El Nino is Kind

El Nino is being kind to us already this fall. Weather predictions are for sunny but cool conditions in September and into October, and a warmer and dryer than usual winter. That is actually bad for our water supply, but it's hard to complain about days like today.

Yesterday I went to the pharmacy to get this year's immunizations - a shot for COVID in my right arm, and for flu in my left. Over night I had a little fever and headache, with some stiff, sore muscles. This morning my right arm was tender, while my left arm was pretty sore and I still had pain and stiffness in my left shoulder and neck. The flu shot is definitely worse than the COVID shot.

Thinking a gentle, relaxed bike ride would help me recover faster, I took a 15-mile turn around the flat lands near the Silver Reef Casino. This area on S. Church Road usually floods and has to be closed over the winter. The county decided to do some preventive drainage maintenance this fall, in spite of the optimistic weather forecasts. So I had to back-track and revise my planned route, but it was a beautiful day and a beautiful ride.

Living Fossils of the Chuckanuts

During the hot, smoky weather in July and August, I'd been hiding indoors. After a few cooler, rainy days, though, I finally got out for an early September ride on the Interurban Trail, above Chuckanut Drive. I meant to turn back at the end of the gravel trail, but after cruising along on the shady trail for ten miles or so, I felt too good to quit. So I jumped on to the road and went on past Chuckanut Manor, then to the tiny postal stop of Bow, where I turned right and went on to the next tiny town of Edison.

I believe the photo to the right is of a fossil impression of a fern or palm leaf in the rock wall along Chuckanut Drive. Also, I predict there will be more slides and rock falls this winter, judging from the fresh cracks and gaps in the rocks. In my not-so-expert opinion.

Edison is a former farm town at a bend in the road, with a few art studios and a high-end furniture and wood-working business, and some good eating spots. By the time I got this far I was too hungry to make it back home without some sustenance, so I had coffee and a blueberry & cream cheese Danish at the Bread Farm - but only drip coffee, no more espresso. I almost felt good enough to continue on all the way to Anacortes, but I'll save that trip for a bit later when I can spare a few days. 

The Longhorn Saloon is the place for beer and (moto)bikers, and there is also a good oyster and seafood restaurant the next block down.

I peeked through a hedge to see this nicely maintained Victorian house, which is probably the showiest mansion in town.



The Lucky Dumpster appears to be a combination pottery studio, art gallery and second-hand shop. It was closed, I couldn't tell for sure.

On my return trip I made a detour to Colony Mountain Road, which turned out to meander several miles farther south-east-ish than I remembered, but it was a nice flat farm tour, with a nice tailwind. There are some blueberry fields and an old local cemetery. One house along the way is known for its menagerie of driftwood sculptures of fanciful animals.

This part of Skagit County is former marsh land and tide flat at the south end of Chuckanut Bay, which was drained for pasture and farming. It still tends to flood in winter, and is a tsunami hazard zone. But there are no crocodiles or alligators, and no carnivore hazards, at least not for nimble bicyclists.

After Labor Day, when the kids are back in school, is the best time for us old people to get out for late summer excursions. This ride came out to be about a 36-mile round-trip, starting from Fairhaven Park in south Bellingham.

I don't mean to be a Karen, but ...

I don't mean to be a Karen, but ...

This is on Guide Meridian, just past the Wiser Lake roundabout. I tried to move some branches aside but they were too tangled together, and some were as thick as my arm. They are very dry, in case anyone is looking for kindling.

Since my adventure on the Cascade Trail I've been slacking off a bit. Following the Tour de France, that's my excuse. But it's been nice to get out for rides around the county now that the blueberries and raspberries are ripening - the smell is wonderful.

And I'm keeping in shape for my next adventure. I've been wanting to ride the area around the Columbia River Gorge, the Palouse hills and the channeled scablands but it's very hot and dry and there are wildfires during this part of the summer. So I will probably head for the coast or the Olympic Peninsula instead, and try the dry side of the state later in the summer, or early in the fall.

67 Miles for 67 Years

This year I skipped both the Tulip Festival and the Highland Games, but I'm still on the road - and rail trails.

Trail start

Old bicyclists have a tradition called "riding your age" - rather than acting it, maybe. The summer I turned 65 I made a 65 mile ride, but I skipped 66 because my spine, knees and ankles were too touchy from standing for long hours behind the cash register at the bookstore. In April I reached my official full retirement age and quit work. So I resolved to make a 67 mile trip to ride my age in June.

I decided to try the Cascade Trail, which runs along side Highway 20 and the Skagit River from Burlington to the town of Concrete. The Skagit flooded badly last winter and Hwy. 20 was washed out and closed for several months, reopening on Monday, just a few days before I rode on Thursday. But I was pretty sure that if the trail was still washed out, I could just detour to the highway.

I drove to the Chuckanut Park & Ride lot in Burlington. From there getting through traffic and bad intersections in Burlington and Sedro Woolley was the worst part of the trip, but once I found my way to LaFayette Road it was easy to follow the Bicycle Route 10 signs to get to the Cascade Trail. The gravel trail starts out fairly open and sunny, passing through grassy farms and pastures before getting on to shady forested areas.

Wiseman Creek is the first bridge on the route, just before a flooded section that still has a little water on the trail. It's easily passable, though I did get my socks wet.


At my first rest spot, ten or twelve miles along, I met a young man walking with a small boy. They seemed a little wary of me, but warmed up a bit when I asked about trail conditions ahead. It turned out the man worked on trail repair and maintenance, keeping the grass mowed along the way. I hope I didn't make them regret bringing crazy strangers to their neighborhood.

Some short sections of the trail have new gravel, which is still a little thick to ride through. Other places are fine, loose sand, hard-packed mud or big ballast rocks. But the rough patches are easy to walk through and overall it was easy to ride with 700x32 tires on my touring bike, though I wouldn't try my road bike.

First view of the Skagit River

 

Below is a sort of panorama view of a section of the Skagit River that flooded last winter.

Two bridges are washed out past the town of Lyman. The second bridge, near Hamilton, was knocked off its pilings, and has been spray-painted with a swastika and racist graffiti: NO N---ERS ALLOUD. This seemed like a good place to stop to apply more sunscreen, before detouring to the highway via Cabin Creek Road.

Maybe better to not repair this one?

Highway 20 has wide bike lanes but a fair amount of fast traffic and heavy trucks. Then there's a crossing that is easily visible to cyclists, but not so well marked to slow down car traffic - definitely a "cross at your own risk" spot. Luckily the Thursday morning traffic wasn't too heavy and it was fairly easy to cross over and get back on the trail.

Fresh, new gravel and a

restful corridor of cedar trees.

 

The trail is lovely and woodsy from here on. There are a couple of cuts through solid rock walls. Big old maple trees, fir and cedar make the path shady but light-filled. A few miles from the trail end in Concrete there is a deeper wash-out with a small creek still running through, but it is easily passable via some small improvised foot bridges.

You'll know you've come to the town of Concrete when you get to bare gravel and come out into the sun in front of the massive concrete gravel towers.

You can just barely see my bicycle at the base of the towers below. Up the hill behind the towers is a small park with picnic tables, bathrooms, a kiddie spray park and a bike jump park under construction.

There is also a Skagit Transit Park & Ride lot, where a SKAT bus was waiting. I was a little tired but not the least tempted to bail on the ride and take the bus home. After a snack and rest break I rode around the town a little. There is a motel, a laundromat, a few restaurants, an ice cream place, a little theater and some craft shops hoping to catch tourist traffic in the summer - or during ski season?

When I ventured across a small art nouveau-ish bridge at the edge of the main business blocks I discovered what is probably the real reason the town continues to exist: the Baker River Hydroelectric Project. Though much smaller than Ross Dam, the two dams on the Baker River are still a major power source.

For the interest of literary-type people, Tobias Wolff, author of the memoir "This Boy's Life", spent his formative years in Concrete. He hated it so much he resorted to forging documentation to get admitted to a toney upper-class East Coast boarding school for boys, where he was even more miserable, until he finally got kicked out. A spell in the army, and then the University of Washington, eventually turned him around.

Baker River Dam, seen from Hwy. 20

I think about this a lot because I also hated the small town where I grew up in the 1970s, and couldn't wait to get out. Yet now that kind of town seems like it could be a haven (if I didn't need to have a job, and a social life). How is it possible to make places like this not feel like a trap and a dead-end to younger people?

Anyhow, my maps and trail guides show the distance on the trail as about 30 miles each way, plus a few miles from my car at the Chuckanut P&R lot. Thinking I might need to add some miles to make 67, I meant to try riding up to Lake Shannon. But I couldn't find the right turn-off and didn't feel like adding on any steep hill-climbing, so I headed back to Hwy. 20 from the dam.

Out on the pavement, my front wheel began to weave and bump: flat tire. I made it to the fire station at Cabin Creek Road, where I found a shady place to change the tube. Then I crossed back to the trail, off the highway, and back to Sedro Wooley. I had made good time on my way up, and was pretty pleased with myself, but it turned out I'd had a steady tailwind the whole way, and I had to work a bit all the way back down. Then I circled around Burlington for four or five miles to make my odometer turn over to 67 miles.

Usually my shoulders are sore at the end of a long ride, and my hands get numb. This time my legs were pretty tired, but I felt surprisingly good when I got back to the P&R lot. I rested in the shade, had another snack, and was going to finish off the last inch of water in my bottle. But when I took off the cap, there was a surprise: an earwig floating in the dregs of my drink.

It must have got in when I refilled my bottle back in Concrete. 48 hours later, I'm not sick yet. Does anyone know if earwigs carry any parasites or diseases I should worry about?

Not Yeti

I went for a ride on Thanksgiving weekend, then not again until mid-December, after the storms had passed and flood waters were receding. Today I went out for a New Year's Day ride, only twelve miles but in slightly above freezing temperatures. I'm looking forward to riding more than once a month in the new year.

Someone could hang this from
the ceiling of their new ballroom

Sad Christmas photo - a Christmas tree floating down river.

Cafe Cruising

As usual the weather turned stormy toward the end of October and I've been riding much less than in my commuting days. Luckily a few years ago I discovered a Facebook social group of "Coffeeneurs". Beginning the first week of October, once a week for seven weeks, group members ride to a coffee shop at least one mile from home, indulge in a "coffee adjacent" beverage and snack, then post photos and details of the ride and the treats. The group has members all over the world, so people in my latitude are mostly riding in the rain and some farther north already have snow, while people in the southern hemisphere are complaining about the heat.

This is what us technologically impaired Boomers do with social media.

For my first ride I braved wind and rain riding to The Woods coffee shop in Boulevard Park by Bellingham Bay. And came down with a cold the next day. But I kept on riding, getting out any time it looks like we'll have a half day of mostly clear weather.

For my second ride I took a quick afternoon turn along some Ferndale park trails, packing a thermos of herb tea and a granola bar because I avoid caffeine after noon. 

  

The Fragrance Garden at Tennant Lake was a nice spot for a bit of autumn sunshine.

  

   

Next was a ride to Bellewood Acres on a damp, grey day, for hot Dutch apple pie and an americano.

Week four was a quick ride to a Woods Cafe to the north. My seasonal favorite peppermint bark cookies are back.

This week I rode to the Cordata Food Co-op and had a hot-pot drip coffee with a cream cheese brownie at an outdoor table in the sun, with Buddha and ravens.

All these sweet treats might seem to defeat the purpose here, but I like to think that riding in bad weather keeps my metabolism fired up, and the incentive gets me out at least once a week. Two more rides to finish the Coffeeneuring Challenge. The weather is looking pretty foul for the rest of November but I'm sure I'll find a few decent riding days, or I'll ride in the rain again.

PS Here are the final two rides. First (or sixth) Mercato Delle Bonta in the Granary Building on the Bellingham waterfront, for my usual americano and almond croissant.

Finally, Week Seven was cold, rainy and windy, I was fighting a cold and working a lot, and almost thought I'd have to bail on the final ride. Luckily the weather cleared up some on Thanksgiving Day and I got out for a seven mile ride on the riverside paths in Ferndale. The Haggen Grocery food court was the only place open by then so I stopped in for an americano and a big piece of carrot cake. The cake is so rich I couldn't finish even half and was forced to carry it home balanced on my handlebars, to eat for Thanksgiving dessert.

Seven miles for the seventh ride and I'm thankful for good health, good coffee shops, tolerable weather and my trusty bicycle.