S.P.O.K.E.S. ride around Lake Sammamish
15th July 2007
I rode further today than I have in years but I haven’t had an easier ride in that time.
The Cascade Bicycle Club sponsors over a thousand rides each year, from the big (like Chilly Hilly or this weekend’s Seattle-to-Portland) to a variety of daily rides. While poking around the site yesterday, I saw the S.P.O.K.E.S. (Sunday Pedalers on Kinda Easy Streets) XXX Root Beer Drive-In’s 1st Annual All Harley Show. This had a lot of features that looked interesting to me: a starting point that I could easily ride my bike to (I dislike the idea of driving my car somewhere in order to ride my bike); an interesting destination (root beer, burgers, and fries are awfully appealing); and a pace that would keep away the people who use group rides as chest-thumping sessions.
We started from Marymoor Park and headed south on West Lake Sammamish Parkway. At the roundabout we headed east and followed the parkway as it ran along the north side of I-90. We stopped for a few minutes at the Lake Sammamish State Park then followed a series of paths with a couple of short detours on sidewalks to the XXX Root Beer Drive-In and their Harley-Davidson motorcycle show. The path included a few hundred yards on a gravel road. Though I didn’t expect any trouble, I was still pleased how well my Rodriguez UTB handled the path with its Serfas Barista 1.25-inch tires.
At the drive-in, I had the best root beer I have ever tasted. It was phenomenal. I also had a cheeseburger and fries but the root beer was so good that I wish I had just decided to have a root beer float instead of the burger and fries.
After we ate, we went through a few streets in Issaquah and got onto East Lake Sammamish Parkway. We rode that back to Marymoor Park to finish the ride.
The ride leaders were generally good about keeping us at the promised leisurely pace, although there were some downhills where we got up to 18 or 20MPH and one section as we took West Lake Sammamish Parkway down from the roundabout where we got up to 25 or so. I did a lot of coasting and often had to brake going down hill since I seemed to build up more speed than most other people in the group. My total distance for the day was about 38.5 miles. About 29 of that was the ride itself. The remaining distance was traveling from home to Marymoor Park and back. I averaged 12.4 MPH for the day, or a little over 3 hours of riding time.
The only tough part of the ride was on the way home on 172nd Ave up from West Lake Sammamish Parkway and through Ardmore Park: 300 feet of elevation gain over 1.25 miles, including a 10% grade on the trail through Ardmore Park. I only brought water with me, figuring that the ride wouldn’t be hard and that I would get all the nutrition I needed at lunch at the XXX Root Beer Drive-In. But the climb up 172nd was a lot harder than it should have been. Like Eric, I probably needed more salt. Maybe I should act like Kent Peterson and drink chocolate milk and eat PayDay Bars and gummy worms. But then he’s not a nutritional role model.
There’s another ride next weekend and I think I’ll do it too.
Oh, BTW, I took a handful of pictures.