Pilcrow

Life continues to be very busy for me, a lot of that being due to paid work, which is mainly why I continue to neglect my journal. But I wanted to take note of my cycling today. 

I mentioned back in January that I had something of a financial collapse at the start of October due to a serious lack of work in the summer and seriously overextended use of credit, followed immediately by a sudden surge in work that carried on right through the winter (and hasn't let up yet), much to my relief. One thing I didn't think to mention in that post was how much bicycling I'd done in those three months. Because my ORCA bus pass was tied to one of my credit cards that had been cut off, I was trying to save it for emergencies, because I didn't know how soon I'd be able to afford to reload the ORCA account. (And it turned out that my credit card had been cut off just before the last time I'd tried to reload the account, so I actually owed ORCA money.) And with just a small stash of quarters available, I couldn't actually afford to ride the bus regularly, as I'd been doing.

Fortunately, I had my bicycle; so I just started cycling everywhere. That turned out to be surprisingly easy to do, even with wearing my laptop-holding backpack, even despite the very hilly terrain of Seattle. I'd say I was out on my bike at least five days a week, and probably averaging 50 miles a week. Just cycling from my place to Bauhaus, which I was often doing as I had so much work to do, meant about 8 miles round-trip. 

So that was actually rather fun most of the time, and I felt great about getting so much exercise. But finally by mid-December I was tired of cycling in the cold weather, and reluctant to cycle when it rained. And then one day when I got home and stepped off my bike, my lower back said Aaaah!, and I figured I'd better take some time for that to feel better. By that time, my finances had recovered enough that I could afford to ride the bus again. And then as it happened, in the week or so it took my back to feel better, we had a good snowfall, which settled the matter for me: time to put the bike away until spring.

Well, spring is finally here. Actually judging by how I've been suffering with allergies, it arrived about two weeks ago, right on schedule with the equinox. But yesterday I finally felt able to get through the day without taking allergy medication, and today was just too gorgeous, sunny and mid-60s, for me to pass up the chance to get back on my bike. So I went out for a ride along the Ship Canal Trail (which I'm so happy they finished back in October) into Magnolia and up through the Ballard locks to Golden Gardens Park. Then I went back through Magnolia (walking the bike up the footpath to Commodore Way) and along the Elliott Bay Trail to the Olympic Sculpture Garden, up Broad Street and 5th Ave past Seattle Center to Mercer Ave, and then over to Dexter Ave and home that way. Google Maps—15.7 miles, estimated 1 hour 39 minutes. I was actually gone about 2 hours 20 minutes, but I spent a little time walking through the locks (both ways) and around Golden Gardens. That was probably a longer trip than I should've done today, considering it's been over three months since I last did any cycling, but I felt good enough that I didn't want to head home just after the trip to Golden Gardens, and overall I still felt fairly good by the end of the ride. 

Now I need to get my bike into the shop for a tune-up. I also need to get some bungee cords and figure out how to strap my backpack down to the carrying rack I had installed when I got the bike, so that I don't have to lug it on my back and possibly hurt myself again. And I need to get a stand-up pump, because it turns out that trying to reinflate my tires with a handheld pump is a really hard workout that I could do without. But once those things are done, I can start riding regularly again. I'm looking forward to it.

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. 

Speaking of Soulcalibur—which, if you don't know, is a fighting game that has the possibly unique focus of sword-based (or other melee weapon) combat, rather than the usual hand-to-hand martial arts—lately I've been feeling a lot like swinging a sword around again. Weapons training was something I particularly enjoyed when I was studying the martial arts, and it would be a very satisfying way of working out feelings of frustration or moodiness. The trouble is, I don't really have adequate space in my home to do that—at best I may be able to practice some basic cuts, provided my cat doesn't get in the way—and I don't really remember any of the forms. I also still don't have any funds to spare on taking lessons somewhere again, which is too bad, as there's a place up in north Seattle, the Chinese Shaolin Center of Seattle, that offers a combination of tai chi, kung fu, and weapons very similar to what I was last studying back East. Much closer to my home, there's a tai chi studio run by Karin Collins, who apparently first studied at Embrace the Moon, which I tried a few years ago. I liked Embrace the Moon, but felt their tai chi wasn't energetic enough for what I was seeking, so that's an argument against going to the Karin Collins school; however, Collins apparently does or will be offering classes in sword and spear as well, so it may well be more like what I'm looking for.


Hah, and I forgot that I already wrote about this back in April. Well, obviously I didn't pick up with the sword exercising I was thinking about doing. Heck for that matter, although I now have a bicycle, I haven't even been using that as much as I should be or want to. I need to make some changes here. Hmm, wait… sword-cycling? Hell, if shooting at stuff while cross-country skiiing can be an Olympic sport, I don't see why we can't have bicycling and swordplay. Anyhow, I'm not sure about the wisdom of exercising first thing in the morning before breakfast, when my energy reserves would be low, but I probably ought to be doing a bicycle ride first thing a couple times a week, as that'd ensure it was done for the day. As my breakfast is just a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice, maybe I could even eat that first and then do the bike ride. Doing that and alternating with some basic sword exercises a couple times a week would be a good thing. Of course, here I'm falling afoul of the problem I wrote about at the beginning of the month—making plans or goals public tends to result in them never happening. But I'm basically thinking out loud here, and I'm not going to now delete this whole entry just for that reason. Anyhow, I need to head for home, and make some dinner when I get there, so I won't have time to write another post before midnight.

I've been busy today working on editing a paper. It turned out to be a nice day weather-wise, and I would've liked to have left the house, but besides the paper I was also doing laundry as usual for Sunday. I probably should have put that off for a while just to have had the short walk over to Caffe Ladro. But then, it didn't really get nice until later in the afternoon, at which point I was already halfway through the laundry and started on the paper, and I didn't want to interrupt any of that. 

I also haven't been out for a bike ride in over a week; I'm not getting out for rides as much as I wanted. That's partly because during the week I tend to head out for the afternoon to do work, and although it stays light out well into the evening, by the time I'm getting home I'm thinking it's time to make dinner. One thing I need to do is figure out how to use the carrier rack I had installed on my bike; I need bungie cords or something to strap down my backpack with my computer in it. Then I could ride the bike out somewhere to work. I could just wear the backpack but it's kind of heavy with the laptop and whatnot in it, and that would make me even sweatier by the time I got somewhere to work.

And you know, I'm really sick of the way Safari hangs all the time when I'm running Parallels as well. I presume my combination of RAM and graphics card just isn't quite enough to handle things, but really Safari does seem kind of bloated and slower than it ought to be. I persist in using it because I like it otherwise and I like that my bookmarks are synched between my two Macs and my iPhone through my MobileMe account—that feature better not be going away with iCloud—but it does irritate me a lot.

I don't have plans for the holiday tomorrow. I'd really like to be hanging out with friends and having fun, but I never asked anyone ahead of time what their plans were, and no one got in touch with me to see what I was up to, either. On the other hand, I'm probably still going to have work to do, and I certainly have a bunch of other projects to tend to, so maybe it's better that I have some time to do things.

Speaking of doing things, time to get back to editing that paper.

I've been off the bicycle for a week, partly because of being busy and partly because of the weird minor chest congestion that's been bothering me all that time. However, the congestion does seem to be easing up a bit, and tonight I decided to go for a ride. It ended up being longer than planned, and maybe wasn't the best idea, but it was all right.

• From my home east and south around Queen Anne by Westlake Ave
• Down through Belltown to the waterfront by way of 9th Ave, Bell St, Western Ave, and Wall St
• South along Alaskan Way as far as University St, just because I felt like seeing more of the waterfront, and then back north the same way to Myrtle Edwards Park
• North and west to Smith Cove Park in Magnolia by way of the Elliott Bay / Terminal 91 bike path
• Back along the bike path (as Smith Cove is a dead end at the marina) to 21st Ave W in Magnolia
• Around the Magnolia Scenic Loop, which was the part maybe I should've saved for another time
• Across W Dravus St to 14th Ave W, then north to W Nickerson St and back home.

Google Maps—18.1 miles, estimated 1 hour 50 minutes, actually spent about 2.5 hours. 

I think the Magnolia double-loop route I described last time may be a better one, or at least an easier one, as it turns out that going clockwise around Magnolia involves a long gradual hill climb headed northward on Magnolia Blvd W, in addition to the climb up Thorndyke Ave W around the southeastern side of Magnolia. Although having said that, I'm forgetting that there was a decent downhill slope headed eastward along W Emerson St, so I'd still have to tackle that climb going the other way. Anyhow, I'll have to give the double-loop a try next time.

Magnolia also has some pretty fancy neighborhoods overlooking the bay. I was amused that just as I was thinking the houses must be practically un-sellable in this market, I saw a realtor's sign at one place, and just a bit further along saw a new house being constructed. I wonder who the people are that live in these homes, what they do for a living that they can afford them, and also how many of the homes may have been passed down through the families. There's also a hidden neighborhood tucked away closer to the shore, along the dead-end street Perkins Lane W, which I decided not to check out this evening as I was already tired and didn't want to deal with even more steep hill climbs, but I do want to go back another time for a look. And there are some parks along the route that I'd like to check out as well.

This is part of the reason I wanted a bicycle, so I could start exploring more of the far (or near-yet-still-somehow-remote) corners of Seattle that I haven't spent time in. I'm pleased that I'm finally getting to do that. I still haven't actually been in Magnuson Park or up to Carkeek Park, so I believe those will be next.

I wanted to embed the maps but it looks like I won't get the results I want, so I'll just link them.

Yesterday's bicycle route, the Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop, just circles Lake Union:

• From my home north across the Fremont Bridge
• East along the Burke-Gilman Trail around the north side of Lake Union to the University Bridge
• South across the University Bridge, then down the east side of Lake Union mostly along Fairview Ave E
• West through the South Lake Union Park, then up the west side of Lake Union along Westlake Ave N and back home

Google Maps 7.3 miles total, estimated 44 minutes—not counting the time I spent checking out South Lake Union Park, that was about right.

Today's bicycle route circled as much of the entire Lake Washington Ship Canal as possible:

• From my home west along the Ship Canal Trail to the Ballard Bridge (but not crossing it)
• Crossing 15th Ave W into Magnolia, and riding up W Emerson Pl to Gilman Ave W
• Northwest up Gilman Ave W and west on W Government Way to 32nd Ave W, then crossing the railroad tracks by footbridge over to Commodore Park
• Across the Chittenden Locks into Ballard, then east along NW Market St and southeast down Shilshole Ave NW to pick up the Burke-Gilman Trail
• East along the Burke-Gilman Trail to Solsticio in Fremont, stopping for a much-needed snack and smoothie
• East along the Burke-Gilman Trail to the Montlake Bridge
• South across the Montlake Bridge and Montlake Blvd E, then picking up the footpath under Route 520 to the Montlake Playground
• Northwest along Boyer Ave E and Fuhrman Ave E to circle the north end of Capitol Hill, arriving at the University Bridge (but not crossing it)
• South along Fairview Ave E to South Lake Union Park
• North along Westlake Ave N to the Fremont Bridge
• North across the Fremont Bridge to PCC Natural Markets for some groceries
• Back south across the Fremont Bridge and home again

Google Maps 15.6 miles total, estimated 1 hour 35 minutes—not counting my stops at Solsticio and PCC, I think I still took over two hours.

That's a lot of cycling, for having just started cycling again after about twenty years. I think my legs are going to be pretty sore the next couple days. Because I'd looped Lake Union yesterday, my initial plan was to go from the South Lake Union Park through Belltown to the Olympic Sculpture Park / Myrtle Edwards Park, and ride up along Elliott Bay to Magnolia, circling back home around the west side of Queen Anne. I think it was probably a wise decision to just do the Ship Canal circle today and leave that part for another day.

And because I've now duplicated most of the long walks I've taken, I'm eager to start going further afield with my bicycle, although that means one thing in this city: hills. I may need to spend some more time cycling around the relatively flat and level areas before I'm ready to start tackling some of the hills. Of course, it looks like I can, for example, cycle out to Alki Beach without facing too many hills…