LUMMI ISLAND STORY HITS SEATTLE TIMES

Hey y'all, today's Seattle Times features my story about Lummi Island's Baker Preserve Trail, as well as a bunch of the island's other cool features and things to do. Read it here.

Above, some cool helicopters at Blue Earth Monuments and Signs (located down the end of Wild Wabbit Woad), made from recycled tools 'n' such. Below, Lummi Island in the foreground (B'ham and Mount Baker in the background) as seen from the top of Orcas Island.

EASTERN WASHINGTON IN APRIL; GALBY NEWS

Headed over to Eastern Washington this week for some more book route scouting, photo-ing and even some riding. Into your Leavenworths, Wenatchees, Watervilles, Chelans, Malagas, Ellensburg, Yakimas, Naches—stop me, please. (Above is P Road NW on the Waterville Plateau, above the Columbia River.)

Below are rock walls of the amazing Yakima Canyon between Ellensburg and Yakima.

Something else I'd not seen before--or at least not for a while--blue sky, as seen in the photo below at the top of Joe Miller Road, a seriously crazy-steep hill just south of Wenatchee. My Garmin sed it was 14-percent in stretches, which is even steeper than Bow Hill. They race the Wenatchee Omnium on it, which is crazy.

Below, a cool view of Wenatchee from Badger Mountain, the 4,000-foot wall that rises high above the east bank of the Columbia River.  

Don't want to get my hopes up too much but today's Herald story seems to imply that there's some positive movement in the Galbraith-B'ham-County-WHIMPs issue. If nothing else, it looks like runners, hikers, bikers, sightseers etc. will still be allowed up there after the original agreement with the WHIMPs ends on Monday. And unless I’m wrong it looks like they’ve got another agreement worked out. Yay! (Read the latest from club president, Mark Peterson here.)

PHOTOS OF AN APRIL MORN ON GALBRAITH

We'd planned on riding the Donut Ride but the roads were still slick from last night's rain so with helmet cam in tow, we headed up to Galbraith instead. Hoping, wishing, fingers crossed, etc., that isn't our last-ever ride up there. Above, Titanium Cancellara up and stomps it. (Somewhere, I'm not sure where.) 

Above, John and Scott catch their respective breaths and get ready for the ride down from the Towers. We talked much about the whole Polygon-Galbraith-the city-the mayor-etc. thang, wondering how it'll play out. To lighten the tension, we tossed up ridiculous Onion-esque headlines, such as: "Polygon Moves to Have Ski to Sea Cancelled"; "Polygon Buys Mt. Baker Ski Area; Illegalizes Snow," etc.   

Above, T.C. on the slippery Mullet bridge. Below, he again stomps it. (Dammit.)

Kinda cool: the three of us have signed up for next month's Stottlemeyer 30-Mile Mountain Bike race near Port Gamble. Should be lots fun. (And hard as hell.) 

A great ride; let's hope there're many more!

THINGS BEGINNING TO SEEM OMINOUS FOR GALBRAITH MOUNTAIN BIKING

Bummer story today in the Bellingham Herald reporting that Polygon Financial, who owns the 3,000-plus acre hiking-biking-running-family walking playground, is ending their agreement with WHIMPs Mountain Bike Coalition. (WHIMPs is the Bellingham mountain biking club that's been the recreational stewards of Galby for some years now.) In January, Polygon started logging the lower flanks of the mountain closing (we hoped temporarily) a few trails. Now though, they're ending the stewardship agreement and I can't help but wonder what's next. My guess is nothing good. (And boy, I'd love to be wrong on this one.)

A part of me wonders if they're doing this to try to get the city (and/or county?) to pony up the $20 million to buy it. Read (and weep) the story here.

Here's a link to Preserve Galbraith, a group working to keep public access to Galby. And here's a link to the WHIMPs site which details the agreement termination.

Ugh.

AREA MAN'S PARIS-ROUBAIX PREDICTION: THOR

Yes, I know the above shot is of last year's winner Fabian Cancellara haulin' arse through Roubaix just before entering the velodrome, but for whatever reason I think it's going to be Thor Hushovd's year. (Or maybe Flecha finally gets one?) Above pic is from last year's race; below shot is a video capture my son took at pretty much the exact same moment:

He got the better shot.

Rode the Donut Ride today for the first time in about a year-and-a-half. (Titanium Clark and Titanium Cancellara rode it too.) Man it was fast, especially the tailwind-aided ride out to Birch Bay which we made in an hour and three minutes. (It's 21.5 miles.) The Donut starts early, 7 a.m., and so by 9:45 you're back in town and you've already got 45 miles in. Nice.

I took the above pics at the end of Walnut Street where the peloton passes coming from downtown. I thought I'd have no trouble latching onto the back after taking my last shot. But with the tailwind (or my dubious time-trialing skills), it took me 10 minutes of pedaling about all-out to finally get on a wheel. I'm not sure I ever recovered the entire ride. Still a lot of fun though. Below is the Birch Bay stop.

TWO GREAT JANUARY RIDES ... IN APRIL

Saturday was mountain biking Chuckanut with the Titanium Cowboys, John Clark and Scott Young. Down the Interurban, Fragrance Lake Road to Cleator wherein we all decided we don't feel like climbing any more, then down 2-Dollar as evinced in the above photo. Sunday, Scott and I got in 40-mile road ride: down Chuckanut Drive, where we hooked up with a group of triathletes for a bit, before tilting at a nasty headwind in the Skagit Flats and then turning inland where the evil 13-percent Bow Hill awaited. Both days were damp with temps in the low 40s which isn't bad for January. But of course it's April. Then again, it's NW Washington so what do I expect? (Just a hint of sun and about 12 to 15 more degrees.)

Hey, these are really cool. Titanium Cancellara's wife Gail, made some Titanium Cowboy buttons. (I guess that makes our wives Titanium Cowgirls.) See below:

Suh-weet!

Switching gears, interesting story in this month's Bicycling magazine: Bill Strickland, long-time Lance Armstrong supporter and author (he wrote "Tour de Lance: The Extraordinary Story of Lance Armstrong's Fight to Reclaim the Tour de France") comes right out and says he's convinced that Lance doped. Bold move by such a mainstream magazine--I noted there were no Trek or Carmichael Training Systems ads (both as usually big advertisers in the mag) as well. Curious as to how this will affect the magazine's bottom line.