Friday, February 5, 2016

Finally! A Century After Two Months (2016-01-30)

It was the perfect weather for a day-long ride.

After dealing with ice, ice, more ice and…

…I finally was able to get a real century ride out.

Neil and Toasty Tangerine: Chilling beside the Carbon Rive
Geotagged Album

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More after the break…

Outbound

Outbound

I started at about 05:00, as has been the tradition, and headed south through downtown. The First Hill Streetcar recently started operation, so I snapped a photo of a vehicle shortly before it left.

First Hill Streetcar: It started operation only a week ago.

I was expecting rain, so I was all suited up, but I didn't really see anything significant as I went south through SoDo and Tukwila.

I did end up seeing drizzles from time to time, but they didn't really bother me.

Old Telegraph Pole: There are a number of these poles with glass insulators along the Union Pacific Mainline here.

Once I got just path 37th Street, the section of path that was iced up before was still flooding normally.

Toasty Tangerine with Helm Leasing #1851: Looks like UP #2067's spot was taken.
Interurban 'Canal': Last time I was here this was all ice, and there was more flooding further south. This time, I took C Street around this mess, rather than turning back.

So I decided to take C Street through Auburn instead, cutting over to the C Street Trail after it started on the west side. I then passed through Sumner and hit the Foothills Trail.

Foothills Trail
Foothills Trail
Toasty Tangerine and Christmas Tree Farm: The strip of land along the Foothills Trail is known for Christmas tree farms

The SR-162 bridge across the Puyallup River that was recently replaced with a modern bridge was still there, albeit with bollards on both ends.

Old McMillin Bridge: For some reason, the county decided to leave this in place rather than tearing it out. All that's changed are the bollards on either end.
Toasty Tangerine on Old McMillin Bridge: For some reason, the county decided to leave this in place rather than tearing it out. All that's changed are the bollards on either end.

At that moment, I was wondering if they were going to move the bicycle trail onto the old highway bridge, but the old railroad bridge still seems to be in decent shape.

McMillin Foothills Trail Bridge: Since the old McMillin highway bridge is still in place, I was able to get this shot through one of its concrete trusses.

From there, I made my way over to the Trailside Cyclery to chat, and we got into some political stuff.

The shop owner talked about how the recession caused by Big Money caused a lot of people to lose jobs, and the tent homelessness problems in so many cities are the result of this. This also caused them to lose their homes and families and end up on the street. Because of the despair, they turned to drugs. This large population dependent of drugs caused the drug cartels and smugglers to get huge amounts of business. I'm not 100% sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I think he said that "El Chapo" said that this helped him get so rich.

He also talked about how the daughter of the late owner of the local feed store was suddenly thrust into local land and house wealth when her father died long ago. The store is long gone, and the daughter is in her 90s, and now has to deal with taxes and maintenance. Whenever she cleans up the houses as forced by the town, the town raises her taxes. It's a pretty nasty situation, especially since she just worked like anyone else before she inherited all the properties.

I was sad to find out that the local bakery shut down, as it was often a stop of mine in the area.

While we were talking at the shop, there was a fender bender on the highway where the trail crosses it. Specifically, one driver stopped abruptly to let someone cross the trail, and the driver behind them rear-ended them.

Foothills Trail Crossing Car Collision: While I was at the Trailside Cyclery, we saw a collision where SR-162 crosses the trail. Apparently, one driver stopped abruptly while a trail user crossed the highway, and the driver behind them rear-ended them.

I left the shop so the owner could get back to work, carefully crossed the highway, then stopped at the Carbon River for photos.

Carbon River
Toasty Tangerine and Carbon River: OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Foothills Snow

Inbound

Inbound

Heading back, I followed the Foothills Trail to Sumner, then stopped at the Dairy Freeze for a lemonade.

And then I headed north up the West Valley Highway, taking it all the way past Auburn to avoid the flooding. I took 37th Street to get back onto the Interurban Trail for a little while. I'd never done it to this degree before, so I saw some new sights.

Rather than taking the Interurban Trail all the way back, I made a left onto the Green River Trail, then Frager Road to get some more distance in.

Green River
Green River
Shack on Green River
Shack on Green River
The Weather: It was like this after the clear skies earlier.

After seeing the nice weather all day, I was worried about the cloud cover in the skies to the north.

The Weather Over Seattle: I was worried about rain from the clouds in the far distance, but it was dry and partially sunny the whole way home.

I eventually made my way back to the Green River Trail, following the detour in Kent, then took it all the way to South Park

And then I crossed the South Park Bridge to follow the eastern side of the Duwamish River back through SoDo.

Seattle Illuminated by Sunset
Concrete Plant
SoDo

Through downtown and all the way home, I took my usual route. It was right around sundown when I got home.

I never really found a comfortable saddle position between "too high" and "too low" with the saddle all the way back. After checking some of my other bikes, my guess is that the saddle still needed to be further back, so I put an order out for my favorite setback seatpost.

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