Much unlike the Tour de Menlo, today’s Tour de San Mateo was a ride thrown around as a concept by another member of SVBC a while back: just a small tour of the interesting bits of San Mateo. I was instantly in, since I used to live in San Mateo and am quite fond of it.<\/p>\n
The ride was a relaxed meader through neighborhoods, parks, trails, and bridges. It was a thoughtfully-designed route and very enjoyable. The best parts were the neighborhoods in the southwest where I hadn’t been, which were classic, pretty San Mateo neighborhoods of the kind that I loved walking through when I lived there, and touring what I call “Secret San Mateo” because you can only get there from either Fashion Island or a freeway exit that exists in only one direction (Kehoe Ave on US-101 N). It was nice to see that they’ve been repaving some of the worst streets since I lived there, though there’s plenty left to do.<\/p>\n
The lowlight was, sadly, the Monte Diablo bike\/ped bridge. There are no pavement cutouts to access it (not just bad for us — what about wheelchairs?!) and it’s incredibly narrow and twisty on the approaches. I don’t know if you’re supposed to walk your bike or what, but it was also full of glass and clearly being used as a camping spot by homeless people, meaning I’d never take it during questionable times of day even if I could get over the totally stupid design. This is really a pity because it’s by far the simplest route over the freeway in the northern area of the city. I don’t know how they managed to screw this up so badly (the bridge was only just completed earlier this year).<\/p>\n