Out riding again with the Team Unattacked Boyz. Forecast was for rain, so we headed up Alpe d'Chuckanut on two 29ers and a 'cross bike. Always a great time. About 30 miles, 2,500 feet of climbing, about 2:45 of riding. Solved a lot of the country's problems too.
Tomorrow, Easter, and Paris-Roubaix. I'm probably waking at 5, gonna shoo away the Easter Bunny then watch the race live on Cycling.tv. I'm a full-on cycling geek nerd dork dude, I admit it. Hardly care at all about baseball season starting or the Yankees' coming and goings--their new stadium, etc.--which, until about five years ago was pretty much what my sporting spectator world revolved around. Anyway, it'd be cool to see Tornado Tom or Fabian Cancellara on the podium, or even George Hincapie, though that's more a sentimental wish than anything. Here's a quick pick: Boonen, Flecha, Chavanel.
Bummer bit of news: looks like the Mount Constitution Hill Climb, which I rode last May and was planning to again next month, is cancelled for this year. Apparently a victim of the bad economy.
In a move that impressed absolutely no one save for himself, area boy Mike McQuaide today rode his bike to the top of Cleator Road. Declaring that not to be enough, he then headed for Galbraith Mountain and rode to the top of the Tower Road. He then made it back in time to pick up Bake at school with a quick stop at Starbucks on the way. Total stats: 41 miles, 4,800 feet elevation gain. 
Post-flood mountain biking in Bellingham redux again part II the second.
Today, John Clark and I planned on riding out the Interurban to the top of Cleator Road. No dice, again. (There seems to be a definite lack of dice lately.) A massive slide off Cleator Road has completely closed off the Interurban about a quarter-mile north of Cleator. Kwazy. (Seems to be no lack of weather kwaziness however.)
We rode the road (Chuckanut Drive) for a while, then headed up Cleator. Several spots have slumped significantly and/or washed out. We made it to about 1,450 feet before heavy wet snow turned us around.
Still, it was a great ride made even greater by the presence of John's new orange gloves.
Nothing quite says Breakfast of Champions like strips of bacon atop a maple bar, wouldn't you say? Bake's been eyeing this thing for weeks at Rocket Donuts but yesterday took the plunge. Today in school, he shared his experience with the class. Would he recommend it? someone asked. No, not really, he said. But at least he took a risk.
Today was a climb up Cleator Road via the 24-pound Fantom CX. Killer climb--1,700 feet (from Chuckanut and Hiline) in 3.8 miles. Subtract about a mile from that for a mostly flat stretch in the middle--1,700 in about 3 miles. Evil.
From the top, I rode (the brakes) down Fragrance Lake Road to an old forest road that lots of folks refer to as the Burnout Road. I've run down it a couple times before from the Lost Lake/Dictionary end of the world and have been meaning to CX-plore up it. Not too far up is probably the best Samish Bay-San Juan Island viewpoint around. See below. It's about a 180-degree view extending far down into Skagit and north to the San Juans and lower BC.
That prominent bump there above is Mount Erie which we rode two weeks ago and I wrote about a couple entries below.
"Every time I get out, they keep pulling me back in." That's the line from the otherwise forgettable third Godfather movie that comes to me each time I go out for one of these fairly long trail runs. This is the winter I'm definitely not doing the Chuckanut 50K because as the top two pictures show, I've been having a great time riding the Fantom CX up and down the dirt roads surrounding Bellingam.
So it's rides like this--and up Galbraith too--that I plan to occupy myself with this winter and to keep me from even having the slightest whim to run that damn Chuckanut 50K.
