Patience….

August 24, 2013 – On Thursday a co-worker stopped by my desk and handed me a few sheets of paper. I took them and only half glanced at them as I wanted to ask her a question. The papers looked like a spreadsheet and I assumed they represented something I’d asked her to look at for me.

I was wrong.

When we started chatting she asked where Kirk and I were going to ride this weekend, and suggested we head for Whidbey Island because rooms would be cheaper if we all went and booked together. I was confused for a moment, then took another look at what was on the papers and saw a list of places and distances. Then I started to digest and some names stood out: Rainbow Rd, Kickerville Rd, Mt View Rd, Grandview Rd, Chuckanut Dr – I knew these roads! These were a part of my standard afternoon rides through Northwest Washington. Then I realized this meant Cheryl and Nigel were off on another bike ride.

Cheryl and Nigel aren’t ordinary bicycle riders. They take cycling to a level I can’t begin to comprehend. There are riders that go out for an afternoon, those who ride through trains and rough roads, even those that do things like Test of Mettle. And then there are the endurance riders. Cheryl will off handedly tell me that she and Nigel, or one of the other of them, have gone on a 1200km ride, over a weekend or so.

This weekend they were off on a piddling 600km turn by turn ride to Whidbey island and back. All I can say is . . . WOW!

We dragged our behinds out of bed late, and I had to convince Kirk it wasn’t going to rain and that we should go for a ride Saturday. We got out of the garage around noon and headed South. After a coffee and a bite to eat in in Steveston we crossed at the Pacific Truck Crossing and did a slightly modified version of a normal route I take.

Cheryl and Nigel left around 6am, there was likely no way we’d encounter them, but I took a route that might anyway. We had a great ride through Chuckanut, really, there is no bad ride through there, and the only bad drivers, sadly, were from BC. Sometimes I am ashamed of that licence plate.

After a run through Birch Bay, where the tide was very much OUT, we stopped into Edison for lunch, except that by 3pm it wasn’t really lunch. But Tweets has such good coffee and the snacks just looked so amazing the last time we were through, that we figured we’d stop in for a bite. And we weren’t disappointed. We ordered a couple of phenomenal coffees, an Edison “petit four” (a giant two layered rice crispie cake with a cocoa layer in the middle), and an oatmeal cranberry macadamia nut . . . something-or-other. Even they didn’t actually call it anything other than that. It was sort of a cookie, sort of a bar, and all wonderful cocoa-ey chewiness with whole macadamia nuts, chewy dried cranberries, and lots of oats.

Fabulousness!

Cheryl had mentioned a place for sandwiches and I’d professed to have never seen it. Because we were stopped at Tweets we had the time to look and I realized why we’d never seen it. The Farm to Market Bakery is right on the corner and we are always looking around the 90 degree corner for traffic, so we are never looking at buildings. But on foot, what a cool place! A large garden, a really neat artsy butterfly gate, picnic tables, and totally closed. Like many small places in the US, the opening and closing times of eateries are at the discretion of the kitchen staff.

In other words, don’t come late!

On a quick internet search, the place comes highly recommended.

Next time!

We opted to head towards Lake Whatcom from there, and I took an alternate route, only realizing halfway across to Hwy 9 that I’d potentially missed where Kirk wanted to go. A quick left hand turn on Parson lake Road and a bit of a Z shaped route and I took us back up and around the Lake and then back out to Hwy 9 and up towards Sumas to cross back into Canada.

I wanted to run through Acme – how can you not love a town that evokes images of Wile E. Coyote – and take a photo of this diner. I always blaze right past and miss it, so today was a concerted effort to remember, and stop!

Kirk took the lead from there, and immediately took a wrong turn into a Rona parking lot. A bit of laughter and we headed back towards Vye Rd. But a few minutes along and I could see Kirk stretching his left leg out as he rode. At the next stop sign I suggested we pull over and he could stretch it out properly rather than ride in pain. When he got off he was in excruciating pain and I wondered for a few minutes if we were going to be going home on two bikes or not. But really, we were back in Canada, it was still a couple of hours to darkness, we had no place to be, and I had a clear visor with me. So we really had all the time in the world.

Eventually his cramp eased and we were ready to go again, but before we did, and as we were readying to get back on the machines, a truck pulled alongside us on the road. A grey and grizzled looking man rolled the window down and, when I turned my head, asked “Is everything OK?”

Wow. Sometimes my faith in the average Joe wavers, and then something happens to make me believe that people are good, they care, and in an emergency, someone would help.

This fellow, in his Ford F150, Harley Davidson special edition, had seen two riders stopped at the top of a rise, in a safe, but unusual place, and had taken a moment to ensure that no assistance was required. And I fully believe if we’d needed anything, that he’d have done his best to help.

People really are wonderful.

As he drove away Kirk looked at me and said “You have to blog that!”

So there you go.

As we looked down Vye Road, all we could see was the setting sun on a brilliantly shining road. The word painful comes to mind. And after a few moments of deliberation we figured backtracking and heading through Abbotsford and across to Mission might offer a bit of shade and a slightly less dazzling ride.

It worked, mostly. Vye Road runs due West, so it was straight into the setting sun. The way we went tended towards a slightly North-West route and kept the sun off at a slight angle. Much better for the most part.

We stopped for a break at Rocky Point in Port Moody where this cutie was patiently waiting for his people to finish dinner… while holding his chin up via the bench.

Another great day on the bikes, even if we didn’t connect with Cheryl and Nigel, and my motorcycle is now just shy of 10,000km in just over four months of riding it.

Not bad so far. And it’s not even September yet!

113 photos in 2013: #3 – Canine