blazing saddles

Blazing Saddles. This could be the very best name of a company ever made in the history of the universe.  I loved the name so much that we didn't look at any of the other bike rental places in the city to compare prices of which place we wanted to rent with to bike the bridge.  You can rent bikes by the day or by the hour with Blazing Saddles. The bikes are nice and you can choose between mountain bike tires and the "street" type tire (i.e. 10 speed bike tire meets a rugged mountain bike tire).  I'd advise upgrading to the "comfort" seat.  I didn't realize that I got the comfort seat until about 30 minutes into the bike ride when Mike was cursing his bike seat and I was raving how great the seat was.  Little did we know we weren't on an even playing field. I had the barcalounger of bike seats while Mike could have been borrowing Lance Armstrong's tour de france bike.

Starting off at the west end of Fisherman's wharf, we were armed with a backpack full o' sustenance and the map included on the bike.  The map offers a fairly understandable route to get you onto the bridge (the gaggle of people you are following on the exact same bikes that we had and the signs on the bike path didn't hurt either.)

There were several hills that require you to work on your trek, but once you get to the bridge, it's smooth sailing.  I, however, am a bit afraid of heights and right about in the middle of the bridge it dawned on me, "holy bridge batman, I'm biking on the bridge and the ocean is RIGHT there!"  And then I looked behind me to see Mike leisurely biking about a football field length's distance behind me, just taking it all in. Apparently he doesn't have irrational fears of bridges or heights.  But really, the teal of the water is amazing. I had no idea how blue it was, coupled with the orange of the bridge and the color of the fog just spells San Francisco.

The fog was billowing into the bay while we were biking the bridge, but even with the fog, it was still an amazing ride.

Stay tuned for the second installment of blazing saddles where we make the decline into Sausalito and the sun shined so brightly I got the funkiest tan in all the land.