decidedlyodd

A friend of mine had a BBQ picnic out in Ballard at Golden Gardens Park this afternoon. After grabbing brunch with Sarah and Jason at Charley’s (middling food, but it’s close and they’ll seat you right away), I dropped by the farmer’s market to pick up some cherries to bring (it’s the end of the season apparently). I decided to ride my bike the approx. 10 miles over there since I need the exercise and because I promised myself I wouldn’t stop riding my bike for the season now that STP is over. Unfortunately, the Garmin connect site doesn’t like the TCX file from the ride so I can’t post a cool little map of where I went with spiffy graphs this time.

On the way over, I took the Burke-Gilman trail until its end at the Fred Meyer in Ballard (11th Ave NW and 45th St), along Shilshole to 24th to Market to 28th. I didn’t realize it beforehand, but 28th is a long uphill slog. I turned right onto Loyal (yeah for diagonal streets) and onto 32nd on my way into the park. Soon I was confronted with a giant road closed sign. Bummer. I’d never gotten to the park any other way, so I was a bix flummoxed about what to do. I tried to call Ken, but no answer. Just at that time, I saw some people on bikes walking around the barricades on their way out of the road and asked if the road was really closed. Apparently, it’s definitely closed but you can walk around the place where the road crumbled during a landslide by foot or bike. I’m sure it’s highly illegal, but I didn’t feel like going the 30 or so blocks out of my way to find the southern entrance. Anyways, I walked my bike around the disintegrated road and everything was fine. On the second road closed sign (right before the damaged part of the road), somebody had written with a marker, “only stupid people go past here” (or something like that). Hmmm, I guess I was stupid.

The BBQ was really nice, although it was fairly hot and even a bit muggy there. I chatted with everybody and nibbled on various fruit and veggie snacks people had brought. I even went and got a Choco Taco which was tasty. After an hour and half or so, I rode back, this time going out the southern entrance which was much prettier, flatter and shorter. Oh well, I guess that hill was good for my health at least.