Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Carbon and Green Valleys II (2015-01-10)

Another ride through these areas, though I was too burned out from over-exertion caused by caffeine to ride everything I had planned.

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More after the break…

Part 1: To Sumner

I started at about 05:00 like usual, and started south on my usual route out of Seattle. If I'm not mistaken, there was a little drizzle about, which progressively worsened.

Rather than sticking to that route, however, I crossed the South Park Bridge and used the Duwamish Route and Green River Trail to leave Seattle.

Despite the Green River Trail detour (still in place), I stuck to the trail until I hit the sign.

I followed my own detour on the major road nearby, then rejoined the trail at S 196 St.

Then I followed the trail until its end at the Interurban Trail, and followed that instead until 15th St SW.

At NW 15th St, I cut over to the C Street SW trail to its end. I then followed the East Valley Highway to Sumner, where I stopped for coffee.

While I was drinking my coffee, the rain stopped. This has happened before.

My route out of Sumner was along the Foothills Trail, which was pretty empty.

While riding along the trail in Orting, something caught my eye.

I really enjoyed discussing bikes with her. I also picked up some anti-friction cream.

It was a Soma Stanyan. He talked about how he was looking into getting either a Davidson or R&E custom bike built up.

When I left, I noticed a noise that sounded like tire tread rubbing on something, so I headed back into the shop to have her look at it. As it turned out, I the wheel wasn't all the way in the dropout.

I then continued to South Prairie, where I stopped for an Italian soda to drink with some food I had brought.

Part 2: Foothills

Next, I headed up to Buckley via SR-162. I also saw a car that was headed to the 'missing link' of the trail, but there was a "ROAD CLOSED" barrier on the trail itself.

I used SR-410 to exit Buckley, but unlike last time, I exited Enumclaw via Cumberland Road and headed further into the foothills along it.

The rain returned as I rode through there, and I knew the caffeine had worn off, so I stopped for some more.

The chain started making noise similar to when the derailleur isn't aligned to a sprocket correctly, but no matter how much trimming I did, I couldn't get the noise to go away.

I eventually made it to Palmer, where I hung a left toward Ravensdale.

At Ravensdale, I headed south via Black Diamond, where the chain started dropping on both sides of the ring.

I completely soaked the chain in lube, which was fine because the rain was still falling pretty hard.

From Black Diamond, I barreled down into the Green Valley, then headed toward Auburn.

When I arrived, I went to Zola's Cafe for coffee

Last time I stopped at a place called Secreto Coffee Shop, but I haven't been able to find it since. I asked the barista at Zola's about it, but she had no idea despite living in Auburn. Looking into it, it would be just before Zola's Cafe when heading west, but I haven't seen the storefront.

Part 3: To Othello Station

While heading further west on Main St to head home, I started seeing a lot of closed streets downtown. I had to detour a couple blocks north in order to find my way around it. I also had a lot of trouble with my chain dropping on the crank side of the big ring, and had to make sure to put almost no tension on it when shifting to the big ring.

There was a thick mist in the air that reduced visibility like fog would, but also collected on my riding glasses. I had to stop every few miles to wipe them off.

I took the Interurban Trail to head north, then crossed over at S 196th St to Oakesdale Way to get into Renton. Next, I headed along Rainier Way and the Lake Washington Loop, and both had far lighter traffic than usual. While climbing the hills of the latter, I realized that I just didn't have the strength to continue like that, and headed to take Link to SoDo.

The indoor wheel hooks are pretty nice.

Part 4: Return Home

From SoDo Station, I rode along the SoDo Trail. There were a lot of crowds leaving the train from the Seahawks game, so I took it slow whenever I approached them.

When I got onto the street, I had to contend with a lot of slow traffic all the way up through downtown. The traffic lights were all in flashing mode and the police were directing traffic.

Once out of downtown, I took my normal route home.

Epilogue

The following morning, I gave my drivetrain a good scrubbing to see if that would help with shifting on the front.

When riding to the farmers' market, it the problem still occurred, though slightly less often, so I stopped by my local bike shop to get it looked at.

The mechanic there at the time was unable to fix it, but she did not ice this bad behavior.

Even days later, nobody has a consensus on the issue. I've left the bike hanging on the wall in the meantime.

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