In honor of bike month (and the fact that last night was cheat night and I did some serious damage to a couple of innocent cheeseburgers), I woke up very early Saturday morning for a nice little training ride on the American River Bike Trail here in Sacramento.

About a mile from my house the trail follows a tight line on the levee where Interstate 5 and the river bow together within several hundred feet.  The river at this early hour is smooth as glass, beautiful, and I’m acutely aware of the jarring contrast between its natural beauty and the roar of the cars scurrying north and south down the freeway.  Across the river on the opposite bank an old riverboat sheathed in dulled graffiti lists to one side and knifes into the river at an unnatural angle.  A fisherman further down the bank waits patiently to make a withdrawal.

A break in the trail takes me out to a back road which leads into the city, and as I stand and pedal up a gentle rise into downtown I’m greeted by the sun peaking out over the buildings of our little metropolis.  The low-slung rays bounce off exposed steel girders of the Crocker Art Museum’s enormous new addition overlooking I-5 and spread screwy geometric patterns of shadow across the lanes of the highway.  Cool.

The road dips and I cut through Old Sac, sort of an old west railroad town mostly frequented by tourists and motorcycle gangs (gangs might be too strong a word, let’s just call them large congregations of riders of Harley).  No one out this early though.  The empty streets lined with faded old west buildings is eerily familiar, and in this solitary setting, cruising down the center of the road, I feel like I’m in Fistful of Dollars as an iconic wooee ooee oooo…wah wah wah bounces around my brain.

Soon I’m back on the trail riding through Discovery Park.  I pass an area reserved for archery—yes, archery—where a long row of bulls-eye targets are lined up, the archers poised in front of them like some medieval firing squad.  I hope they don’t shoot me.  They don’t.  A couple miles further along the trail and I’m forced to swerve to avoid what is, for me at least, the biggest obstacle on the trail—squirrels.  Little sons-of-bitches will run straight across the trail directly in front of speeding bikes like their friends dared them or something.  Fortunately I’m that one-out-of-ten people who actually like squirrels, so I do all I can to avoid making contact with them.  Other riders, not so much.  It’s not uncommon to hear from cyclists about squirrels who met their maker beneath spinning road tires much like Mary Queen of Scots.  Eeewww.

This being an old railroad town, I pass under several sets of elevated tracks.  This morning I have the ill fortune to pass beneath as a train rumbles by overhead and shakes everything within a five-mile radius.  It’s more than a little unnerving to see a locomotive the size of Baltimore several feet over one’s head on tracks supported by little more than Lincoln logs.

Having survived maniacal archers, suicidal rodents, and trains from hell, it’s a relief to see the towering overpass of Interstate-80 (this town is full of highways), beyond which lie the Walden-like environs the trail is known for. Up on I-80 the eastbound lanes are backed up with Bay area folks fleeing to Tahoe for the weekend (we Sacramentans cheerfully describe our fair city’s supposed geographic desolation  as “Halfway between San Francisco and Tahoe!”) 

I get beyond I-80 and the trail in front of me winds lazily through overgrown fields and finally hooks back up with the river.  I get in a streamlined aero position and put the pedal down as hard as I can.  It’s a fairly short ride today and I need to get in as much of a workout as possible.  My three-year old daughter has ballet lessons and two birthday parties so it’s a busy Saturday for her mom and me.

Soon I spy the familiar walking bridge at Cal State Sacramento.  It’s a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge and not hard to spot.  I turn off the trail and stop in the middle of the bridge, eat a banana and slurp down some water.  There is a large group of triathletes congregated on the bridge and they look at me and my 15 year-old near-mint Cannondale tri-bike with suspicion. I must seem like some kind of Luddite to them and their obscenely priced technical marvels, but I don’t care. I’m also not real big on competition or group rides, never have been.  I start pedaling back, look out over the river, and think how lucky I am to experience the ride all over again but from a different angle.  Daddy’s on his way home.