Memorial Day Cycling

A really thrown together trip. Anthony (2nd from left in photo), my best friend from San Francisco days, and I put down this weekend for some adventure. Originally it was to be in Oregon, between Washington and California, but after looking at Amtraks we couldn't find an easy place for both of us to meet up. He was kind enough to offer to come to Seattle and then we expanded the group to 4 when it turned out that he had to friends from NY who also wanted to get some adventure in.

Anthony and I had done some riding before and when we sat down to plan this trip we were targeting ~60 miles of riding a day. Enough for a bit of a challenge with downtime as well. Initially I had wanted to go from Seattle -> Vancouver Island by ferry and bike around there, but with people's flights and the ferry schedule we ended up keeping it more local. We still wanted to take some ferries and make a loop so we ended up with the route of Seattle -> Port Townsend -> Vashon Island -> Mt Vernon -> Arlington -> Seattle. As a native to the area I really had doubts whether this would be nice, specifically the parts after Vashon Island/the bike ride south back to Seattle. Here I have to apologize to Skagit County and my neighbors north of Seattle, it's beautiful and the biking was awesome.

What this video doesn't show is the struggle. Anthony and I were fine but that was expected, we had done multi day trips before and 3 months before this I was in Taiwan biking 6 days straight. Ryan (2nd from right) and Ben (rightmost) on the other hand, had some experience, but no training leading up to this. They also lived in NYC which isn't exactly a place known for cycling. This would be a good time to mention this was my first time meeting Ryan and Ben and I was under the impression that they had done some training.

I do have to tip my hat to the two of them, they powered through. Ryan specifically was borrowing a friends bike (thank you Mehdi) which had the hardest seat known to man and wasn't his size. That last day he and Anthony had to switch bikes because it got to be too much but we made it. I was honestly a bit annoyed throughout the trip for not knowing their skill level. I imagine it would have been more fun for everyone if we toned the mileage down and didn't get to camp at 10 PM every night. If you're planning a multi day trip of some kind with people, check in with their skill level. And if they tell you they're the kind of people that enjoy type 2 fun, they are probably exaggerating whatever endurance they have.

The cycling itself was amazing. We start with Bainbridge island which is a quant little island near Seattle. It has a cute atmosphere and plenty of nice flora all around. We cycled through this island and ended day 1 at the top of the Olympic Peninsula at Port Townsend to ferry to Vashon Island the next day. This is where my bike troubles began. As we started day 2 we had to catch a ferry in town. About a mile away from the ferry my bike pedals stop moving my rear wheel - I can pedal but it does not result in my bike moving forward. I had to run while pushing my bike the last mile to the ferry as we made it with 3 minutes left.

Once we depart the ferry I poke around and find that the rear axle was loose. Tighten it up with an allen key and it works again. I wish I had kept this solution in mind as we continued riding. Vashon Island was also beautiful (likely to see this word a lot). We stuck around the water and got to go through neighborhoods and of course see Deception Pass. It was at Deception Pass that we had a fork in the road. Originally I had planned for us to go from Deception Pass to Mt Vernon via a mountain trail but after I offered an easier alternative to just take the road. Ryan and Ben instantly preferred that while Anthony wanted the mountain. I would have preferred the mountain but was wary about my back wheel, it didn't fail on me but I didn't fully trust it. In the end I joined Anthony on the trail and we split up into 2 groups.

Within 3 minutes on the trail I again cannot pedal my bike. When we look at it the cassette in the back keeps moving left and right which is causing the chain to fall off. We take the back wheel off to poke around. We don't really figure anything out and put the wheel back on and decide we'll go back and take the other route to Mt Vernon.

However, I completely lost the ability to ride the bike. The chain would refuse to stay on the cassette. On the side of the road on Vashon Island we found some remnants of a tire and managed to shove it in between the cassette and bike frame to get it to stop moving. If you'll believe it this actually worked perfectly. I had literally no issues after this and we booked it to Mt Vernon to get to a bike shop before they closed.

We managed to make it to a bike shop and the guy there repaired it. Turns out both my bike tires were loose. I had replaced the brake pads on my own the day before the trip and failed to tighten the front and rear axles enough, I was worried I might strip them. The repair guy literally shook my bike and the front and back tires were shaking 🤦‍♂️. I believe this ended causing a whole spade of issues with my back tire as a month later I had to get a whole new one because the teeth in its freehub were completely missing when I started investigating more issues I was having. Anyway, once we got the bike into ridable condition the adventure continued.

We had to keep riding from Mt Vernon to a campsite outside of Arlington which was quite a bit of riding, especially with the time spent repairing the bike. We pulled in at 10 PM yet again and then headed back to Seattle the next day. In Arlington we grabbed breakfast and watched a memorial day parade by ROTC and Boy Scouts, it was really nice. We hung out and chatted with a really cute older couple that were from the area. They told us the famous local shop: Arlington Hardware and we ran in to get merch. The food, interaction, and parade were a great start to the day. This was our lightest day but bodies were feeling the mileage. Like I mentioned earlier, Ryan and Anthony had to switch bikes halfway through because it was so uncomfortable for Ryan. The scenery again was beautiful, more foresty than the islands and we got to pass by some pretty lakes. Overall, a great trip, but again, type 2 fun people need special planning considerations 🙂