Seattle Shakedown...

Today was a pretty easy day... I got my bike all built up last night with no problems, slept in till 7:00am, and after an overpriced Denny's breakfast, I went out for 23 miles of soft pedaling to see that everything was riding OK. After tinkering with the rest derailleur, which always seams to need fine tuning after a rebuild, everything is running smoothly. I found a great bike trail all along the Green River heading north into Seattle proper. All paved and dead flat, completely separate from the main surface streets.

After about 10 miles, the river turns into a tidal basin called the Duwamish Waterway.

It was really nice traffic free riding, and I even stumbled upon some massive banks of wild black raspberries-- yum!  And I thought I was going to miss all the blackberries in our garden this year ;-)

After getting back to my motel about noon, I got all my bags packed to ship down to my parent's in Riverside, where I'll catch up with them in a couple of weeks.  After dropping the bike bag at Fed Ex, I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around downtown Seattle.

I haven't been in Seattle in several years, and it's great to see they've almost finished removing the waterfront highway viaduct. It really remakes that whole stretch of downtown.

By afternoon, the sun had come out and made for a nice walk with views out the the Olympic peninsula-- that's always been shrowded in clouds every other time I've been here!

Tonight I'll get to bed early and take an early train into Seattle to catch the 6:00am ferry to Bremerton and the real start of the adventure! :-)