Best Bike Ride

This only works during the summer months: Get off work early -- 4 p.m. or so -- and ride your bike to the Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel 65 miles south of San Francisco. Spend the evening chatting with vacationing Swedes, Brits, and so on, then bed down for the night. Wake up at 5 or 6 a.m., and ride back to work. This makes for an invigorating midweek vacation, but remember to bring along some earplugs: Your fellow hostellers always seem to snore like blenders full of walnuts.