heading south, heading north

11:10AM. Branching out a bit beyond familiar shores: cappuccino itinerary for the day includes

1. EON, Hayward
2. Paddy's, Union City
3. Caffe Sportivo, Redwood City
4. Bean Street Coffee, San Mateo
5. CaffeRoma, Millbrae

And we shall see if the day's ride will be bookended by Guerilla and Four Barrel, but I don't think anyone can handle that much caffeine. Possible to make SF by sundown AND edit papers, do readings, send emails? The road will tell...

3:17PM. It was, and is, truly, a beautiful day. Bright blue sky peeking through dramatic white and grey rainclouds, puffy, flowing, accentuating all below. Was lovely riding for a first stop at the corner mart for food, then into Cheeseboard to pick up a ginger & pear scone (nice!!) to be enjoyed with a cappuccino from Guerilla--whoops, too crowded, let's make that Fertile Grounds, where I found out running into a friend that Village Grounds has apparently folded, really too bad--beautiful riding down to the Ashby flea market at the BART station, where I got my new styling $5 pair of sunglasses, beautiful all the way to Oakland Chinatown, where I picked up a few Vietnamese sandwiches at Sarah's favorite spot where I've also started to pop up now and again, and lovely then, fully ensandwiched, fully loaded, ready for the trip. And really, when planning to ride around the bay, downtown Oakland does feel like the starting point, since that's such a well-worn path.

So the point of embarkation was the Webster Tunnel that goes underground to Alameda, where I was poised to launch until realizing that there is no bike lane, no sidewalk, and I had to turn around, head down E 14th street to cross over to the semi-island. Looked over my shoulder, turned the bars, leaned into the pedal a bit, and

>POP< == There goes the second spoke in as many months.

So, having headed south, I weighed my options and turned around. Headed north, to ride another day. And look at the screen in more familiar environs.

But, you know what?

The clouds are still pretty darn nice.