Today was an interesting ride from Port Townsend WA to Anacortes WA. It involved a ferry ride from Port Townsend to Coupeville, about 35 minutes then head north across the Deception Pass Bridge and into the town of Anacortes, a nice town that I expect we'll have a chance to explore since we'll be spending 2 night here.
We woke to a very cool and gloomy day. Cloudy with temperatures in the low 50's and as we exited the ferry in Coupeville, you could almost feel rain drops. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the entire group headed off. My legs were feeling a bit beat from yesterday's ride and it was slow going until the legs stopped complaining. I'm not pretending to know anything about chemicals in the body, but I've been told that the aches you feel in your muscles after a hard day of riding is because of a build up of Lactic acid. All I know is after about 10 miles I was able to pick up the pace a bit. Or maybe it was because by 11 AM the clouds had dissipated and the warm Sun came out casting shadows and warming the air. We stopped to remove some of our cool weather gear and moved on.
Lunch was at the 16 mile mark and Rick, with the luggage truck found a wonderful location for the picnic and by the time we had arrived, the tables and picnic food was all set up.
Below is a great ad for this ride, bike all day and get to sit on the ground to eat!
In the title of this blog I used the word "Deception". That's because we need to cross the two lane, 1930's era bridge called "
Deception Pass Bridge". During the planning of this trip there was much discussion on the best way for the group to cross this expanse. Whether to walk across the pedestrian walkway or to bike on the walkway of whether to cross as a group and "take a lane" and force the the cars to follow us.
Our group of about 8 or 10 riders huddled on the road side about 1 mile or so from the bridge and decided to try to cross as a group if the conditions permitted. As we got closer to the bridge, the traffic slowed bumper to bumper, almost walking speed. This was our chance. We found a gap between a set of cars and moved into the open space side by side taking the lane. The bridge surface was smooth asphalt and we proceeded across. I kept my eyes forward focusing on the road ahead so I didn't look back to see how badly we were slowing the cars behind us. I assume that the cars weren't too upset with us since no one tried to pass us and I didn't hear any horns blaring. Shortly after the bridge, we made a left hand turn to follow our route and I saw a stream of cars moving at a similar pace as our bicycles. In a couple of days, we'll be traveling back across the bridge in the opposite direction and I assume that we'll use the same approach.
As we got close to the end of the ride, ice cream was spotted. A great way to end a ride.
Brian
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