My wife wasn't feeling up for a motorcycle ride together, so I did a solo ride by memory up the Kitsap Peninsula.
More after the break…
Main Loop
After unsuccessfully trying to convince my wife to join me, I ended up leaving (solo) at around 7:30. I didn't really want to do anything crazy since I was a little sad about riding alone, so I started by heading over to I-5. When I saw traffic backing on I-5 towards downtown Seattle, I switched to SR-520 and I-405 to bypass it, rejoined I-5 in Tukwila, and stuck to the carpool lane for a while.
As I approached Fife, I kept an eye out for a gas station that would actually have public restrooms (a rarity these days). I saw the 76 and Associated Tahoma Market off to the right, so I headed to the next exit to both get gas and use the restroom.
Since there was some traffic out on the main drag, I headed over to the nearest traffic light to make a left…only for it to never see me. After hanging a right from the left turn lane and eventually making a U-turn to get back to the intersection, I was stopped by a red light triggered by a line of cars where I had once been. What a pain!
Once finally back on I-5, I moved over to the HOV lane, then took the HOV exit to SR-16 and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I thought that I'd have to pay a toll to cross westbound, but it turned out that the toll was only eastbound. Rather than sticking to SR-16 all the way to Bremerton, I decided that I wanted to use SR-302 to go via the less populous part of the Kitsap Peninsula. Thus, I exited at Borgen Boulevard, only to realize that there was a closer exit to SR-302. Not only that, I had to wait to make a left onto that busy exit's road to get to SR-302.
SR-302 ended up being the more rural experience I wanted, and even turned into a 25 MPH side street at its final reach to SR-3! Once on the latter, I took it all the way to Bremerton (and was shivering the whole time from the cold!), where there was heavy, albeit moving, traffic around the SR-304 exit. As I continued north, I decided to look for food, and remembered the breakfast restaurant where I had a parking lot fall on my Triumph a while back. After almost turning off at the wrong exit, I left at the correct exit and hung a left to the Family Pancake House. My meal there consisted of eggs, bacon, and pancakes with coffee on the side for warmth.
After rejoining SR-3, I headed north to Poulsbo. My only recollection from this section was how fast everyone was going.
From Poulsbo, I took SR-305 to Bainbridge Island, where I made a quick stop to pick up some lemon blueberry scones that my wife asked for when I told her I was headed this way. Despite how packed the street parking was in the area, there were several free motorcycle parking spots. Nice!
Leaving my parking spot was significantly more difficult, however: traffic kept coming, leaving me just sitting there for several minutes. When I did find an opening, I thought that making a U-turn was a bad idea with the traffic, so I headed up the road a little, then used Eagle Harbor Park's parking lot to turn around and rejoined the road, this time headed towards the ferry.
When I did get to the ferry's ticket booths, I saw that there were cars parked in lines leading up to them, which means that they weren't taking any more cars. I tried my luck and walked up to the one of the clerks who was standing outside of the booth and she had no objections to letting me through (with fare). (A past ride had taught me that it was possible for motorcycles to get through despite no more cars being allowed.) She told me to follow the line of moving cars, which I thought was the lines of cars in the waiting area past the booths since they were moving when I showed up. Only when I heard one of the attendants shout "motorcycle" did I realize that there were lines of cars still moving much further down the road, so I joined them and ended up as the last one on the boat.
Since this route was fairly short, I only spent a little bit of time warming up on the passenger deck before returning to my bike and drinking my energy drink.
Return Home
I was delighted to discover that the mainland was warmer than the Kitsap Peninsula was. Less delightful was my route to the SR-99 tunnel: I wanted to make a right from Dearborn Street to 1st Avenue S, which I'd done plenty of times before, but the traffic pattern must've been revised. There was a second stream of cars to my right that preventing me from making the right, so I was forced to hang a left onto 1st Avenue S, then make a couple of rights onto Occidental Avenue S by the stadiums. There were crowds of sports fans and vendor tents on both sides of the street, but I only counted one car as I trundled along it. Once I got to the SR-99 tunnel, I just took my usual route home.
I ended up getting home early enough for my wife and I to pick up my Ninja from being repaired after its fall. I also had them do the routine maintenance since they would already have the fairings off, as well as install frame sliders.
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