The NBG has set Palo Alto as the cornerstone for their coast-to-coast bike route  after 15 years of coast-to-coast Mayors’ Rides. Since the most practical way to pedal a bicycle over the Bay from San Francisco or anywhere on the peninsula to the NBG terminus, Washington, DC, is via the Dumbarton Bridge, Palo Alto has now become an official NBG bicycle crossroads city. A gold level League of American Bicyclists, Bicycle Friendly City, and the former home of seminal bike activist, Ellen Fletcher, RIP, for whom America’s first Bike Blvd was named, Palo Alto, has long been an important player on the national bike scene.

Toward that end, during longer breaks in the National Mayors’ Ride,  during the summer of 2017, two California Mayors’ Rides will end in Palo Alto. On Saturday, June 24, we are hoping  former Palo Alto Mayor, Yoriko Kishimoto, will be able to get a contingent of local government and bike leaders to ride to  her city from a send off in San Jose. San Jose is another of this Nation’s leading bike cities, as Krieg details in his book about the NBG called “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action“.

For the following weekend. on Saturday July 1,  we are working to get the group of bike riders who  annually ride from Palo Alto to San Francisco, to switch their direction of travel.  They will travel along the the route we first  devised in 2003 that roughly follows the CalTrain rail line built during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. 

The NBG is using these rides to also show why Palo Alto is one one of the 20 cities that anchor their bike route from San Francisco to Washington, DC. 

The 2017 Mayors’ Ride season  is set to launch on Wednesday, May 25, when our ride from Berkeley ends in Oakland with a reception and proclamation from Mayor Libby Schaaf. From there, Tom Ayres, PhD, will travel with her important document the 80 miles north to Davis, the Bike Capital of America, for the Davis NBG Fest on Saturday May 27. There live music and speakers will send our next wave of riders to Sacramento, Reno and all the way east to Washington DC.

More info at BikeRoute.com