Thursday, June 20,2019
Thursday had two items on the agenda—a visit to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field, and seeing the Baltimore Orioles play the Seattle Mariners. I got to Boeing Field by a combination of the light rail train and the local bus. The museum was good, although similar in many ways to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC and their Udvar Hazy annex near Dulles in Virginia. The one thing that I loved was the building with the historical large aircraft such as the first Boeing 727 and Boeing 747 in their original markeings, a British Airways Concorde (I wonder if it’s one of the ones I flew on when I took a Concorde round trip to London), and the first Boeing 707 used as Air Force One. You could go through all of these planes. They also had a B-17 and a B-29 of World War II fame, and a triple tailed Lockheed Constellation, my favorite all time propeller airliner. You could not go through these last three planes.
Then it was off to T-Mobile Park (which I had already been at many years ago when it was named Safeco Field) for a game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Seattle Mariners. The roof was open but it turned in to a very cool evening (mid-50’s) and since the Mariners had just scored three runs to go ahead of the Orioles and I was super tired from what amounted to a nearly 24-hour day, I left in the 7th inning. The Mariners won 5-2. One thing I can say is that if instead of having a 20-game plan at Nats Park in DC, I had one at T-Mobile Park, I’d put on 20 lbs. a season due to the great selection of food items around the ballpark. Any ballpark with garlic fries is ok in my book!
Friday, June 21, 2019
One thing that Bainbridge Island is not—flat! Lots of short, steep hills (a few steep ones
were not so short). The extra weight and wide tires on the hybrid
(for those who are cyclists, they were 700 x 38!) made it slow going tackling
what amounted to almost 75 feet of climbing for every mile. On several of the hills I found myself 'zipping' along at about 4-6 mph. For comparison, my average climbing ride around Maryland is just less than half that amount.
There was one exception where a view across
someone's side yard yielded the Seattle skyline in the background.
After Fay
Bainbridge Park on the north end of the island, it was down the west side. A few small but nice parks. And an interesting piece of "road sculpture." I stopped at the very attractive small
village of Lynnewood, rode all the way to the south end through Fort Ward Park,
along a bike path, and then began another series of climbs to eventually make my way back to the “city
center” where the ferry leaves from.
It’s great to have knocked off another state on the list, but riding the
heavy hybrid up and down the hills on Bainbridge Island has left me wiped out
tonight. The tour operator has said that
our route through Alaska is not exceptionally hilly. I sure hope not, because six days of hybrid
riding are coming up!
Tomorrow the only thing on the agenda is to fly in the afternoon, again on Alaska Airlines to its namesake state. When I land in Anchorage I will have set foot in all 50 states, and will be just one day from my 32nd bicycle state.
If you want to see a map and the data (including a profile of the climbing) from today’s ride, you can go to https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3771226030 . Or if you normally follow me on Strava, my ride data is there as well.
Tomorrow the only thing on the agenda is to fly in the afternoon, again on Alaska Airlines to its namesake state. When I land in Anchorage I will have set foot in all 50 states, and will be just one day from my 32nd bicycle state.
If you want to see a map and the data (including a profile of the climbing) from today’s ride, you can go to https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3771226030 . Or if you normally follow me on Strava, my ride data is there as well.
I don’t anticipate an update tomorrow. The next post will be Sunday night, but due
to the four hour time difference between Alaska and the East Coast, many of you
will not get to read it until Monday morning. Thanks for following along. And now, it’s north to Alaska!
Bruce
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