Randomly waking up at 6am just means my ride starts earlier.
3-26-22
Nearly every Saturday morning I go out for a motorcycle ride. When I randomly wake up around 6am I often just try and go back to sleep but today I decided to start my ride early. I’ve wanted to go up Mt Tamalpais again, but it is 2~3 hours away from where I live, and it often gets busy (slow and bad drivers) super early, so this waking up early thing works in my favor this time. I could have powered 2 hour on the highway to get straight there but I decided to take some of my favorite roads on the way there, the 9 and 35 (Skyline). It only added an extra half hour and I got to see the sunrise over the South Bay. Totally worth it.
There were no clouds over my house when I woke up. I did see some low cloud cover over the Pacific while on Skyline, which continued towards SF, completely engulfing it. The clouds started breaking after I crossed the Golden Gate bridge, though they didn’t fully leave. As I rode up Mt Tam I had to go through the cloud layer. Visibility was nearly zero for a bit and I was stuck behind a few slow cars. Not fun. I did manage to get past both the cars and the clouds, and the rest of the climb was very nice. I had to stop a few times towards the top to get some sweet pics of my bike and the sea of clouds.
Last time I came up here I had not brought any extra clothes or shoes other than the clothes and motorcycle gear I wear while riding. This made walking around at the top rather unpleasant so I did little of it. This time I made sure to bring a pair of walking shoes, and I took off most of my motorcycle gear. This allowed me to do the short hike up to the very top of Mt Tam. Once I got my fill of the view I went back to my bike, got gear up again, and blasted my way home on the highway.
I barely ran into traffic while in the twisties, rode for ~5 hours, and still made it home before noon. Maybe there is some benefit to getting up early after all.
