Biking

Favorite rides:

• Seaview / Wildcat loop. Head up through the Berkeley hills to the Little Train, at the south tip of Tilden Park. Up the Seaview trail to Volmer Peak, past some of Berkeley's mysterious prehistoric stone walls, along the ridge to Inspiration Point.
  Out Nimitz Way past Wildcat Peak, through the site of the Nike missile base. Down into Wildcat Canyon, out the bottom past Alvarado Park, and back on the BART bike path.


• Richmond Shoreline. From Point Isabel you can ride north along the bayshore on a converted railroad grade. There's a nice beach at the Marina Bay development. If you head all the way out to Point Richmond, you can climb up Nicholl Knob. For a really long ride, continue north on the Richmond Parkway to Point Pinole.


• Hayward Shoreline. From the San Leandro marina there's a bike path along the shoreline all the way south to the San Mateo bridge. Beautiful area, lots of birds. The path is flat, maybe five miles each way. There's usually a headwind on the trip north.


• Briones Ridge loop. Steep uphill from the trailhead, then about seven miles of undulating ridgeline and pasture through Briones park.


• Bolinas Ridge loop. Start in Stinson Beach, head south on Highway 1 to the Steep Ravine fire road. A killer uphill to the Dipsea trail, short level stretch on Old Mine Trail to the Pan Toll ranger station, then uphill a bit on the road to Rock Springs. That's the south end of Bolinas Ridge. For the next 17 miles you head north, mostly a gradual downhill with a few slight up segments. The first five miles are on paved West Ridgecrest Road, where a lot of car commercials are filmed. Pretend you're an Oldsmobile. The rest is fire road, going through manzanita chapparal, redwood / huckleberry forest, and open pasture. You end up on Sir Francis Drake just east of Olema, and from there it's a mostly flat slog back to Stinson on Highway 1.