so i built a new bicycle. mikeod got a fantastic deal on a new touring frame, so for a song (and $40) i got his old bridgestone rb-t. it’s beautiful, steel, and with a small investment in parts from ABR and some shameless cannibalizing from my road bike it’s a fully functional and extremely nice utility tourer. so what is a man to do with a velocipede such as this?

ride it to bellingham, naturally.

i had already been planning an attempt at canada or similar, but without much knowledge of the weather (nice, as it turned out) i was wary of any plans that left me inconveniently stranded and soaked in unfamiliar territory. so on thursday, i went to REI and picked up a rear rack and some panniers, and early friday morning i set out for bellingham. the long way.

by which i mean i still had to make a token appearance at work for a meeting and to reassure my boss that i would still be reachable by cellphone and that i would earnestly try to avoid getting hit by dump trucks along the road. but after that i was ready to go, except for an offer of lunch in kenmore, featuring delicious grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup – fuel for a day of riding.

eventually i got on the road into bothell around 2pm, and prompty got lost. after wandering around bothell and woodinville for a while, i finally found myself on the rsvp route map i had printed out and started heading east. i was not so excited by the twists, turns, and seemingly unnecessary amount of distance just to avoid traffic, so the first time i met up with highway 9 i took daniel featherhead’s advice, caught onto it north and got on my way. my first stop was ten miles along, to refill water bottles and snack down on some extremely tasty clif bar. the next time i stopped it was at the safeway in arlington, wa for lunch: a banana, naked juice, and a granola bar. i also took this opportunity to refill my water supplies and pick up a bottle of gatorade to boot.

from arlington i continued on highway 9 for what seemed like forever, continually in my head trying to compute how many miles remained divided by how much daylight i had left: the average speed i needed to maintain. eventually, with the sun setting directly ahead i passed through burlington and turned onto highway 11, aka the chuckanut.

and that’s when i discovered that none of my lights worked.

my body had already gone through several bouts of exhaustion, soreness, and other miscellaneous complaints, but i was now faced with an impending twisting, narrow mountain climb in the dark. i was lucky enough to find a country store with one package of triple-a batteries to replenish my lights, but when sarah and jon called and suggested that i was less likely to die if they came and met me on the road, i acquiesced.

i didn’t quite make a century but i came close and certainly picked up the spare with some riding around town on saturday, including a visit to the very cool hub community bike shop and some delicious beers from boundary bay, plus hanging out with my friends sarah and jon and not one but two six year old girls.

all told, it was a fantastic trip, and other than the soreness in my neck and twinge in my right knee, i’m looking forward to doing another one – perhaps longer, slower, and with company.

it’s been a busy week, not least of which because i am attempting to clutch ever-so-feebly at the last rays of summer as they slip down between the grey clouds marching inexorably towards the city.

my summer checklist is sadly incomplete, and looking at the next few weeks i doubt i’ll get in any swimming, or further picnics, or camping at the coast. i am hoping to actually get out of the city a little bit next weekend, i’m sizing up a trip to vancouver, canadia with hopes of it being an interesting and bikey adventure. the only factor deterring me right now is the persistent threat of rain – an obnoxious foe when you are looking at a weekend full of cycling.

this weekend though i start working on my autumn checklist. and item #1? the do the puyallup. yum, scones.

i felt inspired today to catch up with exploding dog and read back through some of the archives. in a sense i forget how ubiquitous his characters are: stick man, green monster, dog, red robot. they are just there, living out the illustration that they have been asked to.