Everybody on a bike in the Bay Area knows Alice's, the roadhouse at the crossing of Skyline Boulevard and Highway 84 above Woodside. It is a low wooden building in a clearing of redwoods and Douglas fir, with a gravel lot that fills with motorcycles on any dry weekend morning and a porch where the whole sport of people-watching takes place. Sports bikes, old Beemers, choppers and the occasional vintage Vincent line up under the trees, and the talk is about which road is open, which has fresh gravel and who just came back from the coast.
Skyline Boulevard, State Route 35, follows the crest of the Santa Cruz Mountains for dozens of miles, and its fame as a rider's road is deserved. It dips and swings through shade, with the Pacific to the west and the San Francisco Bay to the east, and fog often pools in the valleys below so that you ride along a ridge above a white sea. The surface is variable, with patches of damp in the shade and a few rough sections, but the corners are open and rhythmic, and the redwood smell is strong. Woodside lies five kilometres below in the valley, a small, wealthy horse town with an old general store that was a stop on the lumber road when these hills were logged heavily in the 1800s.
Fuel is the one thing the ridge does not offer. Fill in Woodside, Redwood City or Palo Alto before you climb. The café at the crossing serves breakfast and burgers and is busiest from about nine in the morning, so if you want a seat, come earlier or wait until the lunch rush passes. Cell service is patchy in the folds of the hills.
Weekday mornings are the sweet spot, with the light slanting through the trees and few cars. Summer fog can leave the ridge damp and cold, so bring a layer, and winter rain brings slippery leaves and the odd fallen branch. Spring is lovely, with fresh green and a faint trace of wildflowers along the verges.