From Berkeley to Napa by Bicycle, A Skate Marathon, and a Fall From Car-Free Grace

The mission: Get to the Napa Valley Inline Skate Marathon in Yountville without using a car. Camp out. Skate the 26.2 miles as quickly as possible. Return home without using a car.

The modes: Bicycle, inline skates, bus, ferry, and BART.

Saturday: Hercules, California. 15 miles into my 50 mile journey, and my first flat tire of the weekend. Things had been going so well until this moment. But somewhere along San Pablo Avenue, I hit a piece of glass or a goat head thorn and blew out the back tire. My loaner bike and its 40 pounds of supplies were temporarily toast. Luckily, thanks to Janel's bike expertise, and our guardian angel Julien, we had things patched up in about 45 minutes and were back on the road. After the steep climb past the Richmond refinery and over the bridge to Vallejo, we were back on track, even as the afternoon sun began to creep lower in the sky.

When we hit Napa, the temperature got hot, and so did the car traffic. Not knowing much about Napa, I had put my faith in the new Google Maps bike route planner and we found ourselves on the shoulder of the Napa Vallejo Highway. Soon, the speed limit signs were reading 55, the cars were doing 70, and the shoulder became less of a bike lane and more of a cheese grater. Talk about dangerous, Google Maps! There was nothing to do but grin and bear it, wishing there were a far safer and bike-friendlier route to Napa.

The sun was getting low on a lonely stretch of the Silverado Trail, and my legs were getting wobbly, when the front tire blew out. Rats! Nothing but miles of grape vines in every direction, two or three more miles to reach the campsite, and not enough time to patch yet another flat before sunset. Only one thing to do! Quickly, I locked the bike to a fence alongside a vineyard, grabbed the saddlebag containing the camping gear and enough food, put on my trusty inline speed skates, and awkwardly waddled along the Silverado Trail bike lane to Yountville Cross Road, the site of the start line. Just enough sunlight remained to pitch a tent and collapse, utterly exhausted, into an uncomfortable sleep under the lights of the Milky Way.

Sunday: 6:10am. Cell phone alarm clock. A ferocious pain in my hip from having fallen off the camping mattress in my sleep. Stiff and sore all over from the previous day's labors, but with no time to waste, I scarfed down a zucchini muffin for breakfast, slapped on my skates, and headed up to the start line a few hundred meters away. Though I didn't have an official team, I registered under team "Car Free Challenge" in honor of TransForm's wonderful event.

About a hundred skaters had registered for either the full- or half-marathon, including a number of good friends, and despite the cobwebs in my legs the butterflies in my stomach, I was in excellent spirits. Before I knew it, it was 7am, and the start line formed. Event organizer David Miles, "The Godfather of Skating", readied the start... And we were off!

Right from the gun, I could feel the previous day's 50+ miles of cycling in my legs, but I wasn't about to let that keep me from competing! There were some very fast skaters in the mix, but I did my best to hang on to the lead pack and resist any urge to let go of the paceline. 

After all, inline speed skating is a pack sport, even more so than cycling. When you're drafting behind another skater, you're quite close––inches away––and you find yourself working about 30% less hard due to the lack of wind resistance. And on the downhills, the skaters push one another––you just reach out and push the small of the back of the person in front of you. The whole pack travels lickety-split as it moves together like a freight train––typically much faster than a solo skater could hope to achieve over a distance.

The skaters kept testing one another––breaking into a near-sprint for spurts that tested everyone's endurance––before easing up to recover for a minute or two before the next challenge. As we see-sawed forward, a few more skaters were dropped off the end of the pack. 

Around mile 24, I could really feel the burn, but it was no time to let up! With my quads starting to cramp, we approached the final turn––and suddenly, everyone broke into a sprint! I followed suit... Or at least, I tried. As much as I pushed, I just couldn't follow the rest of the lead pack, and one-by-one I was passed with the finish line in sight at the bottom of the hill. Rats! I held on to the lead pack of 14 skaters only to fall to the #14 position, 12 seconds behind first place finisher, Robin Sigl. My final time was 1 hour, 20 minutes, 8 seconds. Whew!

I cooled my heels and watched the other skaters finish the race. As the road closed to skaters and re-opened to cars, it was time to fix the tire. I grabbed the patch kit and tire pump, and skated back down the bike lane––a "third lap" of the course as D. Miles put it––towards the wounded cycle. After patching not one, but two holes (!) and refilling the tire, I was able to pedal back up the road, pack the camping gear, and head over to Yountville for the after-party.

After a great picnic and awards ceremony it was time to figure out how to get home. With three fresh patches, no spare inner tubes, no more patches, and legs made weary from a combined 80-odd miles of cycling and skating, it was time to turn to public transportation to get back to Berkeley.

At the Yountville visitors' center, I learned the that the last Vallejo ferry to San Francisco left at 5:30pm. Luckily, there was a 4:05 "Vine" bus that connected to the ferry––and it was bike accessible! That meant there was time for a dip in the Napa River, a wine tasting, and a cool coffee treat before waiting at the bus stop...

...for a bus that couldn't accommodate me! It turns out that on Sundays, the Vine bus only comes along every three hours, and if the bike rack is full, cyclists who want to ride are out of luck. Well, this one was full. I pleaded with the driver, but to no avail. He wouldn't allow my bike in the passenger section of the bus, citing regulations.

Needless to say, I was distraught, and I realized that my goal of remaining car-free was in peril. Perhaps if I had been a more experienced cyclist, I would have sucked it up, hopped on the bike, and found a way to pedal home. I didn't. Called a cab. Rode it 25.9 miles. Paid $60 instead of the $4 the bus would have cost. Grumbled a lot. As we whizzed along the Napa Vallejo Highway at high speed, it was frightening to imagine myself just one day before, pedaling along a dangerous, hot highway. Surely Napa County can become more accommodating to cyclists!

After missing the 5:30 ferry by literally one minute, finally got aboard the 7:30 ferry (that wasn't listed on the timetable at the Yountville visitors' center!) and made it to the Embarcadero BART station a little before 9pm. From there, waited a long time to get home on BART's newly reduced Sunday schedule. 

I was deflated by the serious shortcomings of our public transit system, and it's hard not to blame it for my failure to meet my goal of zero car-miles for the week. But it was also a learning experience. Cars truly are the default form of transportation in our society, and even as we overheat the planet with our greenhouse gasses and pollute our shores with spilled crude, it's often all-but-impossible for even well-intentioned individuals to completely shun carbon-intensive travel. Maybe as individuals we have a responsibility to cut down on polluting transit, but isn't it more reasonable to demand that our government institutions provide more efficient and reliable mass transit?

Oh, and one more learning experience from a full-time skate commuter and novice cyclist: never again will I plan a long-distance cycling trip without packing a couple of spare inner tubes and a proper bike pump!

Enormous thanks go out to everyone who made the weekend possible: D. Miles, Janel, Brian, Barrie, Cher, Rose, Julien, and so many more. Thanks to Marta for putting me up to this, and for that crazy trip over Mt. Diablo a few weeks ago. What a crazy trip!