Fairfield, CA > Folsom, CA 89.8 miles
Yesterday on the ferry we met an interesting guy from San Francisco. John him called the Keith Richards of bicycling. When he heard we were riding just 15 miles and staying at a hotel he said “oh you are doing a tour de la Visa” as in Visa card. We are staying tonight at a nice Inn on Lake Natoma in Folsom so I guess guilty as charged so far.
The original plan was to ride about 70 miles and stay around Sacramento. We had an early breakfast and saw the weather was going to be over 100 degrees tomorrow in Sacramento. We started riding promptly at 7 am. It was very cool and we made good time. At some point we decided that maybe we should push on past Sacramento if we felt strong after lunch. The temperatures today in the afternoon were in the 90’s – hot but bearable.
We rode through some beautiful agricultural areas around Fairfield. We had lunch in Davis which is great college town and probably one of the best places to ride a bike. There are just an amazing number of bike paths there. To get to Sacramento we had to endure about 3 miles on a bike path that runs parallel to I-80 – quite a contrast to the bucolic scenery earlier. We also got to experience West Sacramento which is pretty sketchy. I saw what I thought was another touring cyclist approaching us, but it turned out to be a homeless guy towing his stuff in a trailer. In Sacramento, we decided to ride on to Folsom which is about 30 miles north. We booked a hotel with my phone and almost immediately after that John got a flat tire!
The ride up to Folsom was entirely on a bike path which was very nice. It was flat and easy riding. We were starting to fade about 10 miles from the finish when a fellow rode up beside us. He had the exact same bike as us and lives in Folsom. It turns out he is a high school teacher in Sacramento area and commutes by bike 45 miles round trip pretty much every day for the past 20 years. He road with us all the way to Folsom and showed us where our Inn was. He gave us some dinner ideas and was just a really interesting guy. The last 10 miles flew by!
Tomorrow we will be heading into the Sierra Nevada foothills and will start to do some climbing. We will see how we are progressing and then decide where to stay. We may have limited internet access for the next 2 days and will update as much as we can.
That is a very cool bridge! Woo hoo! Day one. Successful!