Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Tour de Vancouver: Sometimes It Rains Here

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, a bunch of us took a week's vacation to ride up to Vancouver and back the first week of July. Here's how the first couple of days went.

June 29: Prologue

This was a busy day, with folks arriving and putting bikes together and checking into hotels. By late afternoon, we were able to head out for a little ride around Alki Beach.


From left, that's Tom and Judy Spear, me, Jill Flowers, Cathie Allanson, Jeff Bauer, and Joyce and Steve Grizzle. RandoGirl was still at work.

On the way back, we stopped at Westside Bicycles and a few folks got some things adjusted and tweaked and fixed. With hope that all of our rides were now perfectly tuned, we headed down to Whiskey West and had a big dinner. I had whiskey.

June 30: Everett

We rolled away from our house just after 9 am. After crossing the West Seattle Bridge, we had to stop for our first picture.


Jill and Cathie were driving the van this day, so they aren't in the picture. Even though it was Saturday and the weather was kind of "meh," we were still the 126th bicycles to cross the bridge by then.

We took the usual way into downtown, dodging the folks getting on and off cruise ships, and out the Elliot Bay Trail. Then we spent over an hour watching boats go up and down in the Chittenden Locks.


From there, we went up the Burke-Gilman Trail to its end at Golden Gardens Park, just past Shilsole Bay Marina (the sign for which some members of the group mis-read, commenting that it seemed far too nice a place to have such a harsh name). Then we climbed.



At this point we got on a few roads that were new to me as we traversed north Seattle neighborhoods and worked our way over to the Interurban Trail. Traffic was pretty good, considering that we were in a major metropolitan center. Even better, the rain that had been threatening all morning held off. We almost felt lucky enough to stop at a casino.


But we didn't. Instead, we headed on towards Lynnwood and met up with Jill and Cathie at the Performance Bike Shop near Alderwood Mall. They joined us for lunch, reporting that parts of the trail were closed in the area. As we ate, the rain finally began.

The next few miles were kind of yucky. In addition to the rain, we ended up on some busy roads thanks to the trail closure. About the time we were finally able to get back on the trail, the rear wheel on Steve and Joyce's tandem also started to badly misbehave.


Fortunately, the Interurban Trail nicely connected up with quiet roads as it led us into downtown Everett. We were all happy to get out of the rain and into a warm hotel with good coffee, and were even more happy to enjoy an excellent dinner with a lovely sunset at Anthony's.


In the next blog, I'll tell you about how we got to Vancouver.

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