San Francisco Bay Trail Ride

Disappointed by the snow conditions of last weekend, we decided to plan a bike ride for MLK weekend. We settled on the Northern part of the San Francisco Bay Trail, a network of trails that is supposed to allow you to hike/bike all around the bay area. The full length will be well over 300miles when completed (but as it turned out, we are not at that stage yet...) Misha, Mike, Maureen and I set off from the ferry builidng at 9h40AM on Saturday. After crossing the Golden Gate bridge and leaving behind the familiar neighborhoods of Sausalito and Tiburon, we ventured into uncharted territory on our way to meet up with Jeremy (he had taken the Bus to Novato). When I say uncharted, I mean it rather literally as I was using a crappy printout of the Bay Trail maps, big mistake. I will take the time to write up my suggested route and post it here for future generations of adventurous bikers, and this route will definitely include certain "adjustments" to the route recommended on the website above.
Summary of Saturday morning: magnificent ride through Marin county, a beautiful loop around China Camp, and then things got ugly. We reached John F McInnis Park,where there were supposed to be a dense network of paved trails leading north to Ignacio (and Jeremy). The reality looked like this (more pictures to come once Misha uploads his):
and involved mountain biking for 45 minutes through marshland, scaling a 40 inch pipeline and driving through a US army restricted airfield. Of course all this offroading claimed the fist mechanical of the day (puncture, Maureen). Needless to say we arrived late and the restaurant we were supposed to meet Jeremy at for lunch had closed. We filled up at an Italian restaurant (Grazie on Grant), and hurried back on our way in order to beet the sunset. The afternoon riding was mostly Highways (37, 121, 12), not great but at least we were going at a quick pace. Unfortunately, we had a string of bad luck (3 flats in 90 minutes) and we were caught in darkness on Old Sonoma Road. 45 min of scary night riding later (we had two lights to share amongst the five of us) we were quite pleased to see the Marriott.
The second day was uneventful, we left late (11AM) after stocking up on tubes and truing my back wheel at a local bike shop, destination Berkeley. The ride was mostly Highways, and roads through crappy industrial neighborhoods, but there were occasional highlights such as the stretch north of American Canyon, the ride through Valejo, the crossing of the Carquinez Bridge and the stroll along the Richmond seashore. Total mileage: just shy of 145miles (233km). Pictures.