John’s Ramblings

Saturday September 6, 2008 was the Emerald City Lights Bicycle Ride. An interesting moniker, considering:

• Locally, Seattle is commonly referred to as “The Emerald City”. This ride never got closer than 30 miles to the city limits of Seattle.
• The ride occurs entirely during daylight hours, so there were no lights to be seen anywhere.

The ride begins and ends in Auburn, and benefits a local charity that helps families in need. I arrived at the start at 7:30 a.m., picked up my registration packet and handy-dandy reusable grocery bag (emerald green, of course), and was ready to ride at 8:00 (the official start time).  As my Green River Rider compatriots had opted for a later start time, I headed out solo.  As it turns out, I would rarely see any other riders along the route, and I saw none for the last 20 miles.

The route quickly leaves Auburn and headed out through Green Valley, with the first rest stop at mile 12, Flaming Geyser Park.  It was quickly apparent that I had made pretty good time, since they had not even gotten around to stirring up the peanut butter to put on the bagels.  From Green Valley, the 65 mile loop headed up the 218th Ave hill (a 1 mile long “character-builder”), then through Black Diamond (didn’t make a bakery stop), and out toward Ravensdale. That’s where this little fellow caught my eye.

...let me hose that off for you...

The silica sand plant at Ravensdale features a “truck wash” station, where dump trucks drive through a large conrete tub and have the sand sprayed off their tires, etc.  This replica of the Mannequin Pis (the original is a fountain in Brussels, Belgium) has had a hard-hat added, as well as a certain other “enhancement”.  I assume that when the other water jets are turned on, he helps the hosing process.

another dry bagel, sir?

After a “comfort stop” at Ravensdale Park, the route headed out Kent-Kangley Road to Kangley-Kanaskat Road, then across the foothills all the way to Enumclaw.  Having taken in this exact scenery on the prior two weekends with the Green River Riders, I was pretty much in head-down mileage mode, at least until I got past Nolte State Park and to some new scenery.  Food stop 2 was at the Enumclaw Fairgrounds, where the peanut butter had been stirred (barely), but all the signs weren’t quite up yet.  This reaffirmed my conclusion that I was at the pointy-end of the day’s riders, at least so far.  Given my growing fatigue, I assumed I would get passed with a fair degree of regularity during the last 20 miles.

I left the fairgrounds before any of the other riders, and never saw another rider the rest of the way back.  The route headed out to Mud Mountain Road, back through Enumclaw, and across the plateau through gently rolling farmland.  There was a brief stint of a mile or so that we had to ride on Hwy 169.  I didn’t find it all that busy, but it would have been helpful if someone could have run a street sweeper along the shoulder sometime last week.  The ride ends by winding through some neighborhoods that I never knew existed, and drops you down the hill directly to the start line park.  I finished at 12:30.

Size Matters

I would definitely do this ride again, if the weather cooperated like it did yesterday.  It was overcast for about half the day, sunny and warm for the rest.  On the plus side, the route was nice, and while it covers some of the same territory as the Headwaters Century (which actually takes place the following day), it was less crowded than it’s more well publicized competitor.

On the minus side, I’d love to see a little more variety in the food offered at the rest stops.  The Dan Henry’s marking the route were relatively small… you had to pay attention as you could miss a turn or two.

Tags: auburn washington, Cycling, emerald city lights bicycle ride

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