29.2 Miles!

What a wonderful ride this was, last Friday, around Seattle on a beautiful 50-degree, December, almost-solstice, no-rain day. The shoppers were a-shopping, but lots of bikers were a-riding, all over the city.

First stop, yoga class in Wedgwood, followed by a view from Gasworks Park (pic #1), of downtown, my ultimate destination. Then I stopped at the Essential Bakery in lower Wallingford for their bostock pastry, a luscious almond-flavored, powdered-sugar covered french-toast-like thing. Then, I rode to La Tienda, in Ballard, where the merchandise is varied, unique, attractive and not made in China. From there I cycled to downtown by going across the Ballard Bridge, a somewhat narrow biking path, and then onto the Magnolia-to-downtown bike path (does it have a specific name?--I don't think so). Along the way I took pic #2, of a clear and wintery Mt. Rainier. At Pike Street Market, I parked my bike among a number of others (pic #3) and hit DeLaurenti's and the artisans' booths. From there I rode and walked to Elliott Bay books, and my final stop in the downtown area was at the Best Tea Company in the International District (pic #4). Alas, they were out of my favorite, black lychee tea, but they have lots of other good teas, and I came away with a strong beautiful black tea and some bags of Pu-Errh tea--yum! My route home involved going up Jackson to the Central District, where I breezed through beautiful residential neighborhoods, til I got to the commuter bike route through Montlake, another residential-area ride. Finally, with winter dark falling fast, I hit Metro Market on the Burke Gilman Trail for a few groceries, and headed home, just as my bike light illuminated a few beginning sprinkles--a great ride!

Cold and Wet

As Seattle's deep-freeze drew to a close, I did errands by bike for several days.

Saturday, 12/12 - Groceries, 7 miles, 30 degrees
Sunday, 12/13 - Kenmore, 12 miles, 30 degrees
Monday, 12/14 - Wedgwood, 2 miles, rain
Tuesday, 12/15 - Center for Urban Horticulture, 9 miles, rain

And today is beautiful, so here I go, on one hecka-long ride!

Cold!

Last Thursday and Friday, the morning temperature was about 30 degrees each day, and the streets were dry. So each morning, I rolled out my Trex, and rode. Decked out in snow gear, I was comfortable riding, totally. My Friday ride included my own chilly hilly, between Lake City Way and the Northgate area, straight up 98th (similar in steepness--stepth?--to Dravis and the hill up the back end of Queen Ann). (If something that is long has length,and something that is wide has width, and something that is high has heighth, and something that is deep has depth, then something that is steep should have stepth, I think). I was not able to ride up the entire length of the hill, but made it only to the 1900 block. Next time I go, I'll try to make it to the 1800 block.

At the top of the hill I did some errands and stopped by the Cloud City Coffee Shop, where the best coffee cakes in Seattle are to be found. I had the blueberry cream coffee cake, for which I would have been willing to go up two hills, not just one.

Total mileage for the two days-- about 10 miles
Average speed for the two days -- slow

Yesterday's temp on the deck was 12 degrees, today's 14 degrees. Will I ride today? Stay tuned.

Sunday - 8.6 miles -- No rain!
Monday - 24 miles -- No rain!
Tuesday - 9.5 miles --Lots of sun!

Sunshine--A Gift!

The day after Thanksgiving--

NOAA, Lake City, 10.1 miles, 8.8 MPH, avg. speed

And when I fell on the Meadowbrook Pond bridge, against the railing, it was a gentle fall. The last time I fell was two years ago on a slippery wooden pathway. Watch out for those wooden pathways!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Monday -


11/23/09 8.7 miles, 8.2 mph avg.: Errands (bookstore, grocery store, p.o) – no rain, 45º

Wednesday

11/25/09 21.7 miles, 10.4 mph avg.: Ballard, Essential Bakery - The mountain was out!

Biker Down!

The title was to catch your attention--yesterday, when I'd ridden a half a mile from home, I saw a downed biker. I stopped to ask if she was OK. She was, and asked if I had a pump. Which I didn't. This reminded me of two things--my partner who, eight years ago, happened to have a fire extinguisher in our 20-year-old car when the engine caught fire, so that we saved the car from extinction on I-5 by Monroe. Being prepared for contingencies is good. Maybe I should carry a pump.

Her asking about a pump also reminds me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I'm now reading. The author writes that one should carry the tools necessary to fix the bike (in fact he gives a list of the specific tools to be toted, on the road). Otherwise, he implies, I am (we are, the universal we) just along for the ride. So, indeed maybe I should carry a pump. He also writes that in a car, a rider is looking at the scenery in the same manner a TV viewer watches TV: a disembodied being viewing a disembodied vista through a screen. But from atop a bicycle, the view is real, as it was yesterday when I rode to Shilshole and back.

The photo is a November view of Shilshole from the bike trail. The wind was strong enough that it blew my bike over. Twice. (Luckily I wasn't on it at the time).

28 miles

Hiatus

Life required a hiatus from training, but I'm back at it.

It's raining, raining, raining in Seattle.

But Saturday, despite the grey, no water fell.

So my partner and I did 9.4 miles, in the 40+ degree day, to Third Place Books and back.

Humor from Seattle, through the weather forecast.
Monday - Breezy with rain likely
Tuesday - Windy with rain likely
Wednesday - Cooler with showers
Thursday - Rain likely
Friday - Showers with sun breaks

Aaaaargh!

40 Miles a Day

Somewhere on the web, perhaps the RAGBRAI website, I found a comment by a cyclist who said that, if a biker can ride 40 miles a day, for 3 days in a row, without too much fatigue, then he or she is ready for RAGBRAI. So that's my goal. 40 miles a day, 3 days in a row. I'm not there yet. But in Seattle, I have to keep riding all winter, to reach that goal.

Yesterday--a picture:

On the way from Lake Union, north, up the hill, to Wallingford--
Red leaves falling,
Yellow leaves falling,
Rain falling--
A cascade of color and light.

The ride was beautiful, and not too cold, despite the huge amount of water and soggy clothing. So yes, I've figured out how to ride in the rain (although it turns out that things such as little rocks and small ridges of asphalt or contrete are a bit more slippery than they are when it's dry). And I was lucky that my really rainy ride was a reasonably warm day, around 50 degrees.

Total mileage: 19.4

Grateful Bread

Grateful Bread is the place to be in Wedgwood. Jerry Garcia greets me, music by Cake plays softly, and my awesome apple-pecan pastry awaits. I have bicycled here. This place is the real deal, with real bakers and folks who brew a sublime cup of oolong. The mellow atmosphere, with computers, and moms and dads and kids, and Bible readers, and Bar Mitzvah scholars, and bikers and yogis and knitters, lends itself to the reading of "The Stranger" and "The Weekly". The new outlet of the multinational corporate-entity coffee shop is thriving down the street, but I don't go there, and, thank goodness, that place didn't undermine the popularity of the Grateful Bread.

Monday, November 2 was another autumn Seattle gift--cool and sunny and inviting. So I did bike to the Grateful Bread, where I met my friend P, who helped me figure out more about the mechanics of blogging, which I'm doing to underscore my Ragbrai training.

So here I am in Seattle, yes, training for the RAGBRAI, which takes place in Iowa. A relative invited me, and it sounds fun, so I'm planning for it. It's a long bike ride (400+ miles over the course of a week), with a party the whole way. As I understand it, we'll bike anywhere between 40 and 80 miles a day, party and camp out each night. The Iowa towns through which the ride is routed turn out to cook dinners for and host all the riders--did I read 10,000? According to the website, RAGBRAI stands for Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. I recently met a Seattle bicycle ambassador (I didn't know until I met her that we have people with such an esteemed title here in the Northwest) on a Cascade Bike Club ride. She was a buff young woman riding a workhorse of a bike. She said the STP intimidates her, because of the huge number of riders and the lack of physical space to ride in. But she also said she's heard, through her biking crones and network, that the RAGBRAI is fun. And I'm up for fun, even if it will require year-round, rainy, cold training to get ready for the week-long, dry, hot ride.

And after the Grateful Bread, I did errands by bike, total for the day, 5 miles. Puny.

And the rain has come. What now?

Birds and a Band and the Sun

Sunday, November 1 was stunningly beautiful and sunny, unusual for this time of year in Seattle. My partner and I started out for a ride to the trail behind the Center for Urban Horticultural (CUH). We started off wearing layers, for warmth, necessary despite the sunshine. The map of the CUH showed the path to be for "pedestrians and bicyclists", but once we got there, it was clear that most of the people there, on that sunny day, were birders, so we walked our bikes on part of the mile-long loop trail, whenever somebody with binoculars stopped and searched the bush or trees. The whole area behind UW's athletic fields used to be a garbage dump, created on fill dirt. So it's basically a large filled-in estuary, and is now considered a wildlife area, with lots of little ponds. A great blue heron stood, sunning herself as we rode by one of the ponds. After we left the CUH trail, we passed by UW's soccer field, where the Huskies band was huskily warming up for a performance. By this time (and in this place--behind the band's bleacher area, where the players got full value of the blaring November sun), we were able to remove our outer layers, because we were so warm! Then, back onto the Burke Gilman, and we had to re-coat ourselves. Total mileage: 13.6 miles

Queen Anne and Back

As I prepare for the Ragbrai, I'm going to try to ride on some days that are iffy, weather-wise. Last Friday, rain seemed imminent--the air was damp,the sky cloudy, the distant sky, towards Queen Anne, an ominous steel-grey. I was to meet a friend for tea, and I wanted to ride. So I started out, wondering, Is this a good idea? It turned out to be a beautiful day for a ride. The wind blew gently, so the ride included a bonus of yellow leaves falling from the trees, with the grey choppiness of Lake Washington in the background. A few sprinkles fell as I drank my oolong, but otherwise the afternoon was dry and blustery. The event of that ride occurred when, as I stopped near UW to more closely read a sign headed "Ride in the Rain", a bicyclist ran into me from behind! He said his brakes hadn't worked. (I say to you, although I didn't say to him, that if he ran into me, he was following too closely. I had NOT stopped suddenly. Recently, I saw a bicycle recently with a bumper sticker that read something like, "Leave three feet of space. Threefeetofspace.org", or something like that). At any rate, he caught up with me a bit later and said that his brakes had gotten clogged with leaves and dirt. Well, we were both OK, so there was no harm done. I need to ride more, when it just looks like rain. The day's ride total, including some errands in the morning, was 24 miles.

Pike Street Market and back

On Wednesday, I rode from North Seattle to Pike Street Market and back, a nice 26-mile ride in cold weather. On the way back, I stopped at Cascade Cycle to get a personal helmet fitting, taking winter clothing into account. My personal helmet-fitter said I should buy a balaclava to keep my head warm, instead of a wool hat, under my helmet. So, a balaclava I WILL have, next week, as soon as an order of said balaclavas arrive at my local bike shop.