wickedwords

Ride Length: 18 miles (more or less)
Elevation: no idea.
Where: Sammamish River Trail
Start Time: About 10:00 am
End Time: 1:00 pm
How long: About 2.5 hours
Calorie guesstimate: 1200

My bike computer was misbehaving today, so I didn't get all of the stats myself. But I think I've recreated what we did pretty well. The first part of the ride is all downhill as we headed to the waterfront, and it has some pretty good traffic. Once you get to the waterfront, though, there's a trail that leads all the way to West Seattle and to Alki. We passed where a cruise ship was loading, and wow, those things are big. I also did my "I hate bridges" muttering as we crossed over into West Seattle, but seriously, it's not a bad one at all. A little steep at the beginning, but it's easy to look straight ahead and not see how far you are up.

The day was pretty grey, but there were still a lot of people out on the waterfront path, and we had to dodge a few pedestrians and toddlers determined to escape their parents grasp. (Or pet the dog on the other side of the path, one of the two.) We stopped at the Alki bakery for cookies and hot chocolate, along with about 6 other cyclists. We probably spent a half hour there, warming up and just hanging out before getting back on the road.

The last part of the trip, from the waterfront to Capital Hill, is all climbing, and I was a little concerned about it. But the climb was a lot better than I thought--the route we took up Pike Street basically did a climb a bit, flatten out for a block or two, then climb some more--and we made it back in pretty good time. And by doing a short ride, Sandy and I had time to work on our VVC vid, before I came home to crash.

I'm pretty happy about how it went, and it did a lot to help ally some of my fears about next weekend. I'm pretty proud of myself for climbing Pike.