A week ago today the Seattle Seahawks were in the Superbowl.
That is to say, the American Rules Football team that plays here in my city were in the championship game. The Superbowl is an interesting sports event, because even people who don't care about the sport tend to watch it. It's a major national holiday. I, however, don't care about it at all. I do like that the Seattle team is named after Osprey, the eagle-like raptors that hunt fish in the fjord.
Seattle is a terrible sports city. The fans are not very passionate, and tend to not know much about sports... and the teams tend to be terrible. There is a long history of losing teams here and it's even become a national story in the last few years about how bad Seattle teams are. There was a hockey championship in 1902 and a basketball championship in 1979. And the Seahawks lost the championship game in 2006. Otherwise almost always losing seasons in all sports and the baseball team is the worst in baseball history.
Suffice it to say there was a lot of excitement about this game, nationally of course, but especially locally. Although i certainly wanted the Seahawks to win, i had no interest in watching the game. I planned a bike ride with a friend.
We drove in her truck about an hour and a half to Olympia and set out on a gorgeous trail through the forest. One reason we chose a trail was because this day, Superbowl Sunday, is one of the biggest days for drunk driving. Not being on roads seemed a good idea. We set out late, around lunchtime, on purpose.
We rode from across downtown Olympia to a new trail called the Woodland Trail. It was very short, about 3 miles, but it was gorgeous!! It was also very well signed. Normally the signs on bike trails are poor. This trail had signs with street names at cross streets, a great feature which is sorely missing on many bike trails.
Early in our ride there were a lot of people walking on the trail before the game, but before long we were alone. Neither of us had ridden long miles in quite a while and we tired quickly, but we pushed through it. By the time we got to the end of the trail we both felt like we didn't want to go back the same way (26 mi) we came so we decided to head out on the road.
When we got to the little town of Tenino it was as if it had been completely abandoned. No cars, no people, no activity. You almost expected tumbleweeds to be rolling through. We did find a grocery store, which had no customers, and we fueled up there. Then we set out on old Highway 99, up over a small mountain. This is a road i would not normally ever ride on, due to fast, busy car traffic. But on this day it was almost empty. We saw maybe a dozen cars in 12 miles! No people walking or outside in yards. Not even dogs. Sue kept joking that it was like the Zombie Apocalypse.
It was very strange having the whole world to ourselves. Even in the towns, while fast food restaurants were opened, there was no one in them, sidewalks were empty, busses were empty, parking lots were empty and there were NO CARS ANYWHERE on the streets. It was amusing and strange. We rode up through Olympia, which was also empty and packed our bikes in Sue's truck right at sunset.
It was a very very nice ride and both of us got stronger as the day went on. It took over an hour to drive back to Seattle. There were cars on the freeway but traffic was VERY light. As we drove into my neighborhood, we opened the windows. The bars were packed with people, but everything was silent. We couldn't determine the status of the game. As we were unloading the bikes outside my building we heard some shouts and whoops, but they were all coming from just one apartment. We figured that could mean bad news. They might be Denver fans.
But pretty quickly people started yelling out the windows of all of the nearby buildings. Horns started honking. This seemed like a good sign. A bottle rocket shot out of my own building! And then the blue and green official fireworks show started on the Space Needle.
That told me all i needed to know. I didn't care about the game (or the sport), i didn't want to watch, but i did want the Seahawks to win the championship and i wanted to hear about it from my neighbors. It was fun!!!
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