Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Wilkeson: An Attempt was Made (2019-10-26)

In Sumner

I had high hopes for riding to Wilkeson and back, only for the weather to have other ideas.

Geotagged Album

While it started off well enough, a combination of rain, wind, and saddle position problems made this ride less than fun towards the end.

Related albums

Sumner Out and Back II (Album)
Sumner Out and Back (Album)
Green River Out and Back (Album)
Truncated Foothills Loop: New Trail and Heat Exhaustion (Album)
Green, Carbon, and Cedar Rivers (Album)
Cedar and Green Rivers (Album)
Rain Dodging (Album)

More after the break…

Part 1: To Light Rail

Part 1: To Light Rail

Like usual, I started at about 05:00, However, due to the closure of the light rail through Downtown Seattle, I had to go all the way to SoDo to catch a train. While it was mildly annoying, it did give me the chance to try out the bicycle infrastructure being put in between the 2nd Avenue protected bike lanes and 6th Avenue S, which honestly wasn't half bad.

Hung up on Light Rail

Part 2: Outbound

Part 2: To South Prairie?: There was some pretty bad rain in the foothills.

Unlike last time, I remembered to get off at SeaTac Airport Station, and was immediately faced with much more climbing than I would've faced if I'd left from Angle Lake Station. It ended up being worth it, though, as the descent didn't feature a hairpin turn.

After passing through an industrial park, I rode along the Green River Trail for a bit. It was a little spooky riding in the cool darkness in these fairly rural areas, without another person in sight once I was away from the roads. I switched to the Interurban Trail at S 212th Street, and discovered that Interurban Trail at South 228th Street: Surprise gravel! This will likely be paved when the new overpass is done.the gravel had been paved over, though the fences on either side were still present.

After leaving the Interurban Trail at 15th Street SW, I took the C Street Trail, then made my way through Pacific to the Sumner Link Trail, which was covered in leaves in many spots.

Sumner Link Trail

I left the trail in the business park north of Downtown Sumner in favor of skirting around the eastern edge of the city via 166th Avenue E to Alderton.

Over White River
96th Street E

When I did get to Alderton, I discovered that Spooner Farms was having an Autumn fair, and tried to find some hot apple cider, but only ended up with a huge funnel cake.

Spooner Farms
Spooner Farms
Spooner Farms Pumpkins
Spooner Farms

After leaving Spooner Farms via their muddy parking lot, I was finally on the Foothills Trail. While heading south along it, I discovered a sign that reminded me of a Foothills Trail Bridge Out: This is why the trail is closedpast outage on the same trail.

"Bridge Out Ahead: No Thru Traffic": A bridge was knocked out by a tree out past South Prairie, many miles past this sign.

Since I wasn't headed that way anyway, I pressed forward. Another interesting change was the realignment of one crosswalk on the trail.

Foothills Trail Modification

The leaves were also in full force.

Orting Farm
Foothills Trail

Rain started falling a little past Orting when I stopped to eat, so I aborted the attempt and continued on in hopes of it letting up. While it did reduce some for a while, it started pouring much the same well before South Prairie. After seeing significant rain twice, I decided to give up and turn around.

Part 3: Return via Sumner

Part 3: Return via Sumner: Didn't really feel light fighting the winds for hours.

After looking for a nice indoor hot drink in Orting without success, I simply kept riding west and north along the Foothills Trail

Sumner Farm
Sumner Farm

After hitting the northwesternmost trailhead, I took Shaw Road E over the BNSF mainline, then E Main Avenue to Sumner.

Main Avenue/Traffic Avenue Widening

I ended up stuck at the E Main Avenue/Traffic Avenue for several minutes while the traffic waiting for the light never ended up emptying after each cycle. I ended up needing to jump in on a yellow after the traffic stopped.

Low on water, I headed to the local Fred Meyer to get more at the Starbucks inside.

And then I simply left the ity via the new bridge over the White/Stuck River. After crossing it, I discovered that the city had used part of the P9203318: OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAold bridge as art for the new bridge's park.

Heading north through the Green/White River Valley was a slog against a constant headwind. Likely due to the sugar from the funnel cake earlier, and the alcohol from the previous night, I was in a pretty bad mood at this point, too. After fighting my way all the way to Kent, I decided to give up and take the bus back to Seattle. It wouldn't be that simple, though, as a good portion of King County Metro's buses have bike racks that don't work with my Crust Romanceur because the hoop stabilizing its front lowrider rack, the front fender, and the randonneur rack combine to leave too little space for the bike racks' front arms' claws. After watching two buses roll by, the third one had a rack that had a smaller "finger" instead.

Part 4: Return Home

Part 4: Return Home?: My GPS died, so I rode the rest of the way home without it.

When I got off the bus in SoDo, a well-coiffed guy who was headed to Beacon Hill asked me if he was at the right bus stop while I reassembled my bike bags on the bike. I told him that the stop across the street was the stop he needed to be waiting at in order to head that way. Once my bags were all loaded up, I started on my way back north to home via 6th Avenue S and SDOT's new bicycle route.

At the top of Dexter Avenue, my GPS raised the usual "Batteries low" alert, and I thought it would be a routine replacement. Unfortunately, the batteries I tried wouldn't work after multiple pairs, and I assumed the GPS itself had some sort of electrical fault, so I gave up on it and simply rode home.

This ride taught me a few things:

  1. Minimize alcohol consumption.
  2. Never drink the night before a long ride.
  3. Avoid refined sugar while out on rides.

I also later discovered that some of the same batteries didn't work in other devices. All of my NiMH rechargeable batteries are from the same AmazonBasics package, and only the ones that had never been used don't work anymore: the charger says they're full, but no devices can get power from them. Since they're probably expired as of writing this post, I ordered some higher-quality Panasonic Eneloop batteries and plan to toss the AmazonBasics ones.

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