Our first order of business in Seattle (after a night of rolling and a few hours of sleep) was to drop our bikes off at Performance to get some maintenance done. While we would love to support more local shops there are some advantages to going to chain stores. We have a membership with Performance that allows us to get cheap tune-ups and 10% back on all purchases, and they have shops in many major cities and states giving us some consistency in our maintenance. Unfortunately, the quality of service has been kind of unpredictable. The shop in Seattle didn’t have our reservation properly recorded so they couldn’t get us in for full tune-ups, we were able to get some work done but not everything we wanted. Now it looks like we will have to wait until Missoula to get the care to our bikes that they need.
After dropping off our bikes we met with an old high school friend of mine, Becca. Becca and I have both kind of grown along similar paths after high school, and thanks to the magic of Facebook we have been able to stay in touch. We truly live in magical times. The five of us hit up Elysian Brewery, supposedly the best craft brewery in Washington State… we were not impressed. Our primary issue with them was that they didn’t let you pick your own sample flight, so in order to try a taste of things that interested us we had to leave it up to chance or buy a pint. Every brewery in the past has either let you pick the flight, their flights included everything, or they at least advertised what was in their flights. Elysian just had it as “brewmaster’s choice”… disappointing. The beer itself wasn’t that bad but did not really stand out to us (we were also kind of hungover from our night of MDA so that may have been a small part of it).
After beer we went over to Babeland, the famous sex shop that we had heard about thanks to Dan Savage. (Sidenote: We may have occasionally yelled “DAN! TERRY! DJ!” throughout Seattle hoping to be near Dan and his family. They are kind of our heroes and we wanted to meet them.) The folks at Babeland were incredible and very informative. We talked a bit about things, they pet Higgs and gave him treats, and overall seemed very wonderful. We don’t have the money (or space) for sex toys right now (sad panda) but someday we will restock our sex drawer.
We went back to the hotel after that so Anna could work and we could all rest. That is when we discovered that our cheap hotel on the outskirts of Seattle had bed bugs… and Anna found a little baggy of crystal meth in the back alley. Well, it wasn’t a fancy place but at least it had soft beds and we got plenty of sleep that night. You think Anna and I would be sexin’ it up in a hotel room but unfortunately the hangover kills my sex drive (well, mentally I want to bang but my heart isn’t in it).
Day two in Seattle we met up with Becca again. We went to see the Fremont Troll, Fremont Brewing Company (which was better than Elysian), and a beach on the sound. The weather was a little dreary but we had a wonderful time seeing more of the city. Seattle is a place we definitely plan on visiting again and exploring a bit more. We picked up our bikes at the end of the day, rode up to the hotel for a last night of sleep and prep to hit the road.
Our day of riding out of Seattle was actually really wonderful. Most of our route into the Cascades was on bike trails. Some gravel, some concrete, but all away from the dangers of traffic. At the end of the day we had to get onto I-90 to head over the mountains, after a few miles we found a nice place off the highway to set up our tent, eat some dinner, and get some sleep.
The next morning we continued on the road and got to the town of North Bend, WA (which apparently has the diner from Twin Peaks, a show I have never seen) to get some work done. We spent most of the day at the local Starbucks before heading east again. We planned on getting 20 or so miles done but I blew out another tire. At this point the problem was clearly with the wheel, unfortunately there was no bike shop available until the next morning. We found a place near a river to set up for the night. It was then that we discovered a multiple day storm was coming so we decided the make the best of the situation and bunker down for a couple of days of work, maintenance, and rest.
During those days we got rained on, got some work done, and got my wheel fixed, but we were soon on the road again and took the Iron Horse trail eastward. The Iron Horse trail is the most amazingly beautiful rail-to-trail I have ever seen. The fog, rain, and cold weather actually added to the beauty. We literally biked through clouds and the weather showed us where the nickname “Evergreen State” came from. The ride was far from easy, we climbed the first two days in the cold on gravel paths, but we still managed to keep our spirits high.
On the top of the trail we came to a 2.5 mile unlit tunnel that we had to bike through. It was kind of crazy to be in pitch black for such a long time (we had our bike lights but it wasn’t much). There was a certain sense of accomplishment about it though, a satisfying end to two days of climbing. On the other side of the tunnel the world changed a bit, the greenery quickly receded and the desert of our future started to show.
We had a slow decent throughout the day. We had lunch in the town of Cle Elum, which turned out to be one of the least bike friendly towns ever. The people were rude and the infrastructure terrible. You would think that a town along a bike trail would be more supportive of people who bring them business. Oh well, such is life.
We ended the day at the KOA in Ellensburg. KOA’s are terrible for us. They are overpriced, filled with giant RVs, rarely have good amenities, and there are so many fucking children whining, screaming, yelling, and being chaotic. I don’t know why there aren’t more suicides at KOAs. Unfortunately, our camping options were limited and we had to spend two nights there to work. We were able to meet up with a friend of mine at a local pub though, and had a great time catching up and bullshitting with each other. Ellensburg was actually a lot of fun and Iron Horse Brewery (#29) is our favorite from Washington, with Fremont being a close second. The desert was clearly more prominent here and as we hit the road the sun and heat became a primary obstacle.
Barely Functional Adults 