Our Favorite Road Trip Itineraries: SF to LA, The Scenic Route

7:30 a.m.- Pick up pastries and coffee at Tartine Bakery, hands down one of the best bakeries in the country.

8:00 a.m.- Drive South on Guerrero, continue onto San Jose Ave, then merge onto I-280 South (the traffic is usually better than the 101) and in 4.8 miles take a slight right onto CA 1-S.Tip: This would be a good time to take a Dramamine if windy roads make you woozy.

8:30 am- Pull over at one of the overlooks on the side of the highway between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay and take in the incredible views. Then go check out the Half Moon Bay State Beach and watch the surfers.

By Margot Loren

9:00 a.m.- Get back on the road and continue heading south on CA-1.

10:00 a.m.- Stop in Santa Cruz for delicious brunch sandwiches at Cafe Delmarett. To get there take a slight right onto Mission St., turn right onto Laurel St., and turn left at Pacific Ave.

11:00 p.m.- From Santa Cruz, get back onto CA-1 S for 48 miles, then turn right on Point Lobos to check out some more natural beauty.

12:00 p.m.- Get your camera ready, because the scenery at Point Lobos State Reserve in Carmel is breathtaking.

12:30 p.m.- Want more epic views? Stop just 11 miles south of Point Lobos and take in the grandeur of Bixby Bridge.

Sequoia Hughes, “Bixby bridge” June 26, 2009 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.

12:45 p.m.- Continue south on CA-1.

2:30 p.m.- Ever wondered what it would be like to be a billionaire? Go take a tour of Hearst Castle and pretend you’re royalty for an hour. It’s just off the CA-1 on Hearst Castle Rd.

Rie H, “Castle - 11” August 3rd, 2008 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.

3:30 p.m.- You can’t drive through California and not stop by at least one vineyard. Penman Springs Vineyard is one of our favorites. It’s a scenic family-run vineyard with great wine and tasty snacks. They also make their own olive oil! To get there, head south on the CA-1 for 12 miles, then take a left onto CA-46 E for 4 miles, turn right onto Union Rd, take the first left to stay on Union Rd, and then turn right onto Penman Springs Rd. Don’t forget to spit (not swallow) the wine if you’re driving!

6:00 p.m.- Continue 152 miles south on the CA-1 and stop in the beautiful and quaint Santa Barbara. Pick up some authentic and delicious tacos at one of the many taquerias in town (we recommend Lilly’s) and head to Hendry’s Beach to watch the sunset.

7:00 p.m.- Take the 101 S for two hours to get to LA.

8:00 p.m.- Welcome to the city of angels! This is the perfect time arrive in LA- you’ve skipped the crazy rush hour traffic and there’s still time to get dinner and go out.

Hector Sanchez, “Los Angeles Downtown area” March 16, 2008 via Flickr, Creative Commons

Zimride Tip #1: Attract More Matches

Sharing a ride through Zimride can be like online dating. It’s important to find the best match for you, but that can be tough when you’re dealing with so many fish in the sea. Luckily, Zimride has created a ridesharing system that takes the awkward out of booking a ride with a stranger. But it’s up to you to put your best face forward and that means personalizing your profile so you can catch more ridesharers. The following are a few tips to improve your profile to get the most out of the Zimride network:

1. Upload a profile photo:
Come on, show us your pretty mug. A smile goes a long way to let people know you’re real and friendly. And users are more likely to book a ride with someone they can see than with a mystery person.

2. Personalize Your Page:
If you share your pic, your interests, and other personal info, other users will be more likely to share with you. Share your story to share more rides.

3. Connect via Facebook:
This is the quickest way to fill out your profile with all the juicy details that will make your page more appealing to other users. Zimriders can also see that you are part of a verified network and display your mutual friends.

Stay tuned for more useful tips from Zimride on this blog or ask us for help directly at support@zimride.com.

Happy Travels,
Your Zimride Crew

Meet Zac, Our Tahoe Route Expert

Before joining Zimride, I co-founded the band Hot Buttered Rum and spent ten years traveling around the country in a vegetable oil powered tour bus. In the process of playing nearly 200 shows a year and teaching people how to run their diesel vehicles on grease, I also became quite familiar with the interstate highway system.

Now, as Zimride’s Director of Lake Tahoe Route Development, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to decrease the impact that cars have on the environment while transforming driving into a shared and social experience. I have always felt that our current transportation system needed reinventing, and Zimride has shown me how that’s possible.

Growing up in Oakland, California, I have travelled the I-80 to Lake Tahoe for ski trips for more than 30 winters. I love this place, and so do the 3 million plus visitors that come to Lake Tahoe every year. While tourism is great for Tahoe’s economy, the pollution from cars traveling there is threatening the pristine natural beauty that attracts people in the first place.

Of Tahoe’s annual visitors, 77% get there in a private vehicle with most of those cars having at least one empty seat. That’s a whole lot of cars with a whole lot of empty seats causing a whole lot of traffic and carbon emissions. Not to mention that gas prices are out of control and driving alone is totally boring.

Zimride is the solution. Ridesharing to Tahoe is the most efficient way to save money and help keep it beautiful. Plus, it’s a great way to meet new skiing buddies. So, next time you’re headed to the slopes, stop by Zimride.com first.

Happy Travels!
Zac Matthews
Director of Route Development, SF->Lake Tahoe

Collaborative Consumption Makes Life Better

Since the U.S. was founded, the ethos of the American Dream has motivated how we consume.  The dream was to own the biggest and best that you could buy. The more you owned, the better your quality of life.And even then, the grass was greener on the other side.

Today the economy is in the biggest recession since the Great Depression, resources are depleted, and more people are struggling to afford the amenities to make their lives better. For many, the original sentiment of the American Dream seems like a pipe dream. People are scaling back and ownership of luxury items like cars and houses has lost its luster.

Collaborative Consumption is a movement to disrupt the economic model of owning things for your own personal use. Instead of owning, now you can share, barter, rent, and borrow what you need thanks to a burgeoning marketplace of online networks that make it easy to exchange goods in real time.

Rachel Botsman, a Collaborative Consumption leader and founder of the Collaborative Fund, explains in a Ted Talk how globalization paired with socially enabled technology has “wired our world to share”:

We now live in a global village where we can mimic the ties that used to happen face to face. But on a scale and in ways that have never been possible before. So what’s actually happening is that social networks and real time technologies are taking us back where we’re bartering, trading, swapping, sharing, but they’re being reinvented into dynamic and appealing forms.

Sharing through online networks is not only becoming a ubiquitous way to consume, it is also the most sensible. Owners of resources can make passive income on assets, and people who don’t want the hassle and expense of owning resources can just pay for what they use. It saves everyone money and it removes the middle man to make transactions quick and convenient.

Collaborative consumption is also a win for the environment. The more we share the less we waste, and we really need to stop wasting. A recent climate change analysis reported by the New York Times exposes an undeniable and urgent need to reinvent the way we consume to stop destroying our planet. Redistributing resources instead of manufacturing new ones is an essential part of the solution. As Botsman cleverly states, it has become the fifth R: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair and Redistribute.

Sharing is also better for the greater good. It builds community, connects neighbors that may otherwise be strangers, and raises the standard of living for everyone. Collaboration with your peers in the age of social networks breeds trust, solidarity and even friendship, without sacrificing personal freedom and quality of life. As Botsman states, technology makes sharing frictionless and fun.

So why not share? Some might argue the risks are not worth the gains. No one can deny that there isn’t a degree of vulnerability you accept when connecting with people you don’t know. But actual statistics show that negative outcomes associated with sharing are pretty low: Yes, a renter though AirBnB trashed a woman’s house, but that was one bad occurrence out of millions of successful stays. Plus, if you’re conscientious about who you decide to collaborate with and network on sites that vet their users, you can minimize the risk even further.

Zimride mitigates risk by holding users accountable for their reputation through peer review, by requiring a Facebook login to ensure user identity, and by displaying the verified networks the user is a member of. This all results in a system that naturally rewards users who share more personal info and roots out users who aren’t trustworthy. You also have the option to communicate directly with users before booking a ride. As a Zimrider, you always have a choice of who you ride with.

It’s also your choice whether you jump on the sharing band wagon or not, but you should know that your neighbors are, and by the millions. Collaborative consumption has become such a huge trend because it reinvents an economic system that is in desperate need of improvement. Globalization and a shared economy are now facts of life, and people are starting to take advantage of this virtually small world by connecting with their community to make their lives better. Now the American Dream is not about what I can do for me, but what we can do for us. And together, we can all have greener grass.

Happy Holidays from the Zimride Crew!