Issaquah to Carnation on trails

I've been wanting to get out on the Snoquamlie Valley trail all year so when Nadine asked where we would ride, that was my suggestion.

I set out from home as usual to catch the 554 bus to Issaquah. A block from home i decided i should have some tights, and zipped back and grabbed them. It took maybe 2 minutes. I followed my normal route, i bombed down the big hill on Denny Way, made the first few lights, unusually, but then caught every light in Belltown. I was 2 blocks away when i realized i might not make it. While i was waiting for the red light at 5th Ave, just 80 feet from the bus, it pulled out.

When the light changed i sprinted the full block. I caught the bus middle of the next block, and i pulled up far enough to see that the bike rack still had an open spot. As we both turned onto 2nd Ave, i thought briefly of speeding down hill across town to the International District to catch the bus there. I could surely beat the bus down there, but i couldn't be sure the bike rack would be open. So i matched speed with the bus and three blocks later caught it at a stop. I was out of breath when i got on board.

At the Park & Ride in Issaquah i met up with Dennis (Linda had to work), Emily, Karen and Nadine. We rode along Gillman to the Preston-Issaquah trail. I really like this trail. Once out of town there is a short section of big gravel, but then it's smooth dirt through the forest. Karen, with her very narrow tires, was a bit worried at first, but it worked fine. Emily was on her mountain bike.

We got to ride the new trail extension at High Point which was really exciting. That trail section is less than a mile long, but it cuts off 2 miles of extremely hilly, frustrating roadway. It was looseish gravel and Karen wasn't thrilled, but we did fine. That puts you on the wide, flat frontage road to Preston, which has absolutely no traffic.

In Preston we got on the Preston-Fall City trail. This is paved, quiet, through the forest and just wonderful. Oh yeah, and a lot of downhill!

We had mentioned eating lunch in Carnation (we wanted to meet up with our friend Tom) but we were all too hungry and as we got on Fall City road at the end of the Preston trail everyone was suggesting a snack. I knew we would pass a burger joint so i suggested that. We really rode fast the two miles into town!

I got a small fries, thinking this was just a snack. It was HUGE. We all wound up eating lunch, accidentally!

We crossed the river and through the big roundabout to Rutherford Slough road. This is a trail access point that a private property owner had fenced off in a dispute a couple of years ago. Kent and i got trapped twice, once back behind the fence. I wanted to see if the fence was gone. It was. So we climbed the gravel road through the forest up to the Snoqualmie Valley trail.

Once we reached the trail we had a decision to make. We could go right, up hill, through the forest to the end of the trail, or we could go left, downhill to the flats and in to Carnation. Since we thought we still might get to see Tom we went left. It's a lovely pastoral trail. I can't get enough of it.

We stopped at Starbucks in Carnation. We weren't able to meet Tom. We rode the highway back to Fall City instead of the gravel climb. I was a little disappointed but it was a nice ride and i had a good conversation with Emily. Then it was just a rewind. Up hill on the paved Preston trail through the forest was fun and fast, downhill on the gravel trail to Issaquah was as well.

We tried to stop and see Kent at work in Issaquah but he was on a late lunch break. I hopped on the bus at the Park & Ride.

At 38 miles, and 1200 feet of gain, this was a relatively flat ride for western Washington at 35 feet (elevation gain) per mile ridden. I tend to think of over 50 as hilly, under 50 as fairly flat (for the area). The gentlest route for me to ride from my house, to Pioneer Square and back home (about 5 miles) is about 70 feet per mile.

I got off the bus on Merer Island and rode across the bridge and up the ridge to Volunteer park, because i wanted to ride a bit more. I stopped at The Black Sun in the park near sunset. I have photos of my bike in all weather there, figured it was time for another one. I wound up with time in the forest and 49.2 miles for the day. It was good for the soul.

Slow Earthquake Starts!

The Earthquake expected in late October started early!

I wrote a post about Slow Earthquakes back in June, (wonderfully strange 28 day long 7.0 earthquakes on the Cascadia Fault every 14 months).  I noted that it was predicted to start at the end of October -- but it's going on right now [dead link fixed 2013]. It started on Aug 10th. I don't understand a lot of the graphs and charts and science they're talking about, but they say that it might have been triggered early by a slow earthquake in Oregon. (I didn't know there was one down there!)

The daily blog for the 2011 Slow Earthquake at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network is a good way to keep up with this event. It's called the Episodic Tremor and Slip Summer 2011 Deep Tremor [dead link fixed 2013] page.  I wonder if the Earthquake will last 28 days from August 10th or if it will last until my birthday in mid November (when the predicted quake was expected to end).

Here are some other links:

• strainmeters (what a great name for an instrument)
  
• Borehole Strainmeters Record for the 2011 ETS Cascadia Episodic from the Geodesy Consortium
  
• Spectrogram images
  
• Candian Tremor Activity Monitoring System (Lower BC)
  
• Oregon 2011 ETS
  

The Cyclo- Jalopy (again)

This weekend, i was lucky enough to get to ride the Haulin' Colin built People Powered Parade Float again. And, if this is possible, it was even more fun this time!

We collected the wonderful machine from up on Beacon Hill at Walker's house where we left it last time. This machine has 7 pedaling stations installed upon an old Toyota Pickup chassis. The drivers' seat, transmission, clutch driveshaft, differential, brakes, wheels, tires, steering wheel, suspension and even the speedometer from the Toyota are still intact and are in use in this vehicle..

We pedaled across Beacon Hill. The ride up the slight rise at the top of the ridge of was hard work,

Juliett, Matt, me, Kye, Emily, Dylan, Tom, Davey & Adonia

Davey, me, Tom, Emily, Dylan, Danny, Matt & Adonia

Kye and his dad

Daviy Oil & me & Tom Furtulo pedaling hard uphill

but then we got to Colombian Way which would take us way down hill and all the way to Columbia City. We went very fast!

Near the bottom of the hill, the duct taped tire came apart, slapping the body and making a hell of a racket.

It wasn't serious but it did give us a bit of a scare. We limped the rest of the way to Bike Works. We parked the Octobike by the warehouse and went into the Thursday night work party at Bike Works for refreshments and circle time..

First thing on Saturday, before the parade, Ryan, the amazing lead mechanic at Bike Works went and got us a new tire. And he got it using a bike trailer; i love it!

The purpose of this trip was to move the vehicle down to Bike Works so it could be in the Rainier Heritage Parade on Saturday. We made costumes, decorated the machine and tried to name it. Megan and i tried to come up with a name based on cycle jalopy, but it didn't sound great. I think Chris hit on it a few days later it with Octobike.

Johnathon brought his banjo and Davey his Uke, so we had music on board too! It was a very hot day, and i'm not good in the heat. We tried to stay in the shade while we were waiting.

Davey asked who was going to 'drive', that is, steer and shift. The previous times i had 'ridden' the Octobike i had been pedaling. Since i can drive a standard transmission i volunteered, i figured i'd let everyone else have a turn at pedaling. I actually had fun shifting!! It was just like my old Toyota back in the 1980s.

So i drove in the parade. We had more people pedaling than needed so Juliett decided to show off her AMAZING hula hoop skills. She walked next to the Octobike part of the time, but she got up on the platform and performed while we moved along. It was great -- the crowd LOVED it.

Malia, Emily, Danny, Adonia, Juliett, Matt, Dylan, me, Davey, Johnathon, Meghan, Zack

Perhaps the highlight started off as a danger, loomed towards possible disaster and then turned out spectacular, when a little kid started to run in front of us to grab the candy we were throwing. I jammed on the brakes, forgetting that there was person standing hula-hooping on board. She was knocked off, but she managed to gracefully leap over Emily pedaling in one of the front recumbent positions and she, Juliett, landed on her feet while still hula hooping!!! The crowd went wild! They thought it was part of the act. I apologized to her after the parade.

When the parade was over the people walking were directed to the left into the parking lot next to Bike Works. That would've been ideal for us. But instead, the cops directed us down the steep hill on Alaska St and then even further, and tried go get us to go down Genesee.

So now we had to get up the hill again, and somehow avoid the Parade route. We moved past the football fields on Oregon St and waited for an 18 wheeler to turn around. Then we went up the hill on Rainier Blvd and on Alaska, with traffic. The cop at the intersection we wanted to turn left on was pretty snarky but we were polite to him. We were all pretty happy to pull up in front of Bike Works and find some shade.

We enjoyed the Summer Streets Ciclovita closure of Rainier and talked up Bike Works at the Bike Works booth. Here i am explaining the Octobike to Elizabeth and her family.

Summer streets was over at three and we were going to have to move the Octobike back UP Beacon Hill. Just before 3 good friend Joe showed up. We had been kind of expecting him earlier, he's a strong cyclist and we needed him. He showed up with his friend Chris which was good, but also with a cane and a slipped disc, which was bad. He could barely move.

Once he sat in the Octobike it was clear that he wished he could ride. I convinced him to be our driver while we all did the hard work. He came along!

In this photo you can see that the Octobike still has the brakes, transmission and everything from the truck!

Davey was quite worried that we would not have enough people to power the vehicle up the big hill, but when it came time to leave we had about 22 people volunteering. About 12 of us went. We pedaled out to MLK Blvd and then down the busy street. Davey yelled to people at bus stops that due to budget cuts, we were the bus. I thought it was funny.

We waited a while in the shade at the bottom of the hill while Davey & Danny & Adonia scored us some much needed food.

The we started to crank up the hill. It was very hot, and we were were all suffering but we decided to go up the gorgeous Olmsted parkway Cheasty Blvd which is heavily shaded.

Ryan, Johnathon, me & Joe in the shade
photo by Chris Zömbory

We had enough people that a couple could push and one or two could rest while the rest pedaled. We switched out frequently.

Davey, Danny, Chris, Johnathon, Joe, Emily, Matt & Adonia crank it up Cheasty Blvd in the heat

Johnathon, Joe & me

I took a turn in one of the front, recumbent spots. It's HARD work. I used muscles i don't normally use. I didn't last long.

Chris sweats it out pedaling up Cheasty;
She didn't know her visit to Seattle would be this much fun!

We celebrated once we got to the top and coasted down to Walker's house again. We were all happy to get some food and cold drinks -- it was hard work and took a couple of hours, but it was great fun. I'd do it again.

Here's our route.

Seattle Attacked from The Air

Central Seattle was the victim today of a series of sorties by the most expensive and deadly military hardware in the world.

The extremely low combat maneuvers are designed to frighten and pacify enemy nations. They are performed over residential areas only one time per year, with Seattle being the lucky exception to the strict aviation regulations. No bombs were dropped by the deadly warplanes this time.

While many people interpreted the fear generated by the terror machines as life threatening, it turns out this was just a Soviet style propaganda exercise reminiscent of columns of tanks passing the Kremlin in parade.

The ostentatious display of expensive military hardware was specifically designed to give Americans, especially liberals in Seattle, a warm and fuzzy feeling about war and imperialism and to make them feel happy about spending 70% of their tax dollars killing and subjugating people around the world.

July ride map

In July i rode 450 miles, only 9 miles off of a record for July.

I rode 19 days, 61%, down considerably from previous months,
partially because i was out of town several times for work, or
HAM radio volunteering but also because i lost a little interest
early in the month.