I’m interested in going for a ride in Rancho San Antonio County Park in San Jose (Cupertino). The trails do not allow bicycles. Does anyone know if unicycles are also not allowed in areas that prohibit bikes? I could easily see an argument for either way.
I saw a sign once in a park (in Sacramento around the state capitol) that prohibited bikes, skateboards, and rollerblades. So, I figured that they did not want any wheeled/recreational transportation in that park. However, if only bikes are not allowed on a trail, then I’m not sure about unicycles.
The spirit of the regulation is the same… wheels are wheels… let’s not push our luck.
Worst case, we’ll see anti-unicycle legislation.
There’s tons of great riding in the South Bay! Get on Corbin’s unicycle mailing list (Santa Cruz California Mountain Unicycling at Google Gropus) and join us…
Hey! My high school is right by there and I know the trails like the back of my hand because I run on the cross country team. Basically there are some really well beaten public trails that are generally pretty busy that allow bikes (mostly because of little kids) but I’d say over 90% of the park is off limits to bikes. There are some dirt roads (PG&E trail & upper high meadow trail) that would be fine w/ bikes because they’re big wide fire roads used for utility access for trucks n stuff, but there are rangers all over the place so you’d probably get busted. There are lots of good bike trails in the area though. I’ve just started getting into muni so I’m waiting till summer when I have time to scope out good trails.
As a general rule, if bikes aren’t allowed unicycles aren’t either, although every park district has its own definition of “bike” and the code may not be well-defined (or may be defined so that unis are legal).
Rangers won’t know the code, and if they want to give you a hard time, they will.
There are a decent number of options not far from Cupertino, so I’d go for something legal, like El Corte de Madera, or something in the Santa Cruz mountains like UCONN or Soquel Demo Forest.
I’m pretty sure that California’s legal definition of a ‘bicycle’ includes unicycles, so you can’t play the “it’s not a bike” card unless the rangers are unaware of that minute detail in the law. I assume that applies to county parks if they have signs that prohibit bikes.
The CVC definition of “bicycle” applies only to areas covered by the CVC, which does not include most park trails. As I said, most park districts have their own definition, which may be ambiguous relative to unicycles.
Rancho San Antonio Open Space District is run by Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which actually specifically mentions unicycles in their code:
The adjacent Rancho San Antonio County Park, on the other hand, is run by the Santa Clara County Parks Department, which doesn’t appear to explicitly define “bicycle”, instead referring to the CVC definition, which is ambiguous as to whether it includes unicycles (unless they’re Schlumpf or giraffe).
But in the end it doesn’t matter; you will get harassed if you ride on trails that aren’t bike-legal.