Chilly Hilly

6 of us from our little social bike group traveled northward for Cascade Bicycle Club's Chilly Hilly.

We arrived on Bainbridge Island about dinner time last evening and gathered together at a local eatery before preparing our gear for today's ride.

We began the morning ride just before the first ferry load of cyclists from Seattle arrived. That put us ahead of the wave of 6000 cyclists (with a good share being just people on bikes) Doak didn't bring a camera and thus wasn't encumbered with photo op stops. He finished the 32 mile route at 10AM. The rest of us took a little more time to smell the roses and soak in the ambiance of this ride. With the short distance there is no real need for multiple rest stops. Cascade does provide one "official" rest stop but the course is full of local groups selling snacks and drinks. How can you turn away a gaggle of girlscouts selling cookies? ;-)

One thing that wasn't being sold was a local minister who was standing along the road in front of his church and offering free blessings for cyclists and their bikes for those interested. Mark and I partook of the generous offer. Are we now faster? Stronger? Maybe immune to drivers' anger? No matter, we figured it was bound to be a good thing!

Even though we were on an island the views of water weren't as numerous as one might expect. Much of the time the trees and greenery obscured the view of water but provided their own scenic backdrop.

The 6 of us who made the trip have been riding through the winter and did not find the hills to be all that bad. Many of the "People On Bikes" probably had their bikes out for the first time since last fall and were walking their bikes on even relatively moderate hills. With 6000 bikes on the road and narrow country roads this sometimes caused some bottlenecks but considering the number of bikes this event was put together well and there were no real issues encountered.

Even those of us taking photos and lolligagging around managed to finish before noon. Our little group gathered at a Mexican restaurant for lunch before heading back south.

Lots of photos of today's event are HERE

Some photos that won't be posted are on Kay's camera...... that's resting in the holding tank of a porta-potty. Long story!


(if you click on the "play" button you'll see a 5 min video compilation of my photos, including a couple of short video clips)


............BIKE............LIFECYCLE.........TOTAL
Today.......35................0.................35
Jan........618...............0................618
Feb........692...............0................692
_________________________________________
TOTAL.....1320...............0...............1320