Not so Chilly but oh so Hilly! ;-)

Chilly Hilly was a GREAT ride!

It was hilly, but not too chilly. $5000+ bikes do not a rider make, I saw lots of bikes much fancier than mine being walked up hills today. Mine went up the way it's supposed to........ ridden! The miles accumulated since January 1st must be doing some good! The 33 mile route with 2,675 feet vertical compares with the 10 mile loop around Hagg Lake with 900 ft that I've been riding the last couple of weeks, ie: about 90 ft/mile average. There were some steeper sections on Chilly Hilly, but for the most part just a lot of up and down. Probably the biggest issue for me was the traffic. With 4000+ riders and only 34 miles, there was not enough distance for the crowds to thin out much. I had to continually lose momentum to avoid slower riders and/or faster riders maneuvering around slower riders. Maximum speed today was 41.8 mph, could have been faster but heavy bike traffic prevented an all out descent. Average speed was only 14.6, again, too many times on the brakes. It was still a fun ride, I'll do it again next year!

One of the longer grades, taken from about half way up.



Here's a slide show of some of the sights of the day:

The Kitsap Sun newspaper has posted a series of great pictures from the day HERE


I took a lot of video from my helmet cams. I've got one mounted on the handlebars and one on my helmet. The handlebar cam gets better video, but sound is pretty much limited to vibrations and wind noise. :-(

The helmet cam gets better sound, but video suffers from "looking both ways when you cross the street", checking chains on sprockets, etc. This was the first time I used the helmet cam and found that my aim was a bit high. For the most part when I viewed the video the camera was pointed above what I was "thinking" I was filming, so I haven't posted those. As for those I did post, it's kind of like watching video of someone else's kids, you may find these somewhat interesting if you are "bikey", somewhat less interesting if you're not! Feel free to click on them and watch, or not. ;-)

From the road:



From the road:



A rest stop:




Climbing one of the hills:




Bikes galore!



Preparing to "de-bike" a ferry:








With my round trip "commute" to the ride from Tukwila I managed 61 miles today.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

...............Road Bike.....LifeCycle.....Total Miles YTD
Today...........61...............0
YTD............378.....+........622....=.........1000

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++