Biking beyond the gilman trail

Thought of doing the burke gilman trail + sammamish river trail, a round trip distance of 72 kms (45 miles). But since today's a week day, I had to be back before my advisor starts looking for me. Hence I just went 8 kms into the 16km-Sammamish river trail, a beautiful trail actually. Unlike the Gilman trail, which is surrounded by a canopy of trees, the Sammamish trail follows the kutty Sammamish river all the way to Marymoor Park, Redmond and affords great views of open fields all around. Reminded me of the dainty town of Orting on my previous biking trip to Kapowsin. So I managed the whole trip(56 kms or 35 miles) in 3 hrs and 15 minutes including breaks. Probably this weekend, I might do the full distance and get some pics too.

Biking to the Wayne golf course, Kenmore

I left at 5 am to this supposedly nice Sammamish river park and golf course located at the foot of a tiny hillock, about 100 m high. This was on the 20th of this month. The idea was to bike upto this place and climb the hill. All was fine till I reached Kenmore(about 16kms from university district) where I was supposed to take a right onto the hill climbing trail. But I kept going on towards Bothell(another 2kms), where I came across a fruit and vegetable shop.

After buying a pound of plouts (plums + apricots hybrid), the shop keeper mentioned that I had already passed Kenmore. So back I went 1 mile toward Kenmore (no sign board damn). I took one of the bridges that goes across a creek towards my destination.


But having crossed the bridge, I was unable to find the trail that would take me to the top of the hill.

The picture above shows what went wrong


Finally, I had to settle down to viewing the golf course, which was very vast and green.



The trail to nowhere

Coming back, I came through the usual route - Burke Gilman trail, which took me about an hour for 19 kms.


My next biking trip is obviously to get to the top of that elusive hill.

Cycling to Lyons' creek, Lake Washington - part II

I am outsourcing the photos that come under this post to Flickr since I find it cumbersome to post pics here. Here are two maps in google earth of the route I took.

This one show an overview of the route I took. The part of the route with a line passing through shows my return trip through Burke-Gilman trail, a distance of 15kms.
The place markers' that are not connected show the first part of the trip along Lake city way, a distance of 10 kms.


The above pic is a closeup of the previous pic.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

Its been a week since I got the Schwinn fastback sport 24 road bike, but I haven't used it much except to commute to and from university and home. Today I went to the IMA to check out the indoor running track. I wanted to do some intervals or speed running on the track, but since I hadn't registered for courses yet and officially wasn't a student, I was denied entry inside...So I decided to check out the Burke-Gilman trail instead.

I started off from the husky stadium and when I hit the trail, I was pretty impressed by its functionality - a path exclusively for hikers/joggers/runnners/bikers.

As I progressed along the trail and increased my pedalling rate or cadence, I realised that a mere t-shirt and shorts wasn't going to serve me good in the chilly environs. But since I had come this far, I decided to continue further. I also noticed that the trail wasn't smooth in that there were a lot of cracks and small bumps on the road which were affecting my riding experience. I am used to cycling on really smooth stretches as in highways like the east coast road in Chennai, so this trail didn't live upto my expectations. The trail didn't get any better as I went further on and stayed the same through my 30 minute ride upto NE 125th street(12kms). Ofcourse, there were some smooth stretches, but the overall experience wasn't one that I really revelled in. Its like you pump in effort and increase your speed, only to slow down when you come at a crossing or a really cracked stretch of road.

But I had some fun riding in tandem with another biker, who I presume was commuting back from work. I would accelerate and go ahead of him only to have him catch me at the next crossing. Also 8 kms into the trail, the view of the washington river and the cascade ranges in the background was really breath-taking. So yeah, as my landlord, John says, the trails may not offer a great ride to a road biker, but its a lot safer than highways and affords some scenic views.

Still, I would like to do some real quick biking on the roads of seattle!