John’s Ramblings

Saturday was to be my high-mileage day of the week. The basic plan was for Kevin, Terri and myself to ride to Alki from Auburn. After a lunch break Terri could head back south via the flat route, while Kevin and I made another attempt at the Burien, Normandy Park, Des Moines, Redondo, Browns Point coastal run. We had tried that route last June, but we had run out of time.

As we cruised through Fort Dent Park in Tukwila, Kevin noticed that his rear tire was losing air. We stopped and changed tubes, and proceeded to explode the new one when the bead of his tire would not seat itself in the rim. We patched his old tube, and watched the tire carefully as we pumped it up to about 60 psi. Thinking we were in good shape we headed straight for 100 psi, and were rewarded with another loud report as the tire slipped out of the rim on the other side. It seems that the bead of the tire had the rubber worn off in places, and the exposed wire would not hold against the rim. We employed a third tube, pumped it just enough to get him rolling, and backtracked south to the nearest bicycle shop. Kevin was fitted with a spanking-new Armadillo rear tire and we were rolling again.

The tire changing and shopping ate a good 90 minutes from our cycling day, and thus we would not have time (once again) to do the coastal challenge. We changed plans to just do a run to Alki Beach, have a spot of lunch, and head back.

As we passed through the South Park district, we encountered a group of cyclists that were obviously hunting-and-pecking their way through the neighborhood in search of the missing Duwamish Trail. We eventually gathered them up into our little pod, and made the run up W. Marginal Way & Harbor Avenue to Alki Beach. The weather was gorgeous, and there was plenty of people-watching material.

We had fish and chips at The Sunfish, then headed back. There was quite a commotion near Salty’s, and we came upon this rather interesting looking car accident. It seems that, for reasons unknown to us, the white car had been heading north at a high rate of speed. He crossed over to the left, scraped a parked car down the driver’s side, continued it’s course north, and after 50 yards or so slammed head-on into the red Acura you see here, which was parked against the curb. The Acura was hit with enough force to push it on top of the Volkswagen, which was also parked.

Since we now had the 14 mph winds at our back, the trip home was pretty comfortable, and seemed like it took way less time (of course, we didn’t sit around a bike shop for 45 minutes, either). It was getting quite hot, however, and we had to stop in Kent to replenish our water supply before doing the last few miles to Auburn.

Terri and I are leading a Newcomer’s Ride for Cascade Bicycle Club on Sunday, which will be a leisurely but HOT 23 miles. The forecast for today is 90 degrees.

66 miles for the day, 2,014 YTD.

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