Tacking on two wheels

North Bend, WA
Monday, November 13, 2006

I had this great idea yesterday… go on a ride with the UW cycling team… bad idea. Turned out that they were riding for an hour and a half, I wanted to at least do three and a half hours. So I drove all the way to Bellevue just to ride by myself in the rain. It wasn’t so bad, but it certainly felt like a bit of a waste. I got to ride on some of the good old routes that I used to do when I was riding after college, but other than that there wasn’t much to be said for the drive. Of course, from North Bend it’s only a ~30 minute drive to Bellevue, but it’s 30 minutes longer than I want to drive to ride “with” myself. I did enjoy a few gusts of wind on the way back into Issaquah though; its fun when you suddenly hit a gust and you can’t get into a gear big enough to have a normal cadence. I love the wind when it’s not in my face, when it is, I’d probably rather be riding on the trainer in the rain…
Anyway, I drove to the Bellevue park and ride where I disembarked and continued via bike to the husky in front of the UW. Then I met up with the “dawgs” and began the south end loop going through Seward Park first. At the May Valley turn off I left the UW guys and rode around May Valley, over Cougar Mountain, through New Castle, and across Mercer Island to the I-90 bridge where I turned around and went back to the car. The ride ended up being about 3 hours and fifty minutes.