Yesterday I took an urban cycling workshop with the SFBC.
The San Francisco Bike Coaltion conducts classes from How to ride a bike for beginners, to two part urban cycling workshops for people who want to be more confident riding around in the city. Part one of the workshop covers subjects from picking a bicycle, to fitting a helmet, to rights and responsibilities on how to ride legally in traffic. Part two includes a brief refresher, a written test (covering Traffic Skills 101 curriculum from the League of American Bicyclists) and a demonstration and practice of what I call emergency skills like the quick stop, instant turn and weave. These skills seem easy to do when lectured about, but like any other motor skill, require time and practice to acquire.
After rehearsing for a while at the Waller St (at Stanyan) practice area, we set off on a 5 mile ride through the city, down Oak st, up Masonic, to Cole and down Fell into Golden Gate Park. Then we cut across on 5th Ave, went down Irving for a block and then down Judah to 14th, back up Irving to 9th and cut through the park again to get back to Waller and Stanyan. We did the route twice, once with the instructor leading, and once with us leading.
That was my first time riding a bicycle in city traffic. It was the weekend, and it was 80 degrees outside. Most of the traffic was very polite and gave us plenty of room. It was nice and unexpected, since I keep hearing stories about how cars ignore bicycles. That wasn’t the case on Sat.
Anyway, the point of this post is: if you ride a bicycle in San Francisco (or are thinking of doing so), you should take that class. It’s free. And it taught me a lot.
I’m not confident enough bike everywhere right away, but I am feeling secure enough that I will go on a few exploratory rides as soon as I kick this cold/flu that I seem to have come down with.
