Cougar, Squak, Tiger, Ravensdale loop

We planned to ride RAPSody 2013 (Ride Around Puget Sound), a two-day event, this weekend. However, Paula took ill during the week with a cold that would keep her off the bicycle. With a gorgeous August Saturday in offing Timothy opted to do a ride closer to home and found one listed by John Kay, a fellow High Performance Cycling member. John is training for the High Pass Challenge and put together a route featuring a number of climbs. Paula felt well enough to drive Timothy to the start at Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park.

When you slow down a bit and actually talk to people on a ride you sometimes come away feeling rather privileged by the company. John Kay retired from an electrical engineering career with Boeing over a decade ago. He’s taught karate since 1974 and he and his wife run a martial arts school. He also rides a Harley Davidson. He’s done marathons and mountain climbing and now enthusiastically embraces cycling. Mike runs a physical rehabilitation center in Issaquah. Both have businesses and families. The two of them swapped too many stories to recount here, but they’ve certainly gotten around.

Flying Wheels Century

Our string of four weekends/four centuries during June kicked off with Cascade Bicycle Club’s Flying Wheels Century, billed as the biggest such ride in the state.

The route starts at Marymoor Park in Redmond and travels through the rural Snoqualmie and Snohomish valleys, in places such as Carnation, Fall City, Duvall, Snohomish and Monroe.

We had a great ride on a beautiful route, with lots of rolling hills and of course, a lot of greenery. Afterward, we learned that there had been some notable misbehavior by some cyclists, and a very high degree of unhappiness among some residents in the Carnation-Duvall area.

We didn’t witness anything untoward. But the the fact that we slept late, got a late start and thus ended up on the tail end of the window for starting the century probably worked to our advantage.  The elevated angst is disturbing,  both for this particular ride and for whatever effects the lingering anger among residents might have.  Some commenters to Cascade’s blog say they’re always hesitant to ride in that area, for some longer-term but related reasons.

That’s really unfortunate, as the roads there are exquisite and we like for residents to like cyclists and vice versa.