Bicycling in Rainbow Weather

All or nothing?

No need to skip biking just because you can’t bike all the way to your destination.  Besides rainy days, there are many more times to appreciate bike-and-ride combos.

The bike-and-ride options in Tips for Tourists Bicycling Monterey County were written for anyone who’d like the alternative of a ride—for their bicycle, too!

Those tips have just been revised and expanded.  Check out the new bike-and-ride info, including info on the Monterey Salinas Transit system/”The Bus” (photo below).

Add a comment to this post to share your own experiences in using bike-and-ride options.

Photo provided courtesy of Monterey Salinas Transit

Rainbows and wildflowers

Right now it’s lush and green and sometimes rainbow weather.  Even through our rainy season of winter and early spring—and in 2010,  it’s almost May Day and still raining—we’re blessed to have far more good cycling days than not.

Maybe, especially if a visitor, you aren’t always sure whether grey skies mean you ought to cancel your plans for the bikeways.  Check the weather forecast.  And unless there’s a day-long torrential downpour predicted, you’ll probably still want to cycle at least part of the day.  That 29-mile coastal trail is too beautiful to miss!

Although definitely not desert, this is a fairly dry climate.  Usually from about May or June until the rains start in late autumn—usually not before November—things dry out and the vegetation loses its vivid colors.  But the picture below shows what that water delivers, and one of the reasons we treasure our rain.

Hiking Garrapata Ridge, Big Sur reminds me of being in Colorado, with the Pacific Ocean below.

And oh, those rainbows!   We’ve had some amazing ones in recent weeks.  The one up above was shared by Velo Club Monterey’s Answer Man Jan Valencia.  Jan was on his Seaside-Salinas commute when he caught that double beauty over South Salinas.

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Bicycling?  In this weather?  As Andy Griffiin so eloquently expressed in “The Business I’ve Chosen” (Oct 14-16, 2009 Two Small Farms newsletter)–unpredictable weather is part of life.  If you don’t like the weather, wait, it will change.

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