BIKE EXPO; BOOK ROUTE SCOUTING

Area man looks fairly stunned to be standing astride a $9,000 carbon Specialized Epic (29er, of course).

All right so the weather's been unbelievably crummy for as long as I can remember blah, blah, blah. Perfect indoor weather, however, for the Seattle Bicycle Expo this past weekend and since I have a book due June 1 (Classic Road Rides of Washington) and need to scout out a bunch of routes, I combined the two. Hit the expo for a few hours, reupped my supply of bike porn, then headed down to the Rochester-Galvin-Vader- Boistfort-Adna end of the world. (In fact, I'm in a motel in Kelso as I type this.) Heading down to Vancouver, WA, tomorrow.

Below, please enjoy some expo pics.

Padauk and black walnut time trial/triathlon bike ridden and Kona Ironman last year. $3,500.



Cool wooden mountain bike at the Renovo booth. The wood is hickory and padauk, $6,700.



World champion artistic cyclists--Stefan Musu and Lukas Matla from Germany.

LAST WEEKEND

Just now catching up to last weekend which atchully began Friday when I ferried over to Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival. It features in an upcoming Seattle Times story about Washington's top outdoorsy towns. (Boat photos and list of towns to be revealed next Thursday, the 24th.) But whilst I was there, I came across the Renovo booth. They're from Portland and make these amazing wood and bamboo boats that are called bicycles. (I think that's what they called 'em.) Incredibly beautiful. Their site is: http://www.renovobikes.com/.

The weather was spectacular and on the ferry ride back to Keystone, Mounts Baker and Shuksan were large and in charge. Though as you can see Shuksan, on the right, appears to be a mere nubbin compared to the great white watcher.

Saturday, the John Clark and I hit Blanchard Mountain on the 29ers as was discussed and shown in a previous entry and video. It's an amazing place with two lakes--Lizard and Lily--that are a mile apart and that look almost exactly like and each has an overlook that's too steep to ride up. So it's very easy to be at Lily and think, 'I've been here before' when really you were at Lizard and then you go and get lost trying to find your way out. Which has happened to me several times. So these days I never go near Blanchard without my trusty Chuckanut Recreation Area map (http://www.squareonemaps.com/).

Above, Jonny Boy Clark checks out the view of Chuckanut Mountain, Lummi and Orcas islands and a bunch of others from the northernmost viewpoint, above Lizard Lake. Below, the view toward Samish Island and Anacortes from the top of Oyster Dome, above the Bat Caves and Lily Lake.

After the ride the family, including me sister Kath who now lives in B'ham, hit the St. Sophia Greek Festival where Bake scored a cool hat.

As for this weekend a couple Sunday events I'm considering are the Capitol State Forest Classic mountain bike race (www.capitolforest.com/races2009) near Olympia or the Chuckanut Century ( http://www.mtbakerbikeclub.org/ ) right here in town. Hmm ... one requires a three-hour drive, the other I can pedal to. What's it gonna be?