A Story of Cycling: Alpine Dam, Marin County

This is one of my all time favorite bike rides, beginning in Sausalito and looping through Fairfax and out of town to climb behind Mt. Tam and then up and over and back down to Sausalito. The climbing is great and most of the descents, until the end my favorite kind-long and slow with sufficient shoulder. The last time I rode this, by myself, my shoe got stuck in the clip-in pedals. No, not my foot stuck in the pedal, my shoe. There is some movie, perhaps Breaking Away in which someone ties their shoe to their old-school pedal to keep the focus and “just keep pedaling”. This might work better in a velodrome than on a pot-holed traffic-heavy route. I hobbled as best I could in small bursts until I hit a trail head on Mt. Tam. There I pestered passerby cyclists until someone had an Allen wrench that worked its magic. Now that the shoe was no longer clipped in I could more safely navigate to the car, with the shoe riding atop the pedal. The lessons – don’t ride long distances alone, and always carry the right tools with you, and if you mess up one or the other or both, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Words I am trying to live by,