Shoreline

I've always admired people who manage to organize their lives such that they can commute by bike. On Tuesday I decided to pretend to be one of them, taking a pleasant (but flat) ride in the morning traffic.

View Mountain View in a larger map

... but not exactly early morning traffic. After my morning errands, I only hit the road around 9, after the peak of the rush hour. I was heading up to Mountain View, so I started on Camden and the San Tomas Expressway. Normally my rides are focused on climbs, so this was one of the few times when I could really try to ride quickly on a flat road. I was surprised to be able to maintain 20 mph or more reasonably easily, although it's apparently slightly downhill in this direction so I shouldn't get too excited.

Bone dry wetlands in Sunnyvale Baylands Park

I didn't really have a path in mind. When I got to Monroe, I thought the San Tomas Expressway was going to peel off eastward soon, so I took a left. Almost immediately I came upon the San Tomas/Aquino Creek Trail, and decided to see where that went. As it turns out, it goes quite near the bay, crossing 237 up toward Alviso. At that point I headed west through Sunnyvale Baylands Park, stopping briefly to look out at... well, not much, really.

After that I continued around Caribbean Drive, past the Yahoo! headquarters, and then took Moffet Park drive past the airfield on the way to Middlefield Road. I continued west to Shoreline, then took that up to, and around, the Google Headquarters.

I took Rengstorff south until it ends at El Camino Real, then took Springer south through Los Altos to the Foothill Expressway. Then I took that around to Stevens Creek, Blaney, Bollinger and then back on San Tomas Expressway and home.

Elevation profile, with especially exaggerated elevations.

This ride was a little under 50 miles and basically flat, with just 700 feet of climbing. But it shows that in a commuting scenario I can maintain a decent speed, which may just come in handy in the next few months.