PCC Store to Farm Bike Ride August 2018: Redmond store to Oxbow Farm
Quick note on Saturday evening's visit to the Space Needle with Ivan: those photos are now all captioned on Flickr. In fact I'm all good now, with both tagging and captions, for all the photos I took this weekend.
So that brings us to yesterday morning, when I got out of bed right around 6 am, and was out of the house (okay condo, technically) by 7:45, barely finding the time to make myself hash browns and eggs for breakfast as I had been out of cereal since Friday morning and Shobhit and I didn't have a chance to do grocery shopping until last night. I then rode my bike downtown to catch the Sound Transit 545 express to Redmond -- which I nearly missed. Not just me, though: everyone at the stop. The bus was driving on by, and didn't even begin to turn toward the curb until it was parallel with us. We all really thought he wasn't going to stop -- but, at the last second, he did, and was only a little bit further up the street. He just nearly made a mistake that could have ruined all of our days. Thankfully he corrected it at the last second.
So that means you can click here for the full photo set of the bike ride from PCC Redmond to Oxbow Farm, 26 shots in all. That's only 4 fewer than when I went to Bailey Family Farm from the Bothell store last month -- when I was basically stood up by everyone and I just went ahead and rode there on my own. That farm was open when I arrived and several nice photos, reminiscent of the farmland seen during the Tulip Festival up in La Conner.
Not quite the same this time. Melissa, who had mistakenly forgotten about my interest last month, quite predictably made absolutely sure she'd go on this one. And, as luck would have it, Jamie from the office came as well. So it was just three of us. Better than one, for sure, but I remain genuinely surprised that this series of bike rides has not garnered more interest from staff at a company filled with cyclists. Jamie theorized that stores tend to be busiest on Sundays and that could be part of it.
The other key difference this month from last month is that the farm we rode out to this time was closed when we went out there. Jamie looked it up on her phone and discovered they're closed on Sundays. Melissa said she had contacted someone who said they'd be around to let us in, but it didn't sound like they coordinated very specifically: I don't think a precise time of our arrival was given, perhaps. In any case, there was a closed gate we came up to at the end of a long entry road, and I set my phone on it to use the self-timer to get this shot of all three of us:
I may very well be wildly inaccurate with my estimation of the bike route we did yesterday morning. Suffice it to say I’m pretty sure I rode a total of about 26 miles yesterday. And we took a wide loop for our ride back, just to avoid the seriously steep winding hill we rode down on the way there.
The ride back, slowly but steadily climbing back up that hill on the wider loop, totally exhausted me. It was far better than attempting that cliff-steep hill going back up, at least – I’d have had to get off and just walk my bike up that, and I can proudly say I never had to get off my bike (although several times I had to gear all the way down to 1). I got so sweaty my hands were caked with sweat, which didn’t mesh that well with my handlebar grips so worn down that about a third of the metal bars beneath them are showing. So my hands got all weirdly sticky-dirty with eroding plastic. I have no one to blame but myself for that, though; I should maybe, you know, buy some new grips. My bike is 10 years old this year and to call it “well worn” would be an understatement.
I'm totally glad I went and it was absolutely worth it but this ride was a notably bigger physical challenge than last month's had been. As a result, I'm no longer on the fence regarding next month's ride from the Burien store to Four Elements Farm, as it's set to be 29 miles -- one way. I really don't think I can handle that. I have that weekend in September marked for a hopeful visit with Danielle at her friend Jeanna's place north of Spokane anyway.
When we neared our return to the store, Melissa said there was a Dairy Queen just up the road, and Jamie sounded all about getting some ice cream when we were done. I would not have made this choice on my own, just because I'd already had some ice cream on Saturday and was going to be having margaritas with Laney later yesterday afternoon, but I did like the idea of getting a shot of all three of us with our Blizzards. But, when I looked it up on my phone the Dairy Queen was well over 2 miles away, even further than the Bear Creek Park & Ride where I was to catch my bus back -- and then Melissa herself changed her mind on the idea. So, so much for that.
Jamie put her bike in the trunk of her car right there in the parking lot, but Melissa was headed back to downtown Redmond. I don't know if she actually lives there or what, but we rode basically together for much of that last stretch, until the road forked and she went to the right and I to the left, soon after making it to the Park & Ride. And lucky me, the bus I needed pulled up maybe five minutes after I got there.
And then I rode home from the bus stop downtown, and was home briefly to work a little on photos before needing to leave again. Shobhit arrived home from his weekend at Triangle Recreation Camp, and that was how I learned that it had rained 15 hours straight there on Saturday. He said he liked the camping but was very cagey about his experience with the other gay people there: "Gay people can be very obnoxious," he said. When I asked what he meant, he refused to elaborate, just saying, "I don't know..." and then kind of trailing off. To be fair, Shobhit can be pretty obnoxious himself, but that may very well have no relevance to whatever he was referring to there.
Shobhit did not join me for "Happy Hour" with Laney -- which it technically was not, as La Cocina Oaxaqueña only has Happy Hour on weekday early evenings, and Laney and I met there yesterday at 2:00. Had we stuck with our original plan for Friday evening, it would have been Happy Hour, but Laney apparently had food poisoning so bad she didn't even go to work on Thursday or Friday. Thankfully she was much better yesterday, so we had plenty of time to talk extensively, both about the rest of my weekend with Ivan, and about the book she and I both recently finished reading, called The Power by Naomi Alderman. Look it up, it's pretty great -- although I did have criticisms, which I discussed at length with Laney. Shobhit likely would have had no interest in this so it's just as well he didn't join us.
We both had exactly the same thing: one order of quesadillas fritas, always our favorite dish there -- usually $5 for Happy Hour; all of $6.95 yesterday, so, still pretty damn cheap. They seemed to have a lot more cheese stuffed in them too, so that made them super filling. And then we both had two house margaritas, which cost $9 but we both ordered a double for our first one so those were something like $15. By doing that we each saved ourselves about three bucks. That's not nothing!
It was a great so-called "Happy Hour" for August and hanging out with Laney is always a joy. Next month we already decided we'll go back to The Saint.
Not long after I got back home, Shobhit and I finally spent two hours making the grocery shopping rounds: Target at Northgate; PCC Greenlake Village; Macpherson's Produce on Capitol Hill. We came home and had mushroom risotto cakes Shobhit liked the looks of in the PCC deli case (and after baking them for 15 minutes they were indeed very tasty) alongside some mango salad from Trader Joe's that needed to be consumed, to which Shobhit added fresh chopped mango. We'll have the last of it tonight. We ate while watching Real Time with Bill Maher, and then I came to the bedroom to write my blog post about the visit to the Space Needle before finally getting to bed.
[posted 12:08 pm]