas wanted his message to be loud and clear that the city will not tolerate brazen and disrespectful behavior by drivers who disobey parking rules,” his spokeswoman, Irma Juskenaite, told the Guardian. “The mayor hopes that he will not have to repeat his performance,” she said, “although he says that he is prepared to do so.”

Posted on the mayor’s YouTube channel and clearly staged, the gonzo public service announcement quickly struck a nerve online, drawing some to imagine their own cities’ mayors in such a role.

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rad bike

456 rads per minute to be exact

San Francisco bike thieves - you do not want this bike...In fact, just stay 50 feet away and you'll be just fine....yep the U-Lock, saddle bags (paniers), wheels and water bottle are contaminated too...better off to just keep walking

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my new 20 year old rad bike is the hottest thing on the market....as in overheating and having a meltdown and you better run

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rare bike messenger poster – russian river ride 2009

The Harvey's depicted in the poster is Harvey's Place, 5th and Shipley, South of market, San Francisco, it's the official poster of the 2009 Russian River Ride, a long time tradition for bike messengers

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The Senior Bike Messengers of San Francisco

This little project was started partly because of this SFist article incorrectly proclaiming Junior to be the oldest bike messenger in San Francisco. The truth is that there are five bike messengers in San Francisco over the age of 60 with Junior being the youngest out of all five. Assembled in one place for the first time, here are all five of the senior bike messengers in San Francisco, starting with the oldest

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