Happy Bike Month!

I couldn’t bring myself to go out in the drizzle this morning, but we finally made it out in the afternoon and it wasn’t that bad. Grey days are just harder when they succeed rare glorious days. My original plan was to ride a couple miles across the University Bridge and back, just to see what it’s like. Turns out it’s a great way south and I don’t know why I haven’t tried it before now. Full disclosure: I crossed on the sidewalk because I didn’t notice the bike lane before I was on the wrong side of the cement divider, but it looks perfectly spacious.

Baby Rijder wanted to bring a puppy along so we had him ride inside his jacket–just how I started my family riding, with our chihuahua tucked in my sweater on the way to UCSB classes. It was a nice little stroll down memory lane. The chihuahua is close to a million years old and incontinent now so he doesn’t do much biking these days. Plastic puppy behaved himself well.

Back to the present day: I made the mistake of turning down Allison to leave Eastlake and ride along the water on Fairview. It was very scenic, but we hit a dead end and Hamlin was too steep for me to bike up. Next time we’ll stay up on Eastlake a few extra blocks. Once we were on continuous Fairview things got much better. We saw a bunch of very small parks and lots of interesting boats and sea planes…and experienced a weird wet cat odor near the NOAA building. I was sad to see the Lake Union BluWater Bistro is closed (fire last year). We’ve never been, but it’s right next to a play structure/sand pit and seemed like a perfect sunny lunch spot. Hopefully they’ll reopen.

Rounding the bottom of Lake Union we were very excited to see the Virginia V is back in her usual moorage. She’d been undergoing some maintenance work for a while and we’ve missed her. I think we’ll take our normal route over the Fremont Bridge when we come to see her again, though.

Heading up Westlake Avenue we stuck to the sidewalk for a change of pace and we found more secret train tracks. I can’t believe I’ve been riding along Westlake for so long and never noticed them. I learned something else, too: no matter how much a passenger insists, one should never bike along train tracks. They’re much bumpier than they look. We left things with a promise to come back with the balance bike.

I chose to head home via Stone and stopped at RoRo along the way. YUM! The only thing that could make RoRo better is if it was halfway up the hill and not only a quarter of the way. But it was nice to break up the climb. We stopped a second time to watch the Stoneway Village construction site. The boys were mesmerized by the huge crane carrying a portapotty high in the air over the site. Good stuff.

Almost home, on 45th Street a frazzled mom pushing two kids in a double stroller took one look at me and said, “Holy shit, mom!” I wish I had slowed down to hear what she called after me because I’m sure it was something awesome.

Daily distance: 7.5 miles
May cumulative: 7.5 miles