Tour de Peaks

Charmed Life

Sometimes you have to believe you lead a charmed life…Ann, Mark and I went for a great bike ride today. “Tour de Peaks” is an organized ride that travels through the neighborhoods of North Bend and Snoqualmie. The scenery was outstanding, the roads for the most part were good, but what made this ride worth doing in my opinion were the people and the food!

Tour de Peaks offers a variety of choices for all levels and types of riding, from a seven- mile family loop to a metric century (with a few choices in between) and two mountain bike options.

The people working and volunteering for this ride were helpful, friendly, and incredibly enthusiastic. They treated us like we were their next-door neighbors out for a Sunday ride.

Riding Up Hill

Ann, Mark and I set out on a 31-mile loop that covered the upper part of the valley. Not two miles from the start we turned a corner and hit a steep bit of up hill riding. Not that I’m complaining, but not being warmed up and pedaling up a hill do not work well together! But that about sums up the hill report for this ride – the only other real hill was about two miles from the finish and was only half a mile long at best, the rest of the ride was relatively flat or rolling.

There were some great stretches of road where large trees on either side extended their branches to create dappled shadows. I felt at times as if I were riding through some magical forest of old.

The Food

Okay, on to the food…the first food stop was dangerous! Three different kinds of sandwiches, fruit, and pound cake awaited us. I was starving by the time I got there (trying to plan ahead, since I knew there would be plenty to eat on this ride I didn’t eat much breakfast) so wolfed down a tasty piece of a ham sub and a turkey roll-up. Then, just as a chaser, I ate some fruit and a small slice of pound cake. It’s amazing I could ride after that, but somehow we all got back on our bikes and kept going.

When we did Tour de Peaks two years ago (and Ann and Mark rode it again last year) at the end of the ride there was pizza, of all things. The funny thing about the pizza was that a friend that rode with us that year mentioned sometime in the middle of the ride about how he really wanted some pizza. We looked at him like he was nuts – there was no way he was going to get pizza on a ride. But sure enough, when we rolled up to the finish, we saw the food booth stacked high with pizza boxes. Since then our friend has been known as the conjurer of delectable treats on rides.

Ann and Mark said that instead of pizza last year they had some wonderful baked ziti, but I had my heart set on pizza. We had instructed Joel, our food conjuring friend, to wish up some pizza for us. (He was unable to ride with us this year.) As we came up to the end of the ride I fervently hoped that between my yearning and Joel’s wishing there would be pizza there.

We parked our bikes and set off for the food line. There were more than a few people in it so we stood patiently waiting for our turn to peruse the tables laden with food. The loud speaker came on while we were standing there and a voice says, “For those of you patiently waiting for the pizza, it’s here!” A woman walked by us, her face unseen because of the stack of pizza boxes she was carrying. A fun ride, sandwiches, and now pizza? I silently thanked Joel and promptly devoured two slices of pizza.

Mark, being the wise man that he is, thought we should leave as soon as were done eating. His reasoning was quite sound – to get to the start of the ride, we had to drive across a floating bridge. The short version of a long description is that August in Seattle is devoted to an event known as Seafair. Parades, races of all kinds, and the Blue Angels are in town. The day of Tour de Peaks was also a day of hydroplane races and Blue Angels exhibitions. When the Blue Angels are flying, they close the floating bridges that span the lake the Blue Angels fly over, so traffic on either end of the bridge has to wait to cross. By the time we got done chowing down our pizza, we had approximately a half hour to get to the bridge before they closed it for a good part of the afternoon. And guess what? We were about a half hour away.

Mark put the pedal to the metal and within twenty minutes we were within striking distance of the bridge…but so were a lot of other cars and traffic started to slow down miserably. We were close enough that we felt like we should be able to make it, but far enough away we could get stopped for the closure. The idea of sitting in the car on a hot summer day for some undetermined length of time just didn’t seem that pleasant. Our car inched forward and we saw the state patrolman get out of his car to stop traffic. He came to the edge of the road and pointed to…the car behind us to stop! Our jaws dropped down as we drove forward and I looked back to see the cars that were directly behind us stopped behind the figure of the state patrolman. The dodged bullet of having to wait for the bridge to reopen was a wonderful finale to a great day.

A beautiful ride, good food, great friends and the ability to sail home – the perfect Sunday, I’d say!