South End Ramble

With temperature of 28 when I set out, I knew it was going to be quite a ride, but the roads were clear, only a couple of frozen puddles to deal with, and I'd gotten and email from Mimi saying she'd left her glasses, so I started out by riding down to Boeing and dropping them off. From there, it was through Tukwila along the Interurban trail, and onto the Green River trail at I-405. 2 miles farther south, though, I started to see glare ice. At first, I went off the pavement and onto the dirt shoulder of the trail, but even that had puddles of slick glare ice, and just wasn't safe, so I got off and walked to S. 180th, about a quarter mile. By this time, the trail was totally impassable, so I portaged off down into Costco's parking lot, and slip-slided my way walking out to the main street. There had been a big ice storm that I discovered had pretty much messed up a 2 mile stretch, and ended up walking my bike for quite a ways rather than fall and break a hip. Ended up stopping for almost an hour and letting it warm up a bit before heading out to West Valley Highway, and then eventually over to the Interurban trail and out toward Auburn Golf Course. Found a trail I'd never seen before at 277th, and did the one mile climb to the top, 370' of elevation gain, thinking I'd get onto the street and fly down, but when I got to the top, the street said NO BICYCLES - 17% grade. DANG!!!!! So it was back down the trail, stopping to chat a bit with an old couple walking up who had been friendly when I passed them the other direction. Into downtown Auburn and north on the Interurban to 295th(?) and over to West Valley Hwy to the south end of Kent Golf Course and onto Frager Road. Where there had been no sun, it was still icy and I found a great old dilapidated car, thinking that when all bikes look like mine and all cars look like that, it'll be a much nicer world. Then I got back to where the ice storm had come through and the trail was still iced in, so went back to the main streets, over to Renton and up the east side of Lake Washington to Mercer Island where I stopped to watch three bald eagles soaring for a while, two of them landing in a nearby tree. After a coffee stop at Tullys on Mercer, I ran around through downtown MI looking for a candy store that used to be there. Guess it move. Found a really nice fountain, though and called Mimi to let her know I'd stop at Mutual Fish and pick up something nice for dinner. I didn't buy the octopus, but it was pretty. Here's a little slide show I put together on Webshots:



Southend Solo Ramble - 1/21/08