Day 19: West Oakland BART to Jack London Square

Day 19: West Oakland BART to Jack London Square
(Oakland to Oakland)

Circle The Bay Part 3

June 7th 2018

9.7 miles in 2 hrs 11 mins

(Total:  210.5 miles in 55 hrs 14 mins)

Until today I have never quite understood the layout of West Oakland, and how the freeways and cargo container cranes came to be where they are.  This bike trip gave me all that, so I'd recommend it for anyone who wants to understand the Port of Oakland and its surrounding environment.

Starting at the West Oakland BART I biked west on 7th St. out the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.  7th St. is one of two routes into the port, and crosses under and over the railroads and I-880 as needed.  On the way to the park I had to bike by a mile long back up of semi trucks (parked in the bike lane) waiting to either pick up or drop off a container.

It seems there were 3 different harbors that made up the Port of Oakland.  The Middle Harbor was a Naval facility, now being restored into a environmentally protected shallow bay and wetland.  The other two were organized around two different set of tracks that made their way down 5th St. and 1st St. respectfully, for the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific transcontinental railroads.

A restored control tower from the Central Pacific train yard explores this rivalry, telling the story of how hired muscle from the Southern Pacific landed on newly dredged landfill next to a newly constructed jetty (on the northern side of the Oakland/Alameda estuary) to claim it for their company, to break through the monopoly their competition had on the waterfront of Oakland.  

From here freight or passengers can depart for far away lands or San Francisco, whatever their pleasure.  For the first time I took the ferry from Jack London Square in Oakland to San Francisco.  Which means I have to take the ferry back on the next trek.  Which worked out to be quite a lucky break, because the Warriors swept the NBA championship, which makes a million people descend on Oakland for a parade, most using BART if they're smart.  But for my circumnavigation of Alameda Island I can sneak in and out on ferries, never having to cross under I-880 or over the Central Pacific or Southern Pacific tracks.

Crossing under I-880

Pedestrian Tunnel along 7th St.

Middle Harbor Restoration

Control Tower Museum out on Long Wharf

Control Tower Interlocked Switching Equipment 

Naval Memorial at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park

Captain Stomp, one of the A's Stomper statues around Oakland

Cargo container cranes copied for Star Wars V

Middle Harbor Shoreline Park

Miles of trucks waiting to get in the port

Crossing the tracks back from the port

Tourist Stomper in Jack London Square

Another Stomper

A yacht from another era

Oakland Ferry Terminal

Day 18: Emeryville to Treasure Island to West Oakland BART

Day 18: Emeryville to Treasure Island to West Oakland BART
(Emeryville to San Francisco to Oakland)

Circle The Bay Part 3

June 4th 2018

21.3 miles in 3 hrs 0 mins

(Total:  200.8 miles in 53 hrs 3 mins)

 My computer went on the fritz and I don’t have my usual tools for writing this blog.  So please come back and look at the maps and pictures later. The map is interesting because it shows mile by mile how I rode out on the east span of the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island.  I tried to circumnavigate both Treasure Island and the original Yerba Buena Island on which the Bay Bridge is attached, but there was no way to cross I-80 with the bike on the eastern side of the Yerba Buena Island.

When you see the map it shows that I made it almost all the way, just a locked gate away from completing the circle.   There is a pedestrian and bike path ready to be used to get under I-80. It is just not open yet because there is heavy construction going on all over the two islands and the existing road on the eastern side of Yerba Buena island is not that pedestrian or bike friendly.  I had to walk up a quarter mile of it because of how steep it was. 

But this is a planned part of the  Bay Trail.   It will take a while longer for the Bay Trail to make it all the way to San Francisco. This probably won’t happen until after a third tunnel is laid down for BART or other forms of transit. Perhaps at that time a lane of the Bay Bridge can be repurposed for pedestrians and bicycles and why not have a MUNI train to go to Treasure Island as well?  It’s either that or a MUNI ferry if this landfill island created for military purposes has a future as a vibrant connected neighborhood of San Francisco, in the middle of the bay. 

IKEA, the gateway to Emeryville

On the eastern span of the Bay Bridge headed west

Remaining piers of the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge

Single tower of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge

Legacy Building from WWII on Treasure Island

Restaurant on Treasure Island with San Francisco view

The view from Treasure Island

Average rundown building on Treasure Island

Artwork to decorate my lunch spot 

Clipper Cove and the Treasure Island Sailing Center

Clipper Cove

Bay Bridge Tower from Yerba Buena Island

Westbound egress and ingress for I-80 on Yerba Buena Island

Non-native Eucalyptus trees marked for removal

Road and Track Repair I had to navigate to get to West Oakland BART

Me

Day 17: Berkeley Marina to Emeryville

Day 17: Berkeley Marina to Emeryville
(Berkeley to Emeryville)

Circle The Bay Part 3

June 1st 2018

7.6 miles in 1 hrs 46 mins

(Total:  279.6 miles in 52 hrs 3 mins)

This biking around the bay is taking almost as long as hiking around the bay, because I am using the freedom of two wheels to explore every optional route that juts into the bay.  For example, the next segment of this circumnavigation will be riding the bike path on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge out to Treasure Island and back.

I've run into a few places where bicycles are not as welcome as pedestrians.  You are not supposed to carry them on BART escalators.  If there is a crowd I'll walk up or down the stairs carrying the bike, but waiting for the elevators that are frequently closed is not really a viable option.

And for the first time I ran into segments of the Bay Trail in both the Berkeley Marina and the Emeryville Marina where bicycles were excluded.  In each case there is a nearby bike path on the side of a road, but it is not the same as the privilege I've had of peacefully riding the trail right next to the bay's vista.  I promise to always give pedestrians the right of way, and never travel faster than a runner when navigating a crowd of people.  Can a law be made to encode that?

A bicycle law that would be great to propagate across the land is already the law in the state of Idaho.  Under Idaho rules, for a bicyclist, a stop sign is a yield sign, and a stop light is a stop sign.  Giving this kind of advantage to human powered (or even hybrid electric/human vehicles that fit some category) makes sense to me, and codifies what most people expect from bicyclists anyways.

Speaking of the law, the President today said he could pardon himself if he wanted. Nobody has had that privilege in America since King George.  I'm sorry, but we will not be having another King in the United States of America, no matter what the current President  says.

Berkeley Marina

Berkeley Pier (Closed)

Red Baron Statue

Crew Working In Trees Reported Missing

Windbreak for Bay Viewing

Emeryville Marina

View of San Francisco from Emeryville

Underpass Art

Welcome to Emeryville, home of Pixar

Day 16: El Cerrito Plaza BART to Berkeley Marina

Day 16: El Cerrito Plaza BART to Berkeley Marina
(El Cerrito to Berkeley)

Circle The Bay Part 3

May 30th 2018

8.1 miles in 1 hrs 46 mins

(Total:  272.0 miles in 50 hrs 17 mins)

A pod of pelicans feeding in the Albany Mudflats State Park

Some days I just want to let the photos tell the story, which also indicates a bit of disconnect between the thoughts in my head and the terrain I'm traversing.  And it's the usual culprit of wondering what my future is in the world of computing, if any.  As a young man I dreamed of doing something profound in the space of distributed computation. And I did accomplish that goal with my last two startups, one makes a chip with 16K processors on it, the other makes chip that run down to a quarter volt, linearly increasing efficiency with linear slowdown of performance (can you imagine a car that gets twice the gas mileage if you travel half the speed?).

But I find the the skills and perspective I have that contributed to these out-of-the-box Silicon Valley success stories are not the skills in demand at established players, which quickly drift from the need to innovate in technology to the need to innovate in marketing to investors.  I've always looked for an effective partnership with those of the other orientation, but it hasn't worked out that way yet.  So I'm on the free market again.  Anybody want to work with me to create the next blockbuster semiconductor startup?  Interested parties should already have their tickets to play billionaire-ball in California, otherwise why bother (to build a VC backed semiconductor startup in California).

Tasteful Graffiti 

Decorated rip-rap on the Albany Bulb

Ok I had to write something about the graffiti on the concrete rip-rap that still exists at the end of the Albany Bulb, an outcropping of bayshore just south of the Albany Mudflats State Park.  Rip-rap usually makes me feel bad, in that most of it is concrete trash left behind by the previous century of civic and corporate construction.  But this secluded decoration of any exposed piece of rip-rap was very artistic, and brought it up to be a place of beauty and contemplation that equaled the bay vista in front of it.

Stay Puft!

Shrine to the Unknown Graffiti Artist

Albany Bulb Breakwater

Golden Gate Fields

Berkeley Marina

Berkeley Kite-Flying Statue on I-80

Berkeley Protest Statue on I-80