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I haven't been doing regular bicycle rides in the morning as I intended to. Last week I didn't get out at all; two weeks ago I did get out and do one ride, but I believe that was the week when I had to go get a new connector cable for my iPhone so I used the necessity of a trip to the Apple Store at U Village to my advantage. Hmm, or was that three weeks ago? I might've missed two weeks ago as well. I don't recall now, the point is that I've at best managed only one bike ride a week instead of my intended twice a week around the lake plan.
This afternoon, though, the weather was sunny and breezy rather than cloudy with showers as predicted, and I realized I couldn't let the good weather pass by once again without taking advantage of it. I decided it was a good day to head to Magnuson Park, which I've never yet visited in my 9.5 years here. I also had grandiose ideas of going from there through the Windemere and Laurelhurst neighborhoods and then back along the Burke-Gilman Trail all the way to Golden Gardens Park to see the sunset.
Once I got as far as NE 65th Street, though, I thought about how I'd never been to Matthews Beach Park either, which wasn't that much further along the trail. As I'd decided it was a day of exploration, I went ahead with that thought. I almost kept going even past that; I knew that a section of the trail was closed for construction, and when I saw the detour sign just before Matthews Beach warning that the trail was closed 2.5 miles ahead, I thought that I might as well go as far as I could. But then it occurred to me that just adding that part was another 5 miles total I hadn't planned on, and I was concerned about whether the trail would descend steeply from that point and necessitate a big climb back (I didn't really know that I was already pretty close to the level of the lake), so I decided it was worth saving for another trip.
Matthews Beach Park turned out to be a very nice park hidden away along the lakeshore, and I really liked it. It seemed like a good spot to come back for a picnic in the summer. And although I knew, conceptually, that Magnuson Park was pretty big, just from looking at maps, I was still struck by how big it was. It does seem that a lot of it is taken up by sports fields of various kinds, but it still has other big open fields as well, and a really big (fenced-in) off-leash area for dogs, including a dog beach. I also heard and spotted A Sound Garden, the kinetic sculpture from which the band Soundgarden took their name. Unfortunately, it's actually on the NOAA facility property rather than in Magnuson Park proper, and access is restricted—apparently on a weekday I could've checked in at NOAA's main entrance and walked over to see it, but not on weekends. Still, I'd known that it was somewhere in that area, and it was neat that I finally got a chance to see and hear it, thanks in part to the windy weather. The windy weather also provided me with another cool sight: when I got down to the boat launch in the park, I saw several people both windsurfing and kite surfing out on the lake. The kite surfers were particularly impressive, traveling so fast with the wind that I almost did not believe they weren't motorized. At least one of them kept making some pretty spectacular leaps out of the water, too.
At that point I headed back up NE 65th Street out of the park, and paused when I got to Sand Point Way NE. I'd been looking at the map on my iPhone, and I was suspicious about whether Windemere was a hill (it is) and how hilly Laurelhurst is (I'd driven through Laurelhurst once before, and recalled it being built on a hill too, which it is). Although I still wanted to check those neighborhoods out, and also use that as an opportunity to find the bike path around the south side of UW's sports fields, I figured it would be a better idea to head back—I even thought that maybe I should head home, put in the next load of laundry, and then I could still go catch the sunset at Golden Gardens Park. However, as I started riding the trail back, I discovered that I was hungry. And rather tired. And feeling cold because the wind had picked up some more, and I was sweaty from the ride. I wasn't even halfway back to Fremont before I realized that I was done for the day; I certainly didn't want to head straight to Golden Gardens, and I wasn't likely to want to head back out after I stopped at home. So I slogged on home, and felt pretty tired and even a bit shaky when I got there, so I was happy to consider my ride done. It turns out that the ride was about 20 miles, the longest I've yet done since getting my bike, and quite a long ride to do when I haven't done any cycling in a few weeks.
Google Maps—20.1 miles, but the route plotted on the map includes a bit of doubling back out of Matthews Beach Park that I didn't actually have to do; there's a footpath leading from the road circle on the southern part to 51st Ave NE, so I went out that way to get to Sand Point Way NE. Google estimates the trip time at 1 hour 55 minutes, but I was actually gone for about 2 hours 50 minutes; I left around 3:20 pm or so and got home about 6:08 pm. But I spent a while in Magnuson Park, not just cycling straight through, and I was definitely riding a lot more slowly on the way home.
I'm going to be pretty busy in the next few weeks, between Decibel Festival, the KEXP fall membership drive, and actual paid work, so I don't know if I'll get another chance to do a long ride any time soon. And I'm not even sure I'll be able to do the twice-weekly lake loop I want to be doing as regular exercise. But I'll have to make some effort to do so, and hopefully there'll be another day with decent weather later in October when I could go explore some other part of Seattle I haven't been to yet.
This afternoon, though, the weather was sunny and breezy rather than cloudy with showers as predicted, and I realized I couldn't let the good weather pass by once again without taking advantage of it. I decided it was a good day to head to Magnuson Park, which I've never yet visited in my 9.5 years here. I also had grandiose ideas of going from there through the Windemere and Laurelhurst neighborhoods and then back along the Burke-Gilman Trail all the way to Golden Gardens Park to see the sunset.
Once I got as far as NE 65th Street, though, I thought about how I'd never been to Matthews Beach Park either, which wasn't that much further along the trail. As I'd decided it was a day of exploration, I went ahead with that thought. I almost kept going even past that; I knew that a section of the trail was closed for construction, and when I saw the detour sign just before Matthews Beach warning that the trail was closed 2.5 miles ahead, I thought that I might as well go as far as I could. But then it occurred to me that just adding that part was another 5 miles total I hadn't planned on, and I was concerned about whether the trail would descend steeply from that point and necessitate a big climb back (I didn't really know that I was already pretty close to the level of the lake), so I decided it was worth saving for another trip.
Matthews Beach Park turned out to be a very nice park hidden away along the lakeshore, and I really liked it. It seemed like a good spot to come back for a picnic in the summer. And although I knew, conceptually, that Magnuson Park was pretty big, just from looking at maps, I was still struck by how big it was. It does seem that a lot of it is taken up by sports fields of various kinds, but it still has other big open fields as well, and a really big (fenced-in) off-leash area for dogs, including a dog beach. I also heard and spotted A Sound Garden, the kinetic sculpture from which the band Soundgarden took their name. Unfortunately, it's actually on the NOAA facility property rather than in Magnuson Park proper, and access is restricted—apparently on a weekday I could've checked in at NOAA's main entrance and walked over to see it, but not on weekends. Still, I'd known that it was somewhere in that area, and it was neat that I finally got a chance to see and hear it, thanks in part to the windy weather. The windy weather also provided me with another cool sight: when I got down to the boat launch in the park, I saw several people both windsurfing and kite surfing out on the lake. The kite surfers were particularly impressive, traveling so fast with the wind that I almost did not believe they weren't motorized. At least one of them kept making some pretty spectacular leaps out of the water, too.
At that point I headed back up NE 65th Street out of the park, and paused when I got to Sand Point Way NE. I'd been looking at the map on my iPhone, and I was suspicious about whether Windemere was a hill (it is) and how hilly Laurelhurst is (I'd driven through Laurelhurst once before, and recalled it being built on a hill too, which it is). Although I still wanted to check those neighborhoods out, and also use that as an opportunity to find the bike path around the south side of UW's sports fields, I figured it would be a better idea to head back—I even thought that maybe I should head home, put in the next load of laundry, and then I could still go catch the sunset at Golden Gardens Park. However, as I started riding the trail back, I discovered that I was hungry. And rather tired. And feeling cold because the wind had picked up some more, and I was sweaty from the ride. I wasn't even halfway back to Fremont before I realized that I was done for the day; I certainly didn't want to head straight to Golden Gardens, and I wasn't likely to want to head back out after I stopped at home. So I slogged on home, and felt pretty tired and even a bit shaky when I got there, so I was happy to consider my ride done. It turns out that the ride was about 20 miles, the longest I've yet done since getting my bike, and quite a long ride to do when I haven't done any cycling in a few weeks.
Google Maps—20.1 miles, but the route plotted on the map includes a bit of doubling back out of Matthews Beach Park that I didn't actually have to do; there's a footpath leading from the road circle on the southern part to 51st Ave NE, so I went out that way to get to Sand Point Way NE. Google estimates the trip time at 1 hour 55 minutes, but I was actually gone for about 2 hours 50 minutes; I left around 3:20 pm or so and got home about 6:08 pm. But I spent a while in Magnuson Park, not just cycling straight through, and I was definitely riding a lot more slowly on the way home.
I'm going to be pretty busy in the next few weeks, between Decibel Festival, the KEXP fall membership drive, and actual paid work, so I don't know if I'll get another chance to do a long ride any time soon. And I'm not even sure I'll be able to do the twice-weekly lake loop I want to be doing as regular exercise. But I'll have to make some effort to do so, and hopefully there'll be another day with decent weather later in October when I could go explore some other part of Seattle I haven't been to yet.
