Overall, I was impressed with the number of cyclists out and about. There were far more cruisers tha

My family and I spent last week vacationing on the beach in Oceanside, Calif. While we did take our bikes, we didn t ride them as much as I had hoped. We got in a few rides, walked a ton and checked out the regional train system.
Oceanside is considered one of the more bike-friendly communities in Southern California and was awarded the wholesale travel group a bronze bike-friendly designation by the League of American Bicyclists in 2008. According to the City of Oceanside they have nine miles of bike paths, 17 miles of bike routes, and 70 miles of bike lanes.
Pacific Street runs parallel to the ocean and is a main thoroughfare for bikes. The street doesn t have bike lanes, instead it utilizes sharrows. Sometimes the placement of the sharrows was a little too close to the parked cars, which puts cyclists at risk for getting hit by a door. Some of the sharrows were in a position that keeps cyclists out of the door zone.
Also new since we visited two years ago is a bike valet at the weekly craft and farmers market . When we went by though, there were only a handful of bikes utilizing the service. The service is run by the Oceanside Bicycle Committee.
Overall, I was impressed with the number of cyclists out and about. There were far more cruisers than anything else, many of the people on cruisers the wholesale travel group seemed to be locals using their bikes to get places and carrying their surfboards or fishing equipment, but a large number were also tourists who had rented a cruiser for the day. On the weekend there were large groups of roadies out for a weekend ride. Interestingly, in the whole week were were there, I did not see a single cargo bike.