Winter Wet in Washington

The Chehalis Western Trail

The forecast wasn't looking very encouraging when I packed my bags, but not my bike, for Olympia last week. Our 7-day stay was offering no more hope than two partial days without rain, and since we were going to the Pacific northwest where the roads don't dry out until late Spring and moss grows on the north side of basically everything, I wasn't feeling very optimistic about being able to ride. There would, however, be a couple of bikes at the other end of the transcontinental flight, so I filled a bag with winter riding gear, shoes, pedals, and helmet, hoping for the best.

We arrived in Seattle after two remarkably on-time flights, rented a car, and made the drive down to Olympia under, of course, overcast skies with occasional light rain.  Overcast skies with occasional light rain pretty much defines winter in the upper-left corner of the contiguous US, once you add "with temperatures in the 30s and 40s." We were staying at a brand-new Hampton Inn about half a mile from The Daughter's house. The place was all shiny new and all of the staff acted like they'd just stepped out of hospitality training school.  Danielle and Shannon's new place was nice, even though it was packed with three visiting family members and three visiting family dogs in addition to Danielle's two dogs. If you'd like me to do the math for you, that's 7 people and 5 dogs.

A little park on the bike trail with a much-appreciated
bathroom.  Danielle's old Cannondale worked out fine.

The first chance to ride was the day before Christmas.  The streets were soaking wet, but it looked like the rain would hold off for a few hours.  I went to the garage to swap out Shannon's SPDs for my Keo pedals and hit a brick wall.  The drive-side pedal had pretty much welded itself to the crankarm.  I'd brought my pedal wrench, but couldn't get the thing to budge despite resorting to standing on the wrench, heating up the crankarm, etc., etc.  After half an hour I gave up and resorted to Plan B, which was to use Danielle's 650c Cannondale.  I think the frame size on that is 42.  Fortunately, there was enough seatpost, so I set it at my usual 65.1 cm, moved all of the steerer spacers from above to below the handlebar, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it would suffice.  Granted, the reach was way short, but since I'd be riding pretty slowly anyway I didn't figure it would matter much.

Just as the rain started and I headed home on Tuesday.

The temperature was 37F and the streets were wet, but it was still the best shot I'd have for a couple of days.  I downloaded a Strava Route from Danielle's account and uploaded to my Garmin 500, which was something I'd never tried before, but since the 56 mile loop would take me places I'd never been before, and I'd probably be cold and wet for the last half of it, I figured it was well worth experimenting.  As it turned out, it worked great, which is to say I never missed a turn despite starting out in the wrong direction and having to turn around after a mile or so.  I was wearing long tights on top of thermal knickers with shoe-covers, two layers underneath my winter riding jacket and a wind vest on top.  Long gloves with wind-resistant shell gloves over them completed the ensemble unless you count the liberal amount of chap-stick on my nose, lips and cheekbones.  As it turned out, I was plenty warm enough for the first part of the ride which was on the bike path.  Although it was covered with wet leaves and branches in a lot of places, it was otherwise pretty nice. After 12 miles on the Chehalis Western Trail bike path that I'd ridden a couple of year earlier I turned off onto a nice country road with a few little hills and some nice scenery, eventually riding through the town of Tenino.  From there I picked up "Old Highway 99" which I had hoped would be another nice, nearly abandoned, old country road.  Unfortunately it was relatively busy which kept me on the wide shoulder to the right of the rumble strip, which would have been OK except that it was covered with rocks and mud and stuff from all of the rain, and of course it was soaking wet.  By the time I got back into Olympia I looked like I'd just done a cyclocross race.  I took the bike into the back yard and hosed it, and my shoe-covers, down before peeling off the soaked clothes and throwing the whole muddy mess into the washer.

Christmas day was pretty much spend on the couch while three people worked the kitchen and a humongous turkey roasted in the oven.  On Monday we made a trip up to Seattle to take the Underground Seattle tour and visit the market and generally get out of the house.  It was pretty freaking cold and overcast the whole time, of course. The underground tour was interesting, as was the market, so worth the trip.

Underground in Seattle. Looked like my basement.

The next morning, on Tuesday, I stared at the weather map for a while and eventually decided to try and get in some miles before it started raining again.  The streets were still just as wet as they'd been three days earlier, and there was definitely more rain on the way, but by the time I headed out in the early afternoon the temperature was up to a relatively balmy 44 degrees.  Knowing I'd probably end up in the rain, I dressed almost as heavily as I had earlier in the week.  I made it about 17 miles before it started raining, so at that point I turned back to retrace my route back to the house. I arrived back pretty well soaked from head to foot, so the bike got another wash with the garden hose and the clothes got another trip through the washing machine. Anyway, considering the forecast when I'd left New Orleans, I was reasonably happy to have gotten in 94 miles during the visit.

Arctic Wolf at the Tacoma zoo

On Wednesday the weather was the best we'd seen with sunny skies and relatively moderate temperatures but we had a road trip that day to the zoo in Tacoma and by the time we got back from all of that it was too late for another ride.  Sunrise in Olympia was around 8 am and sunset around 4:30 pm, and riding in the dark on wet unfamiliar roads would have been a spectacularly bad idea during a holiday visit, so I put Danielle's seatpost and handlebars back where I'd found them and packed up the riding clothes.

Mount Ranier through the car window on the way to Tacoma.

The trip back home was not without its complications. We'd left ourselves plenty of spare time for the drive to Seattle since we'd have to return the car and there was a chance we'd get stuck in rush-hour traffic.  As it turned out, the traffic wasn't a problem at all.  We turned in the car and caught the shuttle to the airport where the Alaska Airlines check-in kiosk kind of crashed on us with a message reading "Oops!  Something went wrong.  Please see an agent."  As we were waiting in line for that Candy realized her phone was missing and we figured it must have fallen out in the rental car. We got the bags checked and then headed back to the shuttle and car rental station where, luckily, they had found the phone.  Finally returning to the airport we went through security where the scanner found a crumpled up cash register receipt in the bottom of one of my pockets which triggered a full body search.  I have no idea what the rationale for that might be.  Anyway, they failed to find any weapons of mass destruction on my person and we finally made our way to the gate, which we quickly discovered had been changed to another concourse.  It was a good thing we had given ourselves a whole extra hour!

Back on home turf Friday morning

On the long non-stop flight back home I re-read Erin's book "Postcards from the Sky" that I seem to read every time I'm on a long flight since it's one of the only books I have on my iPad.

Finally this morning I was back on my own bike with the temperature in the mid-40s, so I headed for the levee bike path and had a nice 50 miles, meeting up with Pat and Steve and Charlie and a couple of others along the way.