Metric Century Saturday

Since it was the 4th of July holiday weekend, there were no bike events schedule anywhere, so I decided to do some solo riding. A friend offered to let me ride with her on a century (100-mile) ride, but I just couldn’t bear to get up at 5:30am in order to eat, drive to the start location and be there by 7am. Instead, I slept until 9am and was still waffling about riding at all. I ate breakfast and put on my bike kit to see how I felt while drinking my coffee and checking email. I forced myself to start riding at 10:30am.

I rode stead from my house and made my first stop in Bothell along the Sammamish River Trail. After eating a peach and downing some water, I was off again.

I connected to the North Creek Trail which started out as dirt along an old dike to the other side of Bothell in the Thrasher’s Corner neighborhood. I saw a Panera and could pass up a chance to get lunch there (even though I had packed a sandwich).

When I got to south Everett, I noticed that my route took me right past the apartments where my granddaughter lived, so I made a detour to see if she was home. No luck…no doubt off on her own holiday adventure.

I didn’t stop again until I got to Snohomish, which was a little over 35 miles from home. There I talked to an elderly man about my bike. He was quite impressed!

I decided to turn back at that point and prepared myself for a massive hill that I had just ridden down. It used up quite a bit of my battery, but I had a second one with me.

I had planned to follow the same route back home, but instead decided to ride to my son’s house since I know exactly how to get there and how to get home from there. My battery was just about done when I parked my bike in his garage. I got 46 miles out of it which is quite good considering the hill I had climbed.

After visiting my grandson and charging my phone for about an hour, I changed my battery and headed home.

I had a couple of miles of road riding with traffic before getting on the Interurban Trail. It suddenly disappeared in Montlake Terrace and I had to ask a local how to find it again. So, I had a couple miles back on the road before the trail started again.

As I rode by Echo Lake I saw a guy making a video of himself dressed in a really weird bathing suit and cap. My photo of him doesn’t really capture how comical he looked (I didn’t want to reposition myself and embarrass him by letting him see my take his photo).

I got home around 4:30pm (I think) and immediately soaked in the tub. While I didn’t ride 100 miles, I did ride 65, just slightly more than a metric century (62 miles). It’s also a mile or so longer than any distance I’ve ridden in a single day.