August 8: Back in Washington
This morning, at about 8 AM Pacific time, my latest three-day experience with communal living on the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry ended.
It was very similar to my previous experience on the ferry two weeks ago when I took it from Bellingham to Juneau: too much coffee, too little exercise, anxiety about where I would sleep each night, occasional wildlife sightings (whales and dolphins, mostly), and endless breathtaking scenery. This experience on the ferry did have a couple new twists though: two failures of my OmniPod insulin management system. Fortunately, I had three extra pods with me in my backpack. My remaining seven pods I have with me on the tour were not easily accessible. They were on the car deck with my bicycle. The car deck is normally off-limits except for three times a day so people can go down and access whatever they might have stored in their car — luggage and dogs (!) in particular. It’s kind of sad to watch a dozen or so dog owners trying to get their dogs to go to the bathroom and then give their dogs some exercise, food, and water in an area about the size of a three or four parking spots. They’ve got fifteen minutes, three times a day (weather permitting), to do all this. I’m not sure I could put my dogs through all that. Did I mention all the barking I could hear when I passed the stairway down to the car deck? There seemed to be some very unhappy dogs down there. Yep, I definitely wouldn’t want to put my dogs through that.
Here are some photos from my journey from Sitka on the ferry:
After I got my gear reorganized from ferry passage into bike touring configuration, I was on my way south from Bellingham. I hoped to make it to the Wenberg State Park, a few miles west of Arlington, Washington. I was looking forward to camping again, but it was not to be. They didn’t have a single site available, not even a primitive site usually set aside for hikers and bikers. So, I kept heading south towards Highway 2, the highway I plan to use to cross the Cascade Mountains.
With no campgrounds in the Marysville area and my legs feeling the familiar ache of a long day riding against the wind, I opted for a motel in Tulalip, Washington. A soft bed will be a nice change after three days sleeping on the cabin deck floor of the M/V Columbia.
On the way to the Marysville area, I rode mostly on country roads, but they turned out to be busy ones. I rode on or very close to the white line which is all the shoulder the Washington Department of Transportation decided these roads needed. As a result, all day long, I was feeling like I was in the way of a constant flow of seemingly angry, fast-moving traffic. A number of drivers elected to yell something indecipherable as they went by. I tell you what, I think Washington drivers need to either up their medication or lower their caffeine intake. I’ll be glad to be clear of the Seattle/Tacoma area.
After I had settled in to a room, I turned on the TV to see if anything new had happened in the world since I left Sitka. I turned it on just in time to hear a story that might explain why motorists were not very friendly today. Earlier in the week, there was a Critical Mass event and some cyclists and motorists ended up in a brawl. Critical Mass is an organization, if you can call it that, which holds events, usually the last Friday of the month, in large cities around the world. The goal of these events is, supposedly, to show how unfriendly cities are to bicyclists. Being mostly spontaneous and poorly organized by design, larger ones tend to simply snarl up traffic. Some of their tactics — “Corking”, “the Cyclone” and “the Die-in” — are clearly designed to make matters worse for motorists who happen to be in the area. If you can’t tell, I don’t agree with Critical Mass tactics. Most large cities are unfriendly to bicyclists. In that, I agree with Critical Mass. But the way to fix that, in my humble but correct opinion, is not by infuriating motorists.
Tomorrow, I hope to make it as far as Skykomish, Washington which is well into the Cascade Mountain range. The weather report is calling for rain, so this should be interesting.
Comments(1)
