lesson four part two: sylvania

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a map
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The Snoqualmie Valley trail is an old railroad right-of-way: a raised bed, sometimes with gravel, plotting a wandering line above the marshlands. Ride past the moldering remnants of old industries that litter the landscape alongside: the last rotting bits of the signal system, a massive frame built of old growth tree-trunks turning green in the river. Even the farms, growing bright green in damp, are silent and muddy. Their few gateways are guarded carefully -- tangles of barbed wire and fierce words printed on a collage of fun colors. Mud-fields ferociously defended from a presently deserted road. Stop to urinate next to one of these gate-ways and find artifacts from a previous time: railroad ties corroded bright orange scattered around the tree, as if from some arcane, forgotten ritual.


After passing through Carnation, the right-of-way begins to gain altitude, following the contours of the foothills that form the eastern wall of the valley. Leave settlements behind you and intsead ride along a deseted path in the woods. Except for a handful of dirt roads, the trail follows the hillside in utter solitude.





Ride across a small trestle over a narrow, vigorous river and then the trail begins to climb even higher into the little hills. A gravel track lined with brown leaves and leafless trees that glow bright green in the even overcast light. Get a flat tire and spend a leisurely twenty minutes patching the tube and hear or see no-one else. No sign of humanity or civilization save for the lonely gravel track arcing along the green hillfingers reaching out into the valley floor. Sit on the wet gravel and listen to a hawk call from tree to tree, slowing making its way down the valley.






The trail soon finds its chosen altitude -- no longer climbing, it is content to wind its way easily through the trees. Heading from the left are countless nameless tracks, leading uphill and out of sight into the trees. Keep the bike in a lower gear and spin in through the rough gravel. Worry about that flat tire you got before -- the tire itself salvaged from a dumpster how many hundreds of miles ago? You should not be riding dozens of gravel miles on that tire. The fear is unfounded and you pedal on unimpeded for the rest of the day. Through the trees to your right is an occasional glimpse of the valley now surprisingly far below.




As you ride the only sounds are your breath, the gravel crunching underneath your tires, and birds singing in the still bare trees. Suddenly a gunshot. Then another. And another, this one a shotgun or some other large-bore firearm. Their report echoes down the valley and through the trees. Several more report from far below, out of sight. A gun range in the woods below. The trail crosses a small parking lot and a road, where a cadre of mountain bikers are pulling their bikes off of their sport utility vehicles. The trail has found its way back into settled country again: small and large houses line the trail on both sides now, dogs barking and toys in the open yards. Still the trail continues and eventually crosses a massive railroad trestle, a massive parabola of huge wooden beams turning green with age reaching across a yawning gap. Far below the Tolt River thunders under a blanket of moss-wrapped trees. Cross the bridge and climb down below it briefly. The smell of wet earth, rotting leaves, and creosote. The bridge curves off out of sight. An unexpected treasure, to be sure. A hidden jewel hidden in the damp evergreen woods.




Less than a mile from the trestle the trail comes to an ignoble end: a simple tunnel beneath a rural highway. Ride through it and the corrugated steel walls echo in a strange, almost terrifying way, the sounds of each displaced pebble reproduced a thousand slightly different ways all at once. Beyond the tunnel the official trail ends, but a narrow track continues in the woods, headed for parts unknown.


Now drag your bike up slippery wooden stairs onto the highway and, for the first time in hours, ride your bike on glass-like pavement. Get in the drops and drop it into a low, low gear and really push it downhill for a while without a care in the world: no flats, no slips, no surprises on this relatively well cared for two lane. Look to the right and, for a tantalizing split second, see the Cascades through a break in both the trees and the clouds. They are huge and shockingly close, a seemingly impenetrable wall of rock and snow, a vertical stone wall thrusting out of the verdant dales of Western Washington. Impassable, tantalizingly so. Then they're gone.

A few seconds later the small highway, an insignificant tributary, joins a larger stream of automobiles. Cross the street and find Snoqualmie Falls, a massive cataract of water with a large pool of stunningly blue water, even on a cloudy day.



Dozens of tourists mill about as you gulp down a quart of water in a few seconds. Visit the gift shop where a woman uses a large machine to generate two shots of espresso. Drink those, too, and refill your bottles in the sink of the bathroom. Then saddle the bicycle once again and begin the trip home. First rocket down the switchback highway back to the floor of the valley. Sharp turns and traffic hugging the fogline. Ride the drops and feel no fear, but keep the fingers on the brake levers anyway. At the bottom, you cross the Tolt river once again, but the highway's bridge is a much less remarkable feat. A squat assemblage of poured concrete and asphalt.

The road home is familiar -- two lane rural roads through the countryside of King County. They pass through a small town, Fall City, and then past rural homesteads. The older farmhouses are easy to discern: they're simple, beautiful, and have massive porches rather than massive garages. The road passes by these houses, and their grotesque modern subsequent forms, and up and out of the Snoqualmie Valley.





Soon the rural road is subsumed by a larger exburban highway. The individual rural estates are replaced by subdivisions of houses surrounded by high walls. The road soon becomes massive, four lanes of busy traffic. A bike lane appears suddenly and travels along this not-a-highway-highway for a few blocks before suddenly disappearing before a steep hill drops you off in the outskirts of Issaquah. Now fully in the sphere of Seattle's influence, the road is hugely wide and choked with automobiles. Pull into the left turn lane and be surrounded by two dozen idling automobiles. Smell their poison and listen to the deep rumble of their collective engines. Concrete, exhaust, rubber, steel.

Join the I-90 trail and follow the interstate corridor. In Bellevue ride past dozens of corporate offices. The trail here is a concrete channel tunneling under a freeway overpass alongside an offramp.


Ride to Mercer Island, past the mansions of Seattle's elite, and begin the trip across the I-90 bridge. The wind here is sharp and cold, and all of the rugged commuters have pained, struggling looks on their faces as the ride up the incline onto Mercer Island. Cruise alongside the traffic on the freeway, which you quickly begin to overtake.




Cross Seattle on the bike trail and head downtown, where the traffic is heinous. Split 3rd Avenue all the way to Westlake Center, where you meet several dozen strangers and ride around downtown in circles. A cop walks out in front of everyone, shrieking at the group, totally unable to effect any sort of change. Authority ignored. A big party slowly making its way across Seattle.




The big ride eventually starts to make its way north. Eventually you cross the locks at dusk and start heading home on the Burke-Gilman. The big ride pares down to fifteen, then seven, then four, and then just two. You pick up the pace, bid the fellow rider a good night, and push the last few miles home. Ride with an unexpected pep up the very last hill of the day, gliding past a dozen cheap restaurants and a couple cheap bars, ignoring the hundreds out to enjoy the first night of the weekend. Instead, you go home and take a shower.

lesson four part one: sylvania

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a map
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First, go to the dive coffee shop down the street. Drink burned coffee and eat a vegan scone while looking at yet another dull day outside. Buy another scone and slip into the back pocket of your dirty windbreaker, free your bike from the trash can you locked it to, and head north once again. The air is cool and the sky is unpromising, but so far the roads are dry.

Follow the Burke-Gilman north through more privileged neighborhoods than your own. Houses so close to the lake they look like houseboats. Ride past piles of garbage pretending to be mansions. Ride past the clogged minimall streets and the golf courses.



Find and follow the good old Samammish. Ride fast, reap the easy miles -- later the going will be slow. Carve your way around the bends: this early and there's hardly anybody out. Listen to that thin hum as the tires bite the pavement. The new handlebars have changed your bike: now it handles like the quick road bike it was meant to be, even though ten pounds of gear are strapped to the fork and handlebars.

Eventually the trail finds its way around the big hill and turns south. Into the wind now and the sky is darker. Find the new trail leading under a green willow next to a couple of shaggy ponies. The new trail looks big and bad, totally unpromising. Little more than a muddy track up the sheer walls of the valley.








Dismount before even trying, as your slick road tires will find no purchase. Push the bike slowly up the grade, stop frequently and turn to see the valley fall further behind while breathing hard. The track so steep and loose your shoes slip. Pause and think about the many muddy miles ahead and eat a banana. Twenty miles in and the ride is really only beginning.

At the top of the first brutal hill see the Tolt Pipeline open like a book: a green highway through the countryside, charging roughshod up and down the grades. Countless little valleys between here and the horizon, beyond which undoubtedly lay more unfriendly topography.



Mount the bicycle and begin the first dicey descent. Come up the other side and begin another. Up and down a muddy road surrounded by the mansions of horse breeders and other rural aristocrats. Some of them give you strange looks as they walk their dogs on the trail.



Struggle up another very steep grade. Standing on the smallest gear, the rear wheel begins to slip. Don't stop though: if you let the bike find its own way, you will not fall. Just keep grinding the mud with your slick one inch tires. Struggle past a wealthy looking middle aged woman at the top of the little climb and manage to let out a strained, "Hello." She, of course, does not reply.

The trail continues through the woodsy exburbs of Seattle. Large houses and small along each side, the occasional subdivision carved out of a pasture. Find the home you were surely meant to die in surrounded by family in a distant, warm future.




One long gradual and especially wet descent has you barreling along at thirty miles per hour. Grip the handlebars and stick your body out over the rear wheel and scan the trail ahead for obstructions and dodge exercise ipod walkers deaf to the world about them. Do not think about how easily your tires slip on this wet earth and ride as if you were the wind blowing through the tall grass, there but no affected. Hit the brakes and cross another lonely rural road. You are deep in the woods now, it seems. The Tolt Pipeline reveals itself for a brief moment at the bottom of a gully, looking like an ancient aqueduct more than anything else.









Eventually the Tolt Pipeline Trail comes to an end and the Snoqualmie Valley finally reveals itself. Patches of green hemmed by a forest slowly making the transition from winter to summer.



Ride past another farmhouse, this one perched on stilts on the steep valley wall. A couple of merino sheep watch as you ride through the grass in what could be called a front yard and join a steep, narrow driveway. As the road descends under a canopy of lush woods, it becomes steeper, and then ludicrously steep and also treacherously slick. So tricky that to ride it would be foolish: dismount once more and walk your bicycle slowly to the floor of the valley.



Once there ride along a little two lane highway with no shoulder then turn left to cross the broad valley. Wet farmland beneath a wet sky. On either side, little hills nestled beneath a mix of gray and green and the Cascades hidden behind thick gray clouds. Stop and watch as the semitrucks scare the ducks from their pond.


Ride across the bridge and then past a shrine devoted to an old relic. Find the gravel path running alongside the highway. It is lined on both sides with bare, spindly trees for as far as the eye can see. As you turn off the road onto and begin to crunch through the gravel, the clouds above finally have their say as a mist begins to fall. And so you ride south along the valley, passing rivers and green fields bordered by sullen thickets.

lesson three: some rain

a map.

A vast empire aloft spending weeks slowly migrating above the sound. A vast ethereal continent of mountains, valleys, plains, dales, and trenches, though to us below nothing but an endless horizon of nearly featureless gray, broken by the occasional window to a stolen spring above.

Every day the promise of rain rarely met, until Friday. Waste time and drink coffee. Look out the window and think about the plan, which included seventy-six miles, a very ambitious daytrip. Think about almost half of those miles on dirt, now surely thick mud. Eventually decide to give it a shot and saddle the bicycle in the heavy wet air. The rain, of course, a promise. The redolent roadway and sodden sky are easy signs to read.

A muddy shortcut in the park.





Shortly after, on the burke-gilman, the rain comes. Like breathing, drawing in and out harder and softer. Pull out the raincape, neatly rolled on top of the bag already. Slalom around retirees proving their pluck in expensive goretex. Stop and see the pink cascades in the distance barely visible, dwarfed by the tiresome gloom of the past week.





Follow the trail and meet the Sammamish river, little more than a slow dirty trench in the northeastern suburbs. The rain continues to insist and you find your will slowly ebbing: riding in the rain is, at its core, an entirely un-enjoyable activity. It is something to remember in the hot sweat summer with a kind of nostalgia. At work watch the few pedal by in the rain and feel a twinge of jealousy: riding in the rain they may be, but they are riding in the rain. You should envy them. This is forgotten when you are riding in the rain: cold water seeps into the wool and onto your skin. Through the shoes, into the gloves. Onto your glasses. Finding every weakness, every chink. Cold water is undefeated always.





Around the hill the river goes, into its domain the valley. A swaying river of green with a lake at the bottom. Stop at a trail junction and see how miserable you would be, and choose instead to drink beer in a nearby brewery.





One cup of burned coffee and two beers later the sun is out. Turn the bicycle around. This ride is over. Going further is to invite misery into your life for no reason, so go home. Huge dark skies above either ridge, but the valley itself so bright it nearly hurts your eyes after the days of darkness. A friendly wind blows you up along the valley, a gentle nudge allowing you to turn a 95inch gear with slow ease. Stop and listen to the tall trees whisper in the wind.

Stop on a bridge and see a tree fallen in the water. Watch as it gives birth to dozens of perfect tiny whirlpools, flowing in a little line downstream out of sight under the bridge. Hear the wind and see it blowing across the water. Watch and listen for ten minutes, then twenty. See the huge dark above get closer and closer, know that the little morning rain is followed by its bigger, angrier cousin. The hugest, darkest skies you've seen in a long time. Now watch two ducks fight the current: heads far forward on stretched, strained necks. A second of rest erases ten of hard effort. See them give up and take flight an disappear around a bend in five. Now the rain is here.





After a tunnel the rain is a joke. You cannot but help but laugh at this awful deluge. The skies above are playing a trick on you. The world becomes a fuzz behind a million gallons of water. Keep riding. Your raincape, so effective in the short commutes in the light rain, is a token now. A talisman you have invoked against the idea of getting wet, a symbol of shelter and nothing more. Wet body swathed in heavy wet wool wrapped in a wet piece of nylon.

Back along the trail the way you came, only now the skies to the west are perfect clarity. A window to the beautiful day that does not belong to you. The darkness over the hills makes a more immediate impression than the sun-dappled pathway spread before you.


A wet failure of a day whose only bright side is pulling on a fresh pair of dry wool socks.

lesson two, part two: two lakes.

A map.

The gravel goes on for miles, following closely the eastern shore of Lake Sammamish. At first, it passes mostly between starter mansions or upscale condominiums. Sometimes the path is little more than a glorified alleyway between two large fences, whose gates are always electrically operate. Huge hard-anodized padlocks keep the riff-raff from intruding on an acre or two of dilapidated lakefront, complete with mostly rotting, empty boathouses. Every driveway leading up to the main road is littered with "Private Drive," "No Trail Exit," and "No Trespassing." Of course you can see the tops of cars whizzing by in the sun just twenty feet away. Being a good citizen, you should heed the sings and continue always forward.





Here and there, slowly collapsing treehouses crouch in the trees, empty and forlorn. Their sorry state suggests the children of these strange neighborhoods left long ago. Leave them to their moldering fate and keep moving. No one else rides their bicycle on this path, just retired dogwalkers who give you dirty looks. One woman is so confused by your cheery bell she screams and jumps away from you as you grumble past on the loose gravel. As she falls behind, hear her tell her husband, "I didn't even know what that was!"


The bike handles the gravel well. The secret to riding a bike on the gravel is to let it do the talking. Listen to the bike and let it do the walking, let the wheels find their own way on the ever-shifting ground. You will find that the bike does not want to fall down any more than you do, and will go to great lengths to avoid it, as long as you let it. Slip into low gear, spin, and keep your eyes on the horizon. Do not mind strange apparitions that may appear.








Before long you will find yourself in Redmond. A grumbling stomach leads you away from the gravel that has been numbing your hands for the last forty-five minutes. Next to a large parking lot is a burrito place populated by unpleasant men eating lunch on their break. Read your book and eat your burrito as these young men, who are nothing at all like anyone you have ever enjoyed, complain about how people abuse the new $1000 commission for new contracts. Their sentences are populated with dull vulgarities and a general lack of enthusiasm. Eventually they make fun of a coworker who was dumb enough to try and get married before contemplating how many skiing weekends left in the season. Feel glad that such people find each other so easily before setting off to find the big park on the north end of the lake.

A small amount of wandering around more office parks, which are the primary defining feature of this bike ride, locates it. A massive field with a handful of playing fields and large buildings. A nearby freeway drones as it marches over the low green hills to the west.





Wander around aimlessly, wondering what to do next. A group of men assemble model planes in one spot, while in another dogs frenzied with happiness bolt to and fro, bark and hop. A sign promising a "Mysterious Thicket" sounds promising, so you dismount and start walking along the old concrete path. Soon the promised thicket appears, and not long after that a muddy path so enticing it simply cannot be ignored.

Such paths are usually a good opportunity to feel ludicrous dragging a bike where no one should be doing any such thing, and this particular trench of mud is no exception.





It is always wise to keep in mind, however, that if you find yourself having a miserable time dragging your bike somewhere, you will be rewarded somehow. In this case the reward after slogging through thick mud and manhandling the bike over kneehigh roots and over blackberry patches is a secluded spot in the middle of the Mysterious Thicket. A pathway of soft moss-like grass leads along the otherwise lifeless field. Bare trees stand guard as you find a spot in the shade to sit on spongy earth to clean several pounds of mud out of your outrageous fenders, read a good book, and drink a good beer. Only one person and her dog, a huge wienmarner, wander by after forcibly pushing their way through the thicket. Otherwise a quiet, motionless respite. Small birds skitter amongst the dead grass catching their lunches. Suddenly the thin buzzing of a model airplane as it loops about over the trees. Only then can you hear the barely audible drone of a freeway not far away.








Soon however, the waning sun encourages a conclusion of the ride, still many miles away. Rather than pushing back the way you came, choose to find new ways to get home. A new path is found that leads out over a large peatbog and then over the lake itself.





The ride now continues on an aggressively manicured bicycle path running along a broad valley. The Sammamish rivers flows lazily to the left, between it and the path is a barrier of impenetrable blackberry bushes. The landscape largely farmland subsumed by more recent development that spreads along the roadways. Across a massive featureless green field are huge buildings, utility unknown. Lines of tall narrow trees along the path. Mounds of earth piled at intervals. At an otherwise featureless bend in the river stands several dozen identical condos, arrayed in a long line along the path. All but one unoccupied.





And so the path continues along the river, passing under another massive interchange as it started to make its way westward again. Between the river and the freeway is a trailerpark that reminds you of a Cormac Mccarthy book.







Eventually the Sammamish River trail become the Burke-Gilman trail. First it runs alongside a massive traffic-choked arterial littered with car dealerships and various other forms of suburban detritus. It then pulls away and cruises through some of the affluent lakeside neighborhoods of Seattle. Trees and parks and the smells of more than barbecue. Pairs of racers, chatting easily, breeze past. Rounding a corner, be sure to stop and shoo the big cat you mistook for a dead dog off of the path. He grumbles at you, lets you pet him, and promptly resumes his leisure on the trail.





At the end of the ride now, leave the trail for Ravenna park, a lush glen not far from home. The muddy road follows the brook at the bottom of the crevasse. Tall mossy trees and, high above, an arched bridge. In the middle of the city you started in, a quarter mile from home, and finally you feel alone in the woods.





The last small hill is hard on your tired legs, but get up and spin the muddy hill and emerge from the hidden woods into your neighborhood. Ride past the tired college houses and their tattered, littered lawns and the commuters headed for their own better kept neighborhoods to the north. Another fifty-five miles in King County. See you for seventy-six more this Friday.