Day Two: Aberdeen, WA to Astoria, Oregon

Well, the Washington portion of the ride is now done & dusted! And frankly, I'm ready for Oregon.  Washington, while not a bad place to ride, was a little too much views of "trees, and not being able to really see the forest!". I'm looking forward to staying along the coast for most of the remaining days where you get more interesting, longer views, even if it means a bit more climbing here & there.

Today's ride did pass through some interesting country, with large swaths of forested hills  interspersed with stretches of tidal estuary.  As I rode farther south an got close to the coast I passed lots of oyster farms, and seafood processing plants here & there, after nothing but lumber and paper mills back to the north.  

Tomorrow is a long ride down the rougher northern reaches of the Oregan coast to Pacific City.  It's a mix of sandy beaches and rocky headlands.  I'm also planning to start a little later in the morning and take advantage of the tailwind that's supposed to kick in about 11am. The past several days I've been on the road by 6:30 or earlier, and today I missed a good breeze that came up - though it did come in handy the last 30 miles or so... ;-)

At any rate, all's well so far, and I'm having a great time.  Now it's time to head out and sample another local brewery.  Last night it's the Steam Donkey Brewery in Aberdeen.  Tonight it looks like I'll be checking out either the Astoria Brewing Co., or the Fort George Brewery... as they are each in easy walking distance, might have to try both!

Cheers!!

Day One - On the road! Bremerton, WA to Aberdeen, WA

So... The big day finally arrived :-). I got a good early start, and managed to leave the motel by 5:30am, giving me plenty of time to catch the train into Seattle to make the 6:45 ferry.

The day was much nicer than yesterday in terms of clear sky, with just a few high clouds, and a bit chilly, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable.  The ferry left right on time, with beautiful views of Seattle and across Puget Sound to the Olympics.

I arrived in Bremerton at 7:30, an conveniently, there was a Starbucks about 10 yards off the dock, so before setting out on the ride, I got a good hearty breakfast with a grande latte to fuel the first couple of hours.  My route to Bremerton ran across through almost pure forest for most of the way.  Not the most scenic day, but I sure saw a lot of trees!  Spruce, fir, hemlock, cedar, pine, alder, and lots of big leaf maples! 

After one minor GPS failure (my Garmin wanted me to use a gravel private forest access road, so I had to backtrack and reroute about 5 miles), I eventually headed down toward the coast along the Kitsap River. 

Here the landscape got a bit more interesting, with a mix of forest and scattered small farms.

After a little over 6 hours in the saddle, and 92 miles later, I rolled into Aberdeen, WA.  Aberdeen is definitely an ESF "stumpy" kind of town- the welcome sign on the road in proclaims it to be the "lumber capital of the world!". Lots of sawmills on the riverfront, and they've got the forests to keep them busy for sure!

Tonight I'm staying at the Travelodge in downtown Aberdeen, and it's definitely a step up from my place at SeaTac.  That motel was clean & cheap enough, but I'm sure going to appreciate the firm bed and nice pillows here :-).  So for now, I'm off to a well-earned dinner at Steam Donkey Brewing! According to Strava, I burned 3500 calories today, so I've got my work cut out for me :-)

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! :-)

Seattle!

Welcome to the first real day on the road... or in today's case, wandering through airports with everything needed to ride from Seattle to San Francisco over the next two weeks.  While things pack down to a pretty small package, and I'm carrying less than 15lbs of gear, clothing, and food on the bike each day, it's a lot of stuff:

And I get to squeeze my bike into its travel bag too!

But everything's going well so far, with Norma dropping me off at the airport in Syracuse at 5:30 am- the cost of living in rural upstate NY being you need to leave at dawn to go anywhere, and you always get home at midnight ;-)

As I write this, I'm flying somewhere over the Dakotas, with about 2 1/2 hours left to get to Seattle. Fortunately, my trusty United Airlines app tells me my bike bag got successfully loaded on board my transfer in Chicago, so if you are reading this, everything got safely to Seattle!  Now I'm almost ready to get rolling :-)

The plan is to build up the bike today at my motel near SeaTac, then go out for a good shakedown ride in the morning to see if I need to hit a bike shop for any last minute adjustments or gear.  Then it's truly time to hit the road, first thing Friday...

Back to Caz from Little Falls - Test ride Day Two

After yesterday's 70 miles ride out to Little Falls, with a nice meal at the Canal Side Inn, today I looped 82 miles back home to Cazenovia riding almost 70 miles on the Empire State Trail following the old Erie Canal. The trail is about 50% paved in asphalt, with the remainder fairly good "double track" gravel, stone dust, & well packed dirt.  Occasionally the trail "disappears" and there are semi-marked bikeways on regular streets or rural roads, but the majority is right on the old canal--scenic, shaded, and lightly travelled.  Today I probably passed a couple dozen other touring cyclists.   At any rate, 70 miles of almost pan flat riding made for a pretty easy day, though without any hills to stand up on, your seat definitely feels the miles more ;-). I won't have to worry about that on the Pacific Coast- almost every day has 3000'-5000' of hill climbing!

Anyway, I arrived home safe and without any notable gear failures, Dave for one plastic buckle on my front pack. I'll be sure to get a stronger one for the big ride in a couple of weeks...  So-- stay tuned, and wish me luck!  ;-)

Test Ride overnight...

Today is my first test ride with all my gear fully loaded.  I'm heading to Little Falls in the Mohawk River valley, about 70 miles east of Cazenovia. I'm overnighting in Little Falls at the luxurious Travelodge Motel ;-), then heading back to Caz tomorrow.  

Today's ride was gorgeous- 70 miles, light breeze, hardly a cloud in the sky, and a near perfect 75F.  Light traffic, even riding through the city of Utica, which I've never ridden through before. Once past Utica, I hooked up with the new Empire State Trail, which follows the Erie Canal all across the state... Pretty cool!  Really nicely paved along this stretch too.  I'm planning to ride about 60 miles west along the trail tomorrow, all the way to Chittenango.

So... A really good first outing to test the gear setup.  I'll check back tomorrow after finishing the return trip with a brief report on day two of the "shakedown" tour of CNY. :-)  One final note-- definitely a good omen :-).. . While riding along NY Rt. 12 south of Utica this morning, I found a cell phone lying on the shoulder of the road- pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. After arriving here in Little Falls,  I turned it on, and while it was locked, the home screen listed a bunch of missed calls from a number with an Albany area code. So, I gave it a call on my phone,  and sure enough, found the person who lost the phone!  She asked where I was, and said she'd come by and get it on her way back to Albany this evening.  So I left it for her at the motel front desk and headed out to dinner.  When I got back to the room, the front desk called and said that "Susan had left an envelope for me."  ...and in the envelope  she left a nice thank you note, and $100 !!  Sometimes the world still surprised you :-)

 

Gearing Up!

Loaded for bear and ready to roll! I just finished test loading everything onto the new Ritchey, spare riding kit, street clothes, toilettries, electronics, rain gear, tools, pump, a few key spare parts & tubes, a days' riding food (mostly granola bars!), and two full water bottles... 33lbs even for the whole tamale! 

I'm planning an overnight "shakedown" ride Thursday and Friday this week to test how everything works ;-). New entries in the blog will report on how that goes before we head west in July :-)