Riding Nirvana

By Hunaid Hussain

April 2^nd, 2015

As George Harrison put’s it “If you don’t know where you are going, any roads would take you there” and a lot of people who know Gurmeet Singh Manku relies on his instincts and research to take the less travelled road for a bike or a hike. Every week we receive one email from him enticing us to spend a few hours each weekend on a half day hike or a bike. After ignoring his emails for eternity, like say 3 years, I decided to follow him on his trail for a 30 mile bike, which would take us from Menlo Park to across our pacific pond to Fremont and Coyote Hills and the marshes running around the shoreline.

It was promised as an easy ride and we did stop quite a lot to scratch our itching for clicking.

The first milestone within a few miles from our start was Dumbarton bridge, and we couldn’t control ourselves to stop briefly to soak in the views across miles of ocean hugging the serpentine bay area coastline, in myriads of colors. Halfway through the bridge we were greeted by the Alameda county marker.

Once we descended down to the other side and made our way through a few traffic lights on Paseo Padre, a sharp left turn took took us towards Coyote Hills regional park. A small paved trail along the road side was filled with the occasional bike riders, runners and strollers and the tall swaying grasses like the flowing veil of a midsummer bride, on the right, led us to a field of happy sheep.

We moved on towards the windings pathways on the Alameda creek trail, leading us closer to the marshes.

Finally we reached the end of paved line and it was time to stop and a few of us got adventurous enough to enjoy the bliss.

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Our way back was through coyote hills which hugs the coastline with its gentle rolling slopes filled with the California natives like poppies, coastal larkspur, silver lupine etc. A complete list of these wild flowers are documented here.