Hilly Route

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Today I pulled out my bike and went riding under a gray flat sky. No wind, except the wind created by rolling down the road on two 29" tires. 49°F degrees. It rained yesterday, on Christmas, so the road still had a few small puddles, but the road was almost dry. I had the day off because of the holiday so it gave me the rare opportunity this time of year to ride during daylight hours!

After a short distance I got on the Yelm-Tenino trail to ride into town. My only destination on the ride was the post office, to check my box there. After recycling the ad circular I got back on the bike and headed out down the street. I took the steep road out of town. It's not a big hill, but it's a hill. There aren't a lot of options around here to find hills.

From there I pedaled down Rainier road to Military, then followed a series of roads to loop around Rainier. While I rode along I saw cows, dogs, alpacas, horses and even pigs. The back roads were sparsely traveled today so I mostly had the road to myself. One benefit with taking this route were more hills, a couple good ones but ultimately hardly more than bumps in the road compared with climbing passes for the continental divide. As my training progresses I'm going to have to ride farther afield to find some significant mountains to ride!

But for today it was fine. A nice short loop as I start getting in better shape. Bike and rider both functioned fine. I'm planning to start riding more at the gym before work, so I can get in some morning time. Hopefully by the time the days get longer and I start riding to work again I'll be in good shape for the rides. I have some new routes mapped out that I'd like to try.

Timberland Regional Library: Tumwater

Tumwater Timberland Library

Yesterday I checked another library off my list of Timberland Regional Libraries to visit on my bicycle, when I went by the Tumwater library.

In a couple weeks I'm starting a new position with the library system and will be based at the administrative service center just a short distance away from the Tumwater library. Yesterday I was working out there for training so I decided it'd be a good day to practice the commute with the added detour by the library.

It was 39°F when I left the house at sunrise. Beautiful morning with only a few clouds but cold! I'd bundled up, though, so I wasn't actually all that cold. I'm gradually getting my gear together so that I can handle any temperature. If it was colder I might want a pair of lobster claw gloves, maybe a baklava and another layer on my legs if it got really cold. I don't want to get too warm though so it's a balancing act. On this ride it worked out just about right.

I also got to test out a new app that I installed on my Optimus V phone, called MyTracks from Google. It's a GPS app that tracks your route, live speed/distance/elevation numbers (although the elevation isn't accurate). After you're done recording your route you can share it to various Google services or with friends. It worked very well at tracking my route.


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Since it exports to Google Docs you can build a spreadsheet of your rides, which will be nice as I add mileage and track my progress.

After work I headed home without the added detour. It was much warmer on the way home so I was down to my shorts once again. I started the day riding at sunrise and finished the day riding at sunset. Not too bad!

Only one Thurston county library remains: Olympia!

Tenino Old Oregon Trail Marker

Old Oregon Trail Marker

On Friday I decided to take the long way to work, which brought me into town via the main highway / Sussex where I stopped to take a picture of this marker. I've known about it and I've even ridden by it but hadn't stopped to take a picture until now.

I found an article about this marker in an article about the Seattle to Portland ride, which points out that this was the first marker laid by Ezra Meeker. That's the cool thing about taking a minute to look at markers like this, they remind us of history. Most of the time when I've gone past this marker I didn't stop, didn't really think about it much. It becomes an invisible piece of the landscape. But on the bike you have more of an opportunity to just stop and think about what is around you. In this case, a chance to stop and look at the marker, and then think about it and read a little about the history of it, coming away feeling a bit more connected to the history of this place.

It prompted me to download The Ox Team by Ezra Meeker, which looks very interesting to read, from Google Books.

I didn't set out on the ride with the goal of riding past the marker, but I did think about it before I left. My main objective for taking the long way was to get in more mileage and hills. My route took me down the Chehalis-Western trail to Waldrick, on over to old highway 99 and then up over "Chain Hill".

Coming up on Chain Hill

Chain Hill isn't a big hill. It's about 300' of climbing over a fairly short distance, but it isn't too bad. It's just one of the bigger hills around this fairly flat area. There are bigger hills, but I'll have to go off the paved roads to find them. This route is pretty much my new commute, except with the new route I'll turn right off Waldrick instead of left. Either way ends up being about 17 miles, a little farther for the new commute. And of course with the new commute I've  got ~17.5 miles to ride to get home. On this ride I took the Yelm-Tenino trail home, so my final distance was about 7 or 8 miles less. Still, it was good practice and fun!

Fall is Here

Fall Trail

The rain let up today, the temperature wasn't that cold, so it turned out to be a nice morning for a commute. With all the rain and storms we've had recently there's a lot of Douglas fir needles, branches and leaves down on the trail. It felt great getting out and riding to work.

Tree Down

Near the lake there was a tree down across the trail (sorry for the blurry picture). I'd was able to go around the tree without any problem. It looked like the Parks folks had been cleaning up this portion of the trail and I think the tree fell when other brush was removed. By the time I came back in the afternoon the tree was already cleaned up and gone.

I'm trying to get out more, build up more mileage but I feel like I'm making slow progress. I need to get out riding more days than I've been doing and I want to build up more distance. This weekend I'm thinking of doing another library ride and head down to Olympia, but we'll see.

Timberland Regional Library: Lacey

Lacey Timberland Library

Today I got to check another library off my list of libraries to visit on my bike. I had a meeting nearby so I left with enough time to pay a visit to the library where I worked for fifteen years! It's funny the things you notice when you've been away from a place. The tree behind the sign has grown much taller, and the sign itself, something that I'd pushed to get added, has recently been repainted and touched up. It looks good!

I gave myself plenty of time to get there so I didn't have to push too hard before the meeting. It's dark this time of the year, but the sun was just starting to come up as I climbed the hill to leave Rainier.

The picture doesn't do it justice, but Mt. Rainier looked awesome

Since I had a meeting I had my clothes in the handlebar bag, I just changed when I got there. The ride to the library I took Rainier road down to where the Chehalis-Western trail joins it just at the border of Lacey. I got on the trail at that point and took it on into Lacey.

The small section of the trail that's unpaved

I turned at the junction with the Woodland trail. The last time I was here the Woodland trail wasn't complete, this section was nothing but gravel.

New, Improved Woodland Trail

After a very good day of training for all staff working in the libraries I changed back into my bike clothes and headed right back out, crossing the street to rejoin the Woodland Trail and head home.

Woodland Trail, Along Pacific

It's great that we have such fantastic trails around here, but as I mentioned in my last post, there are reasons to take to the roads too. I rode the trails through the main part of Lacey, but then took Rainier road back home. It does mean riding next to traffic doing 50 MPH, but there's a generous shoulder. There are more hills, but the main reason that I went that way today was because sticking to the Chehalis-Western trail would have added several miles each way to my ride. I ended up with ~32.5 miles round-trip as it was, and that's enough for today. All things considered I feel pretty good, but I can also feel that I worked my legs today! I might take tomorrow as a rest day.

Highway Commute

Highway 507

This morning I decided to take the highway instead of the bike trail. There's a few reasons for that:

• More hills! I'm working on my mileage but the Yelm-Tenino trail is a converted railway trail so the grade and hills are mild. There aren't any huge hills on the stretch of the highway either, but it's a bit more hilly than the trail. That's a good thing.
• More traffic! I'd rather not ride with cars around, honestly, but since cars aren't going to vanish and my new commute (switching to a new position and a ~17.3 mi commute) will involve more riding on roads, I need to feel more comfortable with the traffic.
• More visible! I think it's important for drivers to see more cyclists on the roads. The trail is nice, but we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that cyclists must ride the trail. By being out on the highway it reminds drivers that there are other folks on the roads. Maybe that helps.

Right after I took the blurry picture above (sorry, my phone takes terrible pictures), the rain started. A few drops became many drops and then before long I was soaked. I was wearing bike shorts and a jersey, messenger bag over my shoulder. Helmet, of course. My work clothes were in a handlebar bag. I'd actually put on my fenders this morning in anticipation of the chance of rain. The forecast only said 30%, but clearly we hit that! 

The wind blew, the temperature was cool to cold and felt colder with the rain. I'm sure this might sound odd to some, but I had fun! It was a great ride speeding along the highway with cars zipping past and the rain pouring down. The Marlin took the hills pretty easily. The wide shoulder gave me plenty of room but I also kept an eye on approaching cars with my helmet mirror. The dim conditions emphasized what a difference headlights make! Cars with their lights off were much harder to see. I had my rear blinker on but I hadn't taken batteries for my headlights. I need to start doing that because it wasn't nearly as light as I would have liked and even with my screaming yellow jersey I would have felt better with a headlight.

After work I decided to take the trail back home instead of recreating the morning's ride along the highway. I felt tired and wanted to take it easier without the added stress of cars passing. But I do plan to do much more street riding in the days ahead. I'm already making plans for my next library rides!

Urban Primalist

Today, while reading the Before and After thread over at Mark's Daily Apple, I came across Timothy Williams' site, Urban Primalist with a great before and after series of photos. There are a ton of similar stories on the message board and it really encouraged me when I was first starting out on our primal journey. "After" is a bit wrong for most folks, given that it doesn't ever really start. When it comes down to it primal/paleo is more about paying attention and eating and exercising in a smart, healthy fashion. It's not about dropping a set number of pounds or anything like that, it's about being healthy.

Check out Timothy's story, and then maybe some of the others. Worth reading.

In my case I'm much healthier now than I was back when we started at the end of February. Since we're about six months later I'm going to take some new photos soon and post up a new before/after comparison. It'll be interesting to see the difference.