totally fabricated

Please, if anyone out there knows of a reasonable way to bike from SF City College (Ocean Ave campus) to the rest of SF (mission, civic center, etc) please let me know so I don’t have to continue these life-or-death experiments.

Another Tuesday, another attempt to get home after class at city college in SF. Last week I looked around, realized I didn’t know the neighborhood at all, but there alongside the BART station recognized San Jose Ave. Aha, i thought. I’ll just cruise down that until I get to Mission. No problem.

And off I went. San Jose Ave offered up a nice sloping hill, and even a bike lane. And all of a sudden, the bike lane stopped. And 2 lanes of 60 MPH traffic merged in from the right (leaving me in the middle of it all). And did i mention it was dark? And terrifying?

This week I tried again. I took San Jose Ave for the bike path part, then turned right and got to Alemany, which was quite mellow and had a bike lane. A quick consult with a map at a MUNI stop indicated that I could just take Alemany to Mission. And, again, I ended up on some freeway-like thing, possibly the 101 or maybe just a huge street, which dumped me out in the parking lot of the Alemany Farmer’s Market. It’s my favorite market, but not where I want to be at 11pm. At that point it seemed apparent that I’d somehow overshot Mission, but there hadn’t been any opportunity to turn, so I kept going. I’d once walked from 22nd and mission to the market, so i held out some hope that the territory would become more familiar. Instead, I ended up on Bayshore — I know that strip fairly well, but again, not what I was hoping for. Soon it all turned into the 101 except the far left lane which goes through a creepy underpass and turns into cesar chavez.

At this point my tire went totally, completely flat. And i walked from Bayview to the civic center to meet my friend.

I’m stunned at how many segments of roads were marked as bike lanes only to stop abruptly and become 5-line highways with absolutely no warning. Though after reading this week’s article in the Guardian about bike theft I feel lucky to even have mine.