The Bees

 They're out to get me.  

I've been stung by bees three times in the last 20 years during a ride.  This is where it gets weird, it's happened twice in the past 3 months.  The time before, I was riding down on the Green River Trail which is where I got stung this time.  The ride was good, I took the Light Rail to SoDo.  Not having to fight your way back up through what will turn into rush hour traffic makes the ride better.

One thing to note about the Light Rail system.  There is a rack for bicycles (two per carriage?), but deeper section rims may not fit into the rack.  On the way down I had to hold the bike upright and out of the way of other passengers.  On the way back I could let the air out of a tire and put the bike on the rack.  I think it's supposed be with the bottom tire down, but I couldn't let air out of the front tire because of the valve extender.  

Alki is crazy on a warm sunny afternoon, but the view of Seattle is pretty good.

A beautiful ride with a stain in the middle.

 I did my monthly 100K today,  Centennial Trail Run.  It's not a huge challenged and I was going pretty well.  It started off a little rocky.  I left my first aid kit and emergency inhaler on my desk.  Yes, that made me nervous.  I like the Centennial Trail Run, I do it fairly often.  There are fewer other users, and once you get away from Snohomish and Arlington you're all by your lonesome pretty often.  That suits me pretty well.  Pedal, contemplate the world around me and enjoy the activity. 

Pretty much smack dab in the middle of the ride is Nakashima Barn though.  It's an attractive location, a nice place to stop and in a part of the state that I feel a familial attachment to.  It's also a window into an ugly part of our nations past.  This beautiful location is a memorial to Executive Order 9066.  The Nakashima family were forced to sell their farm and sent to Internment camps with 120,000 other Japanese Americans. History Link has a good account of the history of the farm and the lives of the Nakashimas before and after the war.

This occurred before I was born and my family was not in Washington State at the time.  My grandparents told me about the event though.  The local families being shipped out, the meager belongings they could carry with them, and other people in town looking to profit from their forced removal.  I felt they believed it to be shameful.  Years later my father not always a paragon of racial equality, said that as a child he thought the people who claimed one old Japanese man was signaling submarines with his laundry were crazy.

I look at this barn and this photograph and wonder how we let this happen to us, but then I recall that we're doing something not all that different today.  I can see how it happened then, and I fear what it happening now means for us all.

Ouch

 I forgot to mention yesterday that I got a bee sting in Redmond.  No pictures of that, it's on my upper thigh so the bee seems to have hit my thigh and gotten squished up to my stomach.  It hurt at the time, and I couldn't get the stinger out.  This morning I have a nice red weal on that thigh and over to an old scar from 1980.  I doesn't diminish the ride, but it's a souvenir I can live without.

Back again.

 Well another 100k in the books.  I do RUSA 758 pretty regularly.  The downside is it's the Burke-Gilman / Sammamish River Trail / Marymoor Connector / East Lake Sammamish trail.  These are the busiest trail sections in the region.  They're off road, they're picturesque, they're also crowded.  I've ridden them at 5:30 am, it's dark, but a different experience.  So a good ride in general.

I forgot to mention, I went for a walk with Donna the other day.  You could see Mount Rainer on part of the walk.  That was nice too, I like walking/hiking with Donna.

Just barely squeezed in my 100K

I'm trying to get an RUSA 100K Permanent in every month because reasons.  Actually it's pretty much the easiest award in the RUSA catalog of awards.  The only real challenge of the P12 and the longer R12 (200K rides) is getting the rides in for December January and February.  In my case I missed September and October of 2024 because I had covid.  

It was a good day for a ride regardless.  The Centennial trail had a higher number of people than usual.  Weekend day, sunny weather that isn't too surprising.  I worry that we keep increasing the traffic load on these trails, without adding more trails.

Here is the obligatory photo of the bike on the bridge over the Stillaguamish river.  The river itself was still pretty high, we're getting melt off and runoff.  Fortunately even though there's rain it's not particularly heavy for the next week.

 

Hey Look it's only been a month.

 Another ride iteration of the RUSA 758 UW - Issaquah.  It's flat, so there's that.  I've been inside since the 29th of January.  There have been OK days for rides, but I've always had other commitments when the weather was OK.  So that's pretty much all there is to say about that.

The only other thing to mention is a strange observation I've had a couple times now.  I must pass a couple hundred pedestrians on these rides.  I'm trying to stick to the 15 MPH they have posted everywhere, mostly because where there is congestion even that is pushing it (IMO).  I give audible warnings when I pass, and I've scared/startled people on accident.  I may not succeed, but I'm trying to be a good trail user.  Sure I get annoyed when you have 3 people occupying the entire trail and nattering to one another oblivious of everyone else, but it's a multi-use trail and I try to treat that behavior the way I would want to be treated when I'm using the roads.

Having said that for the third time now I've had oncoming pedestrians actually cross the trail onto my side of the trail and squeeze me to the edge of the trail.  I find it really strange behavior, that's borderline hostile.  I'm not sure they're hoping to accomplish, punish all cyclists because some are jerks.  In that logic, don't their actions justify the jerk cyclists behavior?

Anyhow I hope it's just some strange spatio-motor co-ordination thing that makes them walk where they're looking, and that it doesn't get more common.  The BG/SRT/ELST are crowded enough.  If people don't make an effort to share it won't be any fun for anyone.

I did get a little messy.  Which is really wild considering the road was mostly dry and completely paved.

This time for sure.

 Apologies to all, especially Bullwinkle and Rocket J. Squirrel.

I've been working on trying to rebuild some strength and endurance.  I wouldn't have believed it, but I lost a lot from the clavicle incident.  Things are coming back, but it's not as easy at this age.  I can gain weight really easily.  Losing it?  Not so much.  In fairness, I think trying to hit the 15,000 K after the clavicle probably was the biggest problem.  I made the goal for the year, but it turned riding from pleasure to chore.  Not a good thing.

Anyhow, I'm back. I had a very nice ride down the Sammamish River Trail and East Lake Sammamish trail on Wednesday, the only memorable thing was the heavy frost on some parts of the trail.  It was somewhere around 34F when I started.  So I was pretty cautious at first.  I was mostly alone for the first 40 minutes, then the fog burned off and I started seeing more walkers and cyclists.

Anyhow:  I will do better.  This time for sure.