The before shot – I am sure we’ll be svelte by the time we finish
We hit the road at the not so bright and early hour of 9:30 am, after powering up with Mike’s breakfast sandwiches. The first thing we discovered is that carrying extra weight on your bike makes the hills higher and your speed slower. We were struggling to get our average speed UP to 10 mph!
Hitting 9 mph – more power Scotty!
The trail we followed out of town
And speaking of weight, Keenan confessed over lunch that he had seriously considered throwing in the 20+ pound dumbbell he likes to work out with in the evening. He didn’t because he did not feel like carrying it to work with him the day before (he came straight to our house after work). He claims he did not initially make the connection that if carrying it to work would be too much bother, carrying it to Canada might be worse.
Having no deadlines and only about 37 miles to cover, we took our time, stopping whenever Tami got hungry. She was NOT happy to discover at our first snack break that some of our bike snacks from the bike snack bag at home were tasting a bit old. Rancid peanuts in particular are not a pleasant surprise. She swore to restock at the first store she could find.
Stopping for snacks, but not good snacks
We did make a nice discovery for lunch in Everett. We spotted a new Hawaiian restaurant, and a guy on the sidewalk told it was really good, so we decided to look no further. It was even better than expected. Incredible chicken wings, spam musubi, fried noodles with kimchi, and miso ramen with shitakes soup all went down quickly.
Keenan contemplating the extra weight he could have packed
Our steeds at the hitching post
At lunch
While the first 27 miles had been mostly on bike path, the last 10 were on quiet farm roads to Snohomish.
The farm roads ran through a flood plain. Tami liked this horse next to an old house.
Our biggest hill of the day was riding up to our airbnb rental once we got here. We caught some quick showers – those felt really good! – before walking back down into town to window shop a bit and scout out a dinner location. On the way Keenan spotted a sign for SnoCo Crossfit, which he took for a place selling snow cones (he claimed the sign got torn off). We finally ended up a pub we had been to before. Mike got an apricot sour beer so he wouldn’t have to share.
We were not sure what these were for. I guess just a warning that the sidewalks might be dangerously unflat.
Stuffed, we waddled on back to the house and collapsed on the couch, at the late hour of 6:00 pm. Now just taking it easy and wondering how soon we can go to bed.