Testing the waters for the Carnation Time Trial

A friend and went out to Carnation last weekend to ride two of the time-trials that are being held. One's a flat 12 mile course, while the other is a 14.5 hilly course. I don't even have a friggin' time-trial bike so I'm not sure abou these races, but the hilly I might be able to do alright.

As a side-note, just as we got out of the car to unload our bikes, a jacked-up pickup drove by with what looked to be a redneck leaning out of the window, looking at us. Sure enough, as he rode by he yelled "Go back to Seattle, you ...." We couldn't make out the last part, but it was probably the ususal 'faggots!' remark often heard outside of large cities. What an introduction to Carnation!! The funny thing was that we were indeed going back to Seattle, while he's gonna remain in the sticks.

Anyway, the first course we did was more or less flat, and with the wind we only averaged 19 mph but that's not bad for us. The wind was tough though.

But the 2nd course includes Tolt Hill road, which is a 10% grade for one mile! This is probably the nastiest hill I've done, but having done the 22% block at 26th & E. Roy st on Capitol Hill it wasn't all that bad. The downhill is 9% for a mile, with some winding turns. Had to brake quite a lot since the turns were so sharp, but we maxed out at 42 mph!!

Check out the elevation profile for the hilly time-trial: (generated by veloroutes.org)


Yep, that super-steep climb in the beginning is the 10% grade; wow that was fun! Somehow we averaged 18 mph on this course, whic I'm sure is far under what the winning average will be.

Good country riding out in Carnation, but watch out for the country-folk, they're apparently vocal about their dislike of visitors on bikes.

Bikers gone wild

In case you haven't heard yet, some cyclists in SF smashed a mini-van's window last Friday after Critical Mass!

http://www.cyclelicio.us/2007/04/san-francisco-minivan-vs-critical-mass.html

I wasn't there, but having seen people get trapped in CM and then bump a cyclist more than once here in Seattle, I know it does happen, and I understand why cyclists get pissed off about it.

If the mini-van driver bumped the cyclist, then I say fuck it, they deserved to have their van smashed. It's hard to be pulled out of the un-reality of the safety/superiority of your car, but they just learned the hard way that cars aren't necessarily always going to win the battle. Might does not make right.

Who knows, if they hadn't met up with CM maybe they would've been in a head-on collision, as oft happens with automobiles. It could have been worse.

Note to drivers out there: if you're stuck in CM, just wait it out, turn off your car for a few minutes!

Seattle to Bellingham - the best and worst of country roads in Washington State

Dennis and I did the ride this past Saturday (the one we failed at two weeks ago), it was a hell of a ride! It rained the first half of the ride, but by the end the sun was out and warming us up, which we needed.

Walking into a grocery store about half-way in Arlington, people looked at us like aliens. The lady serving up mac n' cheese said her husband had a bottle thrown at him, presumably in Arlington.. not surprisingly also where we were heckled by rednecks while fixing a flat.

Stats:

• Start time: 7:30 AM
• End time: 5:30 PM
• Riding time: ~7 hours
• Total Distance: 110 miles (177 km)
• Headwind speed: 10 mph
• Flat tires: 1
• Hoots from rednecks in big trucks while fixing flat: 2
• Best part of ride: the view of the Pacific from Chuckanut drive
  
• Worst part of ride: the end of Chuckanut going into Bellingham! (lots of traffic, no shoulder with rock-face on your right)
  

Our route was pretty simple:

• Take the Burke-Gilman trail up to Woodinville, then get on Highway 9
• Highway 9 goes all the way to north of Arlington, take hwy 534 west
• Get on Cedardale Road going north (just before I-5)
• Follow it to Broad St (there was no sign, but it's a T-intersection), take a left
• Right on 4th Ave, turns into 2nd
• Riverside Drive north to Chuckanut
• Chuckanut dumps you in Fairhaven, just south of Bellingham

Here's the route on a google map, with elevation profile.

Highway 9 was pretty crazy, with lots of traffic, but certainly doable. About half of it has a shoulder, the other half has none. Lots of rolling hills between Woodinville and Arlington, it seemed like we went up 10 or so big climbs, each with a rewarding downhill.

Next time we'll have it to under 6 hours hopefully. The STP (Seattle to Portland) is 206 miles, and we're shooting for a 12 hour time on that one, so this is good training for it.

Failed ride from Seattle to Bellingham a success

A friend and I set out this past Saturday to ride from Seattle to Bellingham, which is roughly 100 miles. We wanted to use the Centennial Trail, which goes from Snohomish to Arlington, and skips the suburban sprawl that is closer to I-5. That we did, but getting to the trail was not as easy as I expected.

The problem was that we didn't have a clear route from Bothell to Snohomish, so we just jumped on a road and started heading North. But which was is North? Apparently we didn't know because we went waaaay East and ended up on Avondale road, south of Woodinville. At the time I didn't realize how far off course we were, but a couple on the side of the road made it clear once we asked for directions.

The other problem was that it began to rain in Woodinville, at first that light Northwest rain that doesn't really bother anyone, but then came down harder, and never stopped. We got Soaked.

It took us about four hours to get from Seattle (Capitol Hill) to Snohomish, when it should've been more like two hours! And did I mention we scheduled to catch the Amtrak at 7:30 PM in Bellingham ON THE SAME DAY?!

Well, we didn't make it.. We got off of the Centennial trail at around 4:00, but at that point our maps were falling apart due to the rain, so once again we were left up to our senses and directions from uninterested bystanders. We found Highway 9 and rode it through some foothills of the Cascades, and came out south of Mt. Vernon. There was barely any shoulder, but not much traffic either so it was a nice ride. We were trying to meet up with Chuckanut Drive, which would've taken us all the way to Bellingham.. But Chuckanut is in Burlington, just North of Mt. Vernon, which explains why we couldn't find it.

We bailed out at about 6:30 PM and got a hotel in North Mt. Vernon. We were both disappointed not to make it all the way, but it felt good to get into warmth and take a shower. I think we totaled about 80 or 90 miles, given how off-course we rode.

Next time we're gonna nail that fuckin' route! (and bring laminated maps)

solo century - twice around lake washington!

the lake washington bicycle loop is a popular ride in the seattle area, with both city and suburban views and some nice hills in between.

since i'm shooting for the one-day STP (200 miles!) this year, i decided to do an unsupported solo century just to see how i'd feel. the easiest route i could think of (and that i've done before) was to do the lake washington loop, but twice.

i completed it yesterday, and here are the stats:

• distance: ~110 miles
• total time: 6 hours, 50 minutes
  
• bottles refilled: 4
  
• flats: 0
• cramps: 2
• sore knees: 1
• boosted ego: 1

anyway it wasn't all that bad, although 200 miles this july won't be very easy, and this put it in perspective.

Critical Mass rules Aurora Ave once again!

This past Friday (2/23) i was late to 'mass', but caught up with the group downtown, in a super-stroke of luck. It's easy to see 100+ cyclists in the dark, what with all the flashing lights, and the traffic backed up behind them!

We slowly headed north towards Fremont, and while stopped on Denney Ave something weird happened: a Washington State Trooper pulled up beside us and shined his spotlight at our faces, kind of scanning the crowd, of course this yielded hollers and laughter from the crowd of confused cyclists. What was even more confusing was that the trooper then just sped off, and never said a word. Guess he figured it wasn't worth it to try to arrest us all!

Anyway we eventually snaked up Westlake Ave and cross the Fremont Bridge into the 'center of the universe'. Upon turning up the short but steep climb to the Troll, some kid on a fixie (and in a t-shirt in 30 degree weather) bit it hard, basically slid on his chest! and as usual with critical mass, lots of old road bikes instantly gave up on the hill, protesting to years of neglect no doubt. seriously, every time we go up a steep hill at least 10 chains come off!

After partying at the Troll (thanks to the dude with the keg on the trailer!), we eventually decided to take the Aurora Bridge! We walked up the East steps, which meant we had to stop both directions of traffic (all six lanes) - at first a few of us just stepped out into the street, halting oncoming traffic. This is super-scary consider the traffic NEVER sees bikes on this road, and they're cruising at 50+ mph... but they stopped when they saw our flashing lights in their path..

After we all regrouped, all 30 of us rode south on Aurora for 10 minutes or so, to the tune of a half-mile of honking traffic behind us! I tried to do a backwards circle on the bridge before the pack caught up, but drunken backwards-circles are no easy feat! Damn, I just wanted to say I'd done that, guess I'll have to wait till next time.

P.S. If you haven't seen the Fremont Troll yet check it

Fixed Gear Wiki Site Launched

You know wikipedia, right?

Well it's possible to take the mediawiki software that drives the site and run your own wiki, so as a fixie-nerd that's just what i did.

The result is this fixed gear wiki. It just launched yesterday but peeps are already adding to it, I'm happy that people are actually using it.

So, go ahead and edit!