A Bike Geek's Day Off

Monday is the one day of the week that Bike Works is closed, so it's the one day of the week that I'm pretty sure I won't be working. But even when I'm not working, I'm still a full-time bike geek. So I emailed some of the usual suspects and convinced Matt Newlin and Brad and Thorvald Hawkins to join me on a trip to Bainbridge Island.

The 6:10 AM ferry gets us to an island still dark and fog-shrouded, so we decide to wait for Pegasus to open at 7:00 AM. Young Thorvald has quite a way with the coffee shop ladies and after he and Brad packed away a not-too-hot hot chocolate, we were on our way.

Our route was the kind of variant of the Chilly Hilly route that you make up as you go along, kind of paying attention to a map, mostly just rolling through the fog. We found our fair share of roads that end at incredibly picturesque enclaves and repeated proved that the answer to the question "how lost can you get on an island?" is "quite."

Brad and Thorvald, who it must be noted lack the goat-like climbing ability exhibited by Mr. Newlin and myself, had to take a morning ferry back to Seattle but still got to have the thrill of riding the entire length of Toe Jam Hill Road. Matt and I managed to continue a very vague circumnavigation of the island, ending with a trip to the wonderful museum/shop that is Classic Cycle. After lunch, we hopped the ferry back to Seattle and stopped by the Bikery.

Now I'm sure that there are people who spend their days off as far as possible from any reminders of their day-to-day workday world. I guess I'm not one of those people. And I guess I'm living in a pretty good place to be a bike geek.