gurdymonkey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gurdymonkey) wrote2011-08-14 04:27 pm
gurdymonkey) wrote2011-08-14 04:27 pm
Entry tags:
Angel Island - again
Last time I went it was before the summer season ferries were available directly - or should I say indirectly - from Alameda and Oakland. This time I decided wisely or unwisely to bike to the ferry. The Peralta picked us up promptly at 9:10 and I racked Mimi at her stern.
(Yes, that's in B&W, the light demanded it!)
The ferry made good speed up to Pier 41 where we had to get off, go to the back of a line that had already formed and get on a Blue and Gold Ferry to the island. Bike rackage on the B&G was inside the cabin on the lower deck and was completely inadequate to the demand: Mimi ended up sandwiched between the end of a filled rack with four other bikes wedged up against her, held in place by prayer, I guess.
The Golden Gate was more or less socked in. You could barely see the deck of the bridge in the distance and its signature towers were invisible. Fog was still covering the top of Mount Livermore as we rounded the southern end of the island, passed Camp Reynolds (below),
and motored into Ayala Cove. 
Sheeple being what they are, I had to wait out most of the disembarking mob and the three bikers whose bikes were leaning on mine before I could roll off the ferry.
I had texted Teri to let her know I was coming, but she and Peter both had to work and my jaunt was on a last minute whim, so I didn't expect/know whether I'd even see them. I had just mounted my bike and was trying to tell a bunch of tourons to get out of the way of an oncoming Park Service golf cart that was crawling along behind them, when I recognized the driver. "You need a bike bell on that thing, Petey!" I shouted. "Yeah, I do," he said. That was the only contact I had with my friends who work on the island all day.
I found a rack by the Visitor's Center (in the building in the photo above), took a quick look at the exhibits before it got crowded and picked up a map.
Now when I visited Teri last year, we'd tooled around the island by golf cart. In the intervening months I'd sort of forgotten what the terrain was like, and discovered that I had to take my bike up an unpaved trail before I could even gain access to the perimeter road (the paved stretch up from the VC being extremely steep, straight and closed to bike traffic.
Keep in mind that mountain biking didn't become popular enough for production-line bikes until the 1980s. My bike is 46 years old, and while she may be a ten speed, she's an early one: her shifters are a little awkward to reach and not the smoothest ones ever designed. She was built to ride around suburbia: which works fine on the neighborhood streets of Alameda, and even on paved park trails in Yosemite, but off-road, not so much.
Pretty spot isn't it? It's steeper than it looks. See that bit of rail fence at the end? It'll get mentioned later in this post.
So I walked Mimi all the way up the unpaved section until it came out onto asphalt and hoped my legs and her gears would be up to the next bit.
From there going to the right, the road climbs around the side of the island. This is the first time since I bought this bike a year ago that I'd shifted her all the way up to 5th gear. That was actually sufficient to get me up to the turnoff for Camp Reynolds, because the road surface has plenty of level breaks between the climby bits. I took her part way down the unpaved trail, then stopped here because (a) it was a great photo-op and (b) it made more sense to walk her down. Her tires were sliding badly on the gravel.
Go back and look at the first photo I posted. Look for the row of white houses going up the slope. This was shot uphill from the house at the top.
I had Reynolds, also known as the West Garrison, pretty much to myself. I saw a family at the bottom of the hill by the battery while I was at the top, but they left when I stopped to use the rest room at the bottom of the hill. The views across the bay are pretty spectacular, but there was a stiff breeze coming in off the water. Took a lot of photos of the surviving buildings at the garrison as I wheeled Mimi back up the hill. Opting for aging pavement along the row of surviving officers' quarters in lieu of gravel on a steepish uphill climb, I happened upon this view:
.
More amazingly, I then saw two deer grazing behind the boarded up houses. I stopped and stood perfectly still. They were maybe 25 yards from me, if that. The one raised his head. He looked right at me. I looked back. He went back to eating. I managed to get several shots before moving quietly up the hill again.
(Can you spot the second deer in this shot?)
I propped Mimi against a tree by the camp's old mule barn at the top of the hill and sat down at a picnic table to eat my sandwich and have some water. Twice I was passed by island tour shuttles, but it was a pleasant spot to sit and relax.
I rode a little bit further up around the perimeter road to a spectacular overlook by Battery Ledyard. I noticed groups of people trudging further along the road and I could see it angling upward from there. I decided the smart thing to do was head back to the cove. I knew I wasn't in shape for too much more and decided not to push it. I made my way back to the unpaved trail down to the Visitor's Center and actually rode down part of it before I reached the "Oh, hell NO!" part of the slope (see fifth photo in this post, look for the turn where there's post-and-rail fencing at the edge of the trail). I dismounted there and walked her the rest of the way, keeping as far to the right as I could while kids blew past me on their bikes. I was most of the way to the bottom when I heard a that scrapy sound of bike brakes being applied full force and tires rasping on asphalt below me, then "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH."
When I got to the road, there was a man in a bike helmet and a park employee kneeling on the other side of the road by the visitor center over a kid and a bike I could not see. However, I ID'd the father and figured it for the Asian boy who'd blown past me last. He'd ridden the last few yards with the posted "Walk your bikes!" sign. If he'd been able to make a sharp right at the bottom, he'd have just kept going on pavement. Instead, he'd flown across the road, hit the edge and gone off by the side of the house. He did have a helmet on and I didn't see any flurry of emergency activity in the intervening period, so I assume he was more or less ok.
The reason I know this is that I found a tree to sit under where I could flop on the grass, have some water and dried apricots and people watch for awhile. I boat-watched for awhile too. Found a rack where I could lock my bike and walked a short way up the trail going towards the immigration center. I discovered after a few hundred yards that it was a very steep upward climb and the trail was clogged with other park-goers coming down it from the opposite direction. I found a picnic table and sat down - I had a ferry to catch by a certain time and I had no problem sitting listening to the wind rushing through the big pine beside me and peeping at boats below.
Wandered back down when I got cold, bought a cup of tea at the cafe and stood in the sun drinking it and watching a Chinese family snacking on Granny Smith apples. The grandfather kept shooting sidelong looks at his granddaughters: for awhile I couldn't be sure if he was disapproving or amused by them, then he finally cracked a smile.
For reasons known to the ferry companies and not to me, the 3:10 was the Peralta going directly back to Alameda and Oakland, with no transfer in SF. This meant we left the cove going easterly around the north end of the island, then south along the shore of Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island (see tree covered lump below with bridge sticking out of its left side).
Mimi hobnobs with a few hybrids and a road bike on the deck of the Peralta.
The winds had picked up and there was quite a lot of chop and spray on the return leg. "Let 'er buck." I stood topside holding a railing while the fainter of heart cowered from the spray or tried to stagger inside towards the shelter of the cabin. My sunglasses were covered in spray and so was my jacket. Amazingly, the seat of my bike remained dry.
More photos are at my Flickr page here. Photos from my previous visit, which include the Immigration Station and Fort McDowell (the East Garrison) can be seen here.
(Yes, that's in B&W, the light demanded it!)The ferry made good speed up to Pier 41 where we had to get off, go to the back of a line that had already formed and get on a Blue and Gold Ferry to the island. Bike rackage on the B&G was inside the cabin on the lower deck and was completely inadequate to the demand: Mimi ended up sandwiched between the end of a filled rack with four other bikes wedged up against her, held in place by prayer, I guess.
The Golden Gate was more or less socked in. You could barely see the deck of the bridge in the distance and its signature towers were invisible. Fog was still covering the top of Mount Livermore as we rounded the southern end of the island, passed Camp Reynolds (below),
and motored into Ayala Cove. Sheeple being what they are, I had to wait out most of the disembarking mob and the three bikers whose bikes were leaning on mine before I could roll off the ferry.
I had texted Teri to let her know I was coming, but she and Peter both had to work and my jaunt was on a last minute whim, so I didn't expect/know whether I'd even see them. I had just mounted my bike and was trying to tell a bunch of tourons to get out of the way of an oncoming Park Service golf cart that was crawling along behind them, when I recognized the driver. "You need a bike bell on that thing, Petey!" I shouted. "Yeah, I do," he said. That was the only contact I had with my friends who work on the island all day.
I found a rack by the Visitor's Center (in the building in the photo above), took a quick look at the exhibits before it got crowded and picked up a map.
Now when I visited Teri last year, we'd tooled around the island by golf cart. In the intervening months I'd sort of forgotten what the terrain was like, and discovered that I had to take my bike up an unpaved trail before I could even gain access to the perimeter road (the paved stretch up from the VC being extremely steep, straight and closed to bike traffic.
Keep in mind that mountain biking didn't become popular enough for production-line bikes until the 1980s. My bike is 46 years old, and while she may be a ten speed, she's an early one: her shifters are a little awkward to reach and not the smoothest ones ever designed. She was built to ride around suburbia: which works fine on the neighborhood streets of Alameda, and even on paved park trails in Yosemite, but off-road, not so much.
Pretty spot isn't it? It's steeper than it looks. See that bit of rail fence at the end? It'll get mentioned later in this post.
So I walked Mimi all the way up the unpaved section until it came out onto asphalt and hoped my legs and her gears would be up to the next bit.
From there going to the right, the road climbs around the side of the island. This is the first time since I bought this bike a year ago that I'd shifted her all the way up to 5th gear. That was actually sufficient to get me up to the turnoff for Camp Reynolds, because the road surface has plenty of level breaks between the climby bits. I took her part way down the unpaved trail, then stopped here because (a) it was a great photo-op and (b) it made more sense to walk her down. Her tires were sliding badly on the gravel.
Go back and look at the first photo I posted. Look for the row of white houses going up the slope. This was shot uphill from the house at the top.
I had Reynolds, also known as the West Garrison, pretty much to myself. I saw a family at the bottom of the hill by the battery while I was at the top, but they left when I stopped to use the rest room at the bottom of the hill. The views across the bay are pretty spectacular, but there was a stiff breeze coming in off the water. Took a lot of photos of the surviving buildings at the garrison as I wheeled Mimi back up the hill. Opting for aging pavement along the row of surviving officers' quarters in lieu of gravel on a steepish uphill climb, I happened upon this view:
. More amazingly, I then saw two deer grazing behind the boarded up houses. I stopped and stood perfectly still. They were maybe 25 yards from me, if that. The one raised his head. He looked right at me. I looked back. He went back to eating. I managed to get several shots before moving quietly up the hill again.
(Can you spot the second deer in this shot?)
I propped Mimi against a tree by the camp's old mule barn at the top of the hill and sat down at a picnic table to eat my sandwich and have some water. Twice I was passed by island tour shuttles, but it was a pleasant spot to sit and relax.
I rode a little bit further up around the perimeter road to a spectacular overlook by Battery Ledyard. I noticed groups of people trudging further along the road and I could see it angling upward from there. I decided the smart thing to do was head back to the cove. I knew I wasn't in shape for too much more and decided not to push it. I made my way back to the unpaved trail down to the Visitor's Center and actually rode down part of it before I reached the "Oh, hell NO!" part of the slope (see fifth photo in this post, look for the turn where there's post-and-rail fencing at the edge of the trail). I dismounted there and walked her the rest of the way, keeping as far to the right as I could while kids blew past me on their bikes. I was most of the way to the bottom when I heard a that scrapy sound of bike brakes being applied full force and tires rasping on asphalt below me, then "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH."
When I got to the road, there was a man in a bike helmet and a park employee kneeling on the other side of the road by the visitor center over a kid and a bike I could not see. However, I ID'd the father and figured it for the Asian boy who'd blown past me last. He'd ridden the last few yards with the posted "Walk your bikes!" sign. If he'd been able to make a sharp right at the bottom, he'd have just kept going on pavement. Instead, he'd flown across the road, hit the edge and gone off by the side of the house. He did have a helmet on and I didn't see any flurry of emergency activity in the intervening period, so I assume he was more or less ok.
The reason I know this is that I found a tree to sit under where I could flop on the grass, have some water and dried apricots and people watch for awhile. I boat-watched for awhile too. Found a rack where I could lock my bike and walked a short way up the trail going towards the immigration center. I discovered after a few hundred yards that it was a very steep upward climb and the trail was clogged with other park-goers coming down it from the opposite direction. I found a picnic table and sat down - I had a ferry to catch by a certain time and I had no problem sitting listening to the wind rushing through the big pine beside me and peeping at boats below.
Wandered back down when I got cold, bought a cup of tea at the cafe and stood in the sun drinking it and watching a Chinese family snacking on Granny Smith apples. The grandfather kept shooting sidelong looks at his granddaughters: for awhile I couldn't be sure if he was disapproving or amused by them, then he finally cracked a smile.
For reasons known to the ferry companies and not to me, the 3:10 was the Peralta going directly back to Alameda and Oakland, with no transfer in SF. This meant we left the cove going easterly around the north end of the island, then south along the shore of Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island (see tree covered lump below with bridge sticking out of its left side).
Mimi hobnobs with a few hybrids and a road bike on the deck of the Peralta.
The winds had picked up and there was quite a lot of chop and spray on the return leg. "Let 'er buck." I stood topside holding a railing while the fainter of heart cowered from the spray or tried to stagger inside towards the shelter of the cabin. My sunglasses were covered in spray and so was my jacket. Amazingly, the seat of my bike remained dry.
More photos are at my Flickr page here. Photos from my previous visit, which include the Immigration Station and Fort McDowell (the East Garrison) can be seen here.