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.

Surprised Myself

WYSIWYG

I hate taking selfies, but here I am with helmet hair at 65 years old.

All this month I had been meaning to go for a 65 mile ride to commemorate this milestone birthday. I thought, given my usual average speeds, that the ride would take me at least six hours, maybe seven, so I procrastinated because I just haven't felt like devoting a whole day to logging miles around Whatcom County. Suddenly it's the last week of the month and the weather is iffy, with only a few days when rain isn't in the forecast.

Today, Wednesday, I woke early in the morning. My other plans for the day had been cancelled so it seemed like a good day to get out for a ride before the rains came. I didn't really feel like doing the whole 65 miles, but thought I'd head out to Everson and then maybe cruise through Lynden and add on other detours and loops, depending on how I felt.

People have told me I'm a diesel engine - I start slow, but once I get warmed up and get my steam up I keep going pretty strong for a long time, though maybe not very fast. When I got to the Glen Echo Community Center, about 20 miles from home, I was getting warm. I took a long way around to get to Lynden, coming in on Hampton Road, which is being repaved and widened, with new bike lanes. On the smooth, virgin blacktop I was zipping along at about 15mph, pretty fast for me, until flaggers and orange cones for the paving project appeared, and I had to stop for about 10 minutes until they waved traffic through. Not long after that the wind turned around and I had to fight to keep my speed up until I got on to Front Street in Lynden.

Conveniently, my odometer hit 30 miles just as I reached The Woods coffee shop, where I stopped for a snack break. After that I back-tracked down Front Street to Hannegan Road, planning to add on 10-mile or 5-mile increments to maybe eventually add up to 65 miles. Or not, if I didn't feel like it.

A new roundabout is under construction at Hannegan and Smith Road, so I turned off before that intersection, at Axton Road. There are a few small rolling hills on the first bit of Axton, and I had to push hard to get up the first, steepest ones, but after that I got the momentum and rhythm worked out and had a pretty speedy ride back toward Northwest Drive. By this time, at about 40 miles, I was fired up and decided to aim for the whole 65 miles. I began zigzagging around to add distance. Now I'm not exactly sure what route I followed.

By the time I crossed the freeway overpass to Main Street in Ferndale, I was still about 12 miles short, getting pretty tired, and it was beginning to rain. But I stuck it out, looping around the flat farm roads west of the Nooksack River, and finally returning to town by way of the gravel trail through Hovander Park.

My bike computer showed my time at 5:22:54, with a 12.1 average speed and 24.8 maximum, probably because of the construction delay on Hampton Road. My back was hurting in the last several miles, and now my legs are sore, but I'm pretty pleased with myself. If I hadn't been so pessimistic about how long the ride would take, I probably would have gone out earlier in the month. However, I usually ride faster in cool, rainy weather. Maybe I wouldn't do so well on a warm, sunny summer day.

On Woodlyn Road, at about 50 miles

 

Dept. of Transportation

I'm still feeling a bit foolish and ambivalent about a trip I took this Memorial Day weekend, when I volunteered to help out with the 2024 Ski to Sea relay race. Usually I just stay in Ferndale to watch the canoes passing under the bridges over the Nooksack River, or walk to Hovander Park to see the paddlers staggering out of their canoes to make the hand-off to their cross-country bike rider. This year I got to see an earlier phase of the race, from the Washington State DOT station on the Mount Baker Highway, which is the start of the fourth leg of the relay. Farther up the mountain the ski and snowboard legs take place, then the road running leg, then the runner hands off to a road biker for a 44-mile ride into Everson.

Early cyclists at check-in

On Saturday morning I joined a crew of a dozen or so volunteers to set up tables, tents, signage, barriers, traffic cones etc. Then on Sunday, for race day, I left Ferndale in the dark to arrive at 5am and get organized before the first runners started coming in after 7am. I was assigned to cover the First Aid Station, even though I only have very basic first aid training, plus personal experience self-treating my own injuries. Luckily the only aid required was for a few runners who came in with blisters and needed band-aids. After the last bicycles were on the road, we packed everything up and left the DOT station as it was before the race, finishing around 1pm.

I got pretty well chilled standing around in the cold and damp, despite wearing winter layers, while runners and bikers milled around with bare legs in thin shorts, t-shirts, and various styles of road-bike apparel.

I haven't heard much about specific results, but it must have been a hard year for racers. It was cold and rainy most of the day, especially on the mountain highway. Snow conditions weren't very good this year, but the folks at the ski area managed to pile up enough snow for the two events. However, due to lack of snow melt, water levels in the river were low, the current was slow and there was more debris in the river, which would make paddling harder and more dangerous.

Cars head up the highway toward the ski slopes

Probably the hardiest and most heroic are the zero-carbon teams. The day before the race, they load up bicycles and trailers with ski and camping gear, or tow canoes and kayaks to their starting points. They camp out over night in the rain and cold and wake early to get to their starting point on foot or by bike. Then they haul all their gear home on bicycles.

The hand-off area, just before the DOT gas pumps

One of the reasons I bought a car was so that I could load it with my bike and some camping gear and drive to trail starts or event rides farther away from home without wearing myself out just getting to the starting point. I have made a few trips each year, like the Willapa Hills ride, or an annual tulip tour. With gas prices close to $5/gallon, though, I still avoid long drives. 

The foolish part of the experience is that it was a 50+ mile drive to the DOT station. For this weekend I drove at least 220 miles in two days. It was interesting to see another leg of the race, and be a peripheral part of it. Besides, I can't remember the last time I've been so far up the Mount Baker Highway and I'd kind of like to come back and make some stops to view the falls and the river. Maybe even ride my bike up the highway ... I could make it a three or four day camping trip ...

They're Baaaaack

Ick

The summer of 2014, when I was training to ride the Red-Bell 100, was a bad year for tent caterpillars. These fuzzy critters hatch out from nests in alder, willow or fruit trees then swarm all over. In some places they were so thick on the pavement that I couldn't avoid running over them, which is nasty because they splattered all over the underside of my bike, and even worse, on my shins and knees.

Out of curiosity I did a little research on Google and Wikipedia, and learned that tent caterpillars have a roughly seven-year boom and bust life cycle, where their population builds up to a peak, then dies down. Lucky me: 2014 was a peak summer.

The buggers died back after that, and I never saw more than a few caterpillars here and there, and no nests near the roads or trails where I ride or walk. By 2021 I was waiting to see the population building again, but the awful swarms haven't come back yet. I suppose because of unusual weather patterns, and a few summers of wild fires farther back in the hills, which might have prevented nests from spreading. I can't exactly call it a bright side to climate change, but .... 

Any how, it looks like they're coming back now. At least we don't have cicadas in the Pacific Northwest.

My Annual Tulip Tour

What more can I say about the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival?

I went early this year, on a Wednesday morning so there was very little car traffic and no crowds. The weather was brisk but sunny. Because I am a "Budget Traveler" I just bicycled past the fields to get the free view. The more elaborate gardens, where you have to pay for admission, aren't visible from the road but I don't mind that.

Paper maps are getting hard to find, though I still like them to get the big picture. The most recent ones I have are pre-pandemic and not very accurate any more. With Map My Ride I can keep track of where I've been and how far I've gone, but it's not very helpful for navigating. So I took a sort of random and unusual route this year, following the very badly maintained Bradshaw Road until it t-boned with the Rexville Grange Road, or Best Road. I'm not sure which because the signage was a little bent and didn't match my maps. Anyhow, I turned right to a vigorous but not difficult uphill, and got a panoramic view.

The daffodils were fading, the tulips just coming in to bloom. 

Usually I stop for espresso & pastry or brunch somewhere, but I skipped that this year, I'm not sure why. When I got back to my car, an apparently homeless woman was having a bit of a mental health crisis at the Park & Ride. She was dragging clothes and possessions out of her car, throwing things around, screaming and crying, and pouring bottled water over her head. I watched her as I loaded my bike into my car, wondering if I should approach her and try to help. After she smashed a glass bottle on the pavement, then got in the front seat of the car and started blasting the horn, I decided she was too out of control for me to handle. I called 911 and described the situation as calmly and compassionately as I could, then waited until a brigade of Skagit medics, police and fire trucks arrived. I hope they could get her to detox, or a shelter, or some sort of help.

So the ride ended on a down note. Still, it was a lovely break from my sometimes dull and dreary routine here in Ferndale. Hope for a brighter spring.

Here Comes the Sun - 2024

I haven't been out for a bike ride since Christmas week, but today was sunny and warm. Finally, this morning I got motivated to go for an easy 15-mile round-trip to Bellewood Acres. Hot Dutch apple pie and an americano was my incentive.

I've been walking a lot, especially while there was snow on the ground, so I'm not in the worst shape I'd feared. It felt so good to ride fast enough to get out of breath and clear out my lungs and sinuses. And I had a tailwind on the way home, which helped me finish on a high note.

The home fires are still burning by the outdoor seating, and the Sunday brunch crowd was just beginning to arrive at 11am.

The online weather forecasts I see always seem to be wrong, even on the same day. This winter has actually been fairly mild so far, just a few days of snow and a lot of drenching rain. The usual. But I'm seeing predictions for a return of the atmospheric river, so winter's not over yet. The sun sets after 5:20pm now, though.

The Distillery is putting out some suggestions for Valentine's Day treats.