On the Road Again

just a sprinkling for the May Queen

It's been four years since I crash-landed on my elbows after my first day back at work after the pandemic shut-down. That was my worst bicycling mis-hap (so far), resulting in a trip to Urgent Care for a few stitches and some antibiotics. My Cannondale Synapse came through with only some torn handlebar tape, which I replaced with some cool zigzag patterned stuff. I took a few days off from riding but then, because bus service was still too limited for commuting, it was back to riding my old Northwest Drive route to and from work. 

Not long after, the Cannondale developed a wobble in the rear hub. This had been a recurring problem that began because the wheel apparently wasn't built right. Added to that, even though the bike was designed for pavement-riding only, during the summer I lived and worked on San Juan Island I had put on a rear rack & panniers and used it for grocery shopping and rail-trail riding. So the bike actually held up pretty well under my abuse. Anyhow, I stopped riding it for a while, in favor of the little Specialized TriCross consignment bike I bought near the end of the shut-down. This bike was designed for racks & panniers on gravel trails, but it's an extra-extra-small, which lately has begun to feel a little bit too small.

Finally I decided to take the Cannondale in to REI to see if they could fix the rear hub. I've explained the trouble with the wheel build before but this time the master mechanic saw the issue and seemed agreeable to fixing it. The work was more expensive than I expected and I'm still a little bothered that the REI shop wouldn't address the problem when I first brought it up after purchase several years ago. But the mech did a good job with it, and after all the hard use I've put the poor bike through I decided to just call it normal wear and tear. Last week, after removing the rear rack, I took it out for a pavement-only ride on the new wheel. The small-size Synapse definitely fits better than the XXS TriCross but I kept having to remind myself I couldn't turn off the pavement and take gravel trails through the parks. And I need to rig up some kind of handle-bar bag so I can carry a spare tube and some tools, and my wallet and keys. And without my heavy-duty cable & lock, I'll have to skip coffee-shop stops.

Which might be for the best, because during the recent spell of hot weather I was skipping bike rides while making daily coffee shop visits for an iced americano and pastry.

Fish Tacos Friday

Sasquatch always has the right of way

Summer has been late in coming, but the past few weeks we've had a hot spell with extreme heat advisories. It actually hasn't seemed that bad to me, the temperature hasn't gone above 90F yet. A few days have been in the 80s and my apartment became uncomfortably warm in the afternoons, and difficult to sleep in at night. But I keep the lights off, blinds drawn and the door half-open when I'm home. With a couple of small electric fans running and lots of iced drinks (non-alcoholic) I'm fine. I've been waking before 6am most mornings and try to get out for a ride while it's still cool.

Today has been a bit cooler so I got out early for one of my favorite summer brunch rides, from Ferndale to Blaine, with a lunch break at the Mexican Grill. This time I did my usual route in reverse, going clockwise. Usually I head out of town on Enterprise Road and ride the fairly flat farm roads to Blaine then take the water-side route coming home.

Today I started with a stiff one-mile climb up Vista Drive to Church Road. After that comes some not-too-hard rolling hills and flat roads to Birch Bay. I rode the scenic route by the beach, then on to the hillier, wooded road over the bluff, past some pricey view houses and the Semiahmoo golf course development. Then there's a big,  kind of scary downhill just before the turn-off to Blaine via Peace Portal Drive. It was 24 miles to the Mexican Grill where I ordered my favorite fish tacos, after stopping in at Starbucks for a 16oz iced americano. After the hilly start I was very hungry and glad to enjoy a favorite treat.

The Blaine Music Festival is going on this weekend, and the town is still decked out for the 4th of July. While I was in town I stopped at the Visitor's Center to ask about bicycling across the border. Google Maps said cyclists have to use the truck crossing now, but the nice lady at the desk said we can still just walk/ride through Peace Arch Park to the Canadian Border offices. (I'm planning ahead for another excursion.)

Retracing my usual route backwards was a little tricky and I was pretty hot and tired by the time I got close to Ferndale. In the last few miles I got that painful sensation of having a large rock in my right shoe just at the base of my toes but I stretched my leg out and straightened my back on the bike, which helped enough to get me back home. It was a 45-mile round-trip.

This weekend the Ragnar relay race is on, with runners on the road starting at the border, passing through Bellingham, and ending 200 miles later, on Whidbey Island. It's billed as a Northwest Passage event, one of those things that any Pacific Northwesterner who wants to call themselves a runner/biker has to do once. Kind of like the Seattle-to-Portland bike ride, except that Ragnar looks like much more of a painful ordeal, to be running on paved roads in the heat.