Riding to San Jose (well, trying)

So I’ve had a pretty good day, exercise wise. This morning I went the gym and worked out for an hour or so – just light stuff for the moment to ease myself into it. Then Ash and I went for a ride down towards San Jose, as traced on this map. I included a view of the other end of Stevens Creek road for comparison with my ride last weekend.

Quite a long road, all in all. We didn’t know exactly where we were going, just that it was east… so, we went east. After the bazillions of car yards and a few shops, things went a bit down hill… rather crappy neighbourhood. Then we came across a sign promising downtown San Jose south, so, we turned south, not particularly wanting to continue even further into the dump. Of course, we should have known – this is America – the crappier it gets the closer you are to a city.

So, we worked our way back. There’s very few useful signs off the freeways, which we obviously can’t ride along, so it’s very hard to figure out where you are, where you’re going, or where anything else is. So, we went west until we couldn’t go any further. Then we go to the Lawrence Expressway, and couldn’t go any further. So we went north, and wound up back on Stevens Creek.

It wasn’t a particularly scenic ride, unless you’re really into crappy commercial areas and rundown suburbia. But at least now, that I’m back and can figure out where we went, I know how to get to San Jose proper.

For reference, A is the “HP Pavillion” – the ice hockey arena, where we were last Thursday. Just east of that, going off the map above, is downtown San Jose (not south as that evil sign promised). B is San Jose City College, and C is the Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre, which is the only hospital-like place I’ve seen here so far.

’twas a nice little way to kill an afternoon. We rode about 20km, all up.

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