Getting There (and Back)

Island Bicycles, on Argyle Street in Friday Harbor

It was March when the owners of Island Bicycles came to meet me in Ferndale, after I replied to their job posting on United Bicycle Institute's website. They were very friendly, positive and encouraging, but I had a hard time visualizing what the shop and job would be like just from discussing things at Wood's Coffee Shop. So I made a couple of trips to San Juan Island to check things out, and in April I decided that I would never get a better offer, and I'd regret it forever if I didn't take the chance.

Early spring at American Camp

An excursion to the San Juan Islands has been on my "places-to-go" list for years, though I would have chosen better weather for the trip - this year April and May were cold and rainy. Besides, I had always been a bit daunted by the logistics. To get to San Juan Island you take a Washington State ferry from Anacortes, which is fifty or sixty miles from Ferndale; I had always considered this a day's ride, plus the ferry trip. Instead, I planned to ride my bike to the Bellingham Transit Center (ten miles), then catch a WTA bus to the Chuckanut Park & Ride lot near Mount Vernon; from there I could take two Skagit Transit buses to Anacortes, then ride five miles to the ferry landing. This way, I left home at about 8am and arrived in Anacortes a bit after 11am, leaving plenty of time for a nice lunch before the ferry sailed at around 2pm. The ferry trip to Friday Harbor takes a little more than an hour, so I would arrive mid-to-late afternoon.

Walk-on passengers arriving in Friday Harbor

The timing of the connections is a little tricky - both the bus and the ferry are scheduled to run mainly in the morning and afternoon, with gaps in service at mid-day. But after a few trips back and forth I got the route and routine down pretty well, and when the weather got better I discovered that it was not too difficult to ride my bike between Anacortes and Mount Vernon (twenty miles or so), riding the WTA bus between Bellingham and Mount Vernon. Over the summer I returned home to Ferndale about once a month, and it was basically a three-day trip - a day of travel home, a day at home, and a day returning to the island. By late summer I was even riding the whole distance between Ferndale and Anacortes, which made for a long, tiring day but gave me a chance to do some scenic touring on Chuckanut Drive and through Skagit County farmlands.

The worst obstacle along the way is the bridge over the Swinomish Channel on Highway 20 near the Swinomish Casino. This high arching bridge has a separated bike and pedestrian walkway on the westbound side, and bike lanes going east or west, but the traffic is heavy and fast-moving, there are often gusty cross-winds, and a lot of sharp metal, glass and gravel on the road. Bicyclists can use the bike lanes, or use the separate sidewalk, going the "wrong" way on the "wrong" side to cross the bridge going east, but it is difficult to get across Highway 20 at the ends of the bridge, whichever way you choose. I rode this route several times over the summer and finally decided the best eastbound route is to ride the wrong way on the separated sidewalk. There is a highway crossing not far from the end of the bridge and the highway is divided with a wide, grassy median, so it is fairly safe to cross the westbound lanes, wait at the median for traffic to clear, then cross the eastbound lanes. After that I would ride about two miles in the wide bike lane on the highway, then take the first exit to LaConner, turn off to Young Road, then to Highway 536, a two-lane road that goes all the way in to Mount Vernon.

The route is survivable, but the bridge section is ugly and dangerous and needs to be improved. Otherwise, having made five or six trips this summer, the ride is much less daunting and I hope to make more pleasure-trips to the islands in the future.

A tribute to my Cannondale Synapse: I bought this bike untested from the REI online catalog thinking it would be a moderately-priced, light, quick, well-fitting recreational road bike. The bike is designed to dampen road vibration, with specially shaped aluminum tubing on the rear triangle and very flexy wheels. It is smooth and comfortable to ride, but not meant to carry luggage. It doesn't even have rack mounts, but I attached a rear rack to the fender mounts and seat post anyway. I rode it loaded with twenty or thirty pounds of baggage in my panniers, and used it for weekly trips to the grocery store, and took it on 50-mile gravel trail rides, and the bike hummed along happily all summer with no trouble at all. It came home looking pretty dinged up and battered, and now I feel bad for treating it so roughly when it served me so well.