A.K.A. a Mental Health Day with Isha, my personal mental therapist.
It was a PERFECT day for a ride up My Baker! Not too hot, a bit of cloud cover, no rain, most of the traffic was headed into Vancouver for a Celebration of Light night (fireworks).
The border was a quick and easy crossing down. We’d looked at the traffic and it didn’t look great; we expected a half hour wait for Nexus. When we arrived the Nexus lane was empty and I didn’t bother stopping to dig out my card and wave it at the reader, instead just riding straight up to the guard.
He asked “Purpose of your trip?”
I said nothing and made a flamboyant two handed wave over my motorcycle and smiled from inside my helmet.
He laughed and asked if I was bringing anything in, to which I answered, “Just that guy behind me, feel free to harass him.”
He laughed again and handed my Nexus card back and told me to have a nice day before waving Kirk forward before I’d even started my bike. I hadn’t so much as had to take my gloves off.
We wouldn’t normally come through Blaine if headed to Baker, but I had something to pick up in Blaine at a shipping company. We’d barely made it before they closed at 1pm after some pretty significant traffic, including a rolled car (the other direction luckily….but still snarled traffic because everyone needed to slow down and have a look-see).
From Blaine we rode south to Birch Bay – Lynden Road and cut straight east until we passed through Lynden and then (after getting a bit turned around….for some reason my brain always short circuits when I ride this direction and I get my cardinal points reversed) up towards Sumas with a quick right just before the border and on to Front Street, and then another hard right on to Mt Baker Highway.
Traffic was light and we made it to Kendall where we fuelled up and got back on the road. A few other riders were taking a break off to the side and, as we rode out of the lot and back towards the road, one rider stood and looked directly at us and pointed in the air as if to say “Are you going up to the top?” I nodded and he gave me the thumbs up with a big smile.
We pulled off past Maple Falls at a spot above the river and took a break, had a snack, and noted that far more traffic was coming down than heading up.
Perfect!
We had one vehicle in front of us and the driver pulled over to let us past. And for the entire rest of the ride from Glacier to Artist’s Point at the top of Mt. Baker we didn’t have a single car in front of us.
Again…perfect!
We hadn’t been up since October and expected it to be busy, and it was, though not nearly as crazy as it had been last fall. It’s been quite a number of years since we’d been up at this time year, usually it’s earlier and later. Given the lack of snowpack in BC I didn’t really expect to see any up here, but there was still some hanging on and people were enjoying it.
It’s kind of cool to park your motorcycle next to a wall of snow at the end of July.
The ride down was behind a line of traffic, and although without it we’d have probably been clipping along at about 10-15kph faster than we were, it was still moving at a pretty good pace and we got through the fun stuff before we encountered the car-train.
Out to Kendall, a left to head south for about 5 minutes, and then into the parking lot at North Fork Brewing for another fabulous pizza dinner with a glass of craft beer.
I had a Share the Shred sour, described as: Collaboration with Girls On Shred! Brewed with Linc Malting’s Francin Pilsner and white wheat. Hopped with Eldorado. Kettle soured and fermented with our house ale yeast and multiple brettanomyces strains. Dry hopped with hibiscus flowers and hand picked (by Alex and Zoe) local dandelions flowers.
Kirk opted for the Giant Fork #5 barrel aged sour with this tantalizing description: This is the 5th release in a barrel swapping project with Lost Giants Cider co. After aging cider in a red wine barrel LGC gave us the barrel partialy filled with cider that we then fermented and aged saison style beers with a plethora of wild yeast strains. They then got the barrel and once again aged cider in it (G.F.#2). For this one #5! we fermented a Lambic style wort in an upright puncheon on dregs of a previous spontaneous beer before extended aging in the GF barrel. Cask conditioned with Marie’s Bees wildflower honey. Super dry, tart and full of character ‘n magic from the barrel.
We timed things perfectly too. The place always fills up late in the afternoon and there is usually a line out the door and down the stairs by 5pm. We got there at 4:30, got a parking spot right out front, and got a table as soon as we walked in. Not long afterwards a long line down to the parking lot and, when we left, the parking lot was overflowing with more cars pulling in.
Their pizzas are excellent, and so is their beer.
When we’d filled up and settled up it was a 15 minute run to the border and then we crossed over and opted to ride through Lougheed back in as far as Burnaby before jumping on Hwy 1 for the last leg. It was much less stressful than last time. Takes longer, but definitely fewer murderous drivers.
And that’s what kind of day it was, a 360km mental health day ☺️