My first Century ride

[markboy]

I've been puttering around on some short routes near home for several weeks and decided it was finally time to do something a little longer. I planned out a nice route the night before. My trip would take me from my home town up to Whidbey Island and provide a couple of new experiences for me.

First off, it was going to be my first ride on the freeway. I left early on Sunday morning knowing that there would not be too much traffic. I'm close to Seattle so the posted speed limit is 60 though traffic typically flows much faster than that outside of rush hour. No problem at all on the superslab and actually found myself 'speeding' at 65 a couple of times. The bike ran great and while it was definitely pushing its limits it didn't protest or whine as much as I thought it would have.

Next it was on to the Ferry boat. For folks in the Seattle area, you can pre-purchase your tickets online and bypass the tollbooth to save some time. It was early enough in the morning that I didn't have to deal with any backups and being on a cycle allowed me to board first and depart first as well. I went up into the seating area and kept wondering if the bike would still be standing after feeling all the vibrations during the ride (it was). The ride on the island was great! My family used to have some property up there so I knew several of the backroads and had some fun on the twisties. No deer to be seen on this trip but I was on the lookout the whole time.

On my ride back across the ferry I pulled out the cell phone and did a little map research and found there was a easterly route from the ferry that would take me out to the Snoqualmie Valley - a well travelled route for motorcycles and bicycles. Again, there were some great corners, very low traffic volumes and beautiful weather on the way home.

The best part was that in the 100 mile trip I didn't encounter a single bozo or incident to upset the ride. Well, time to start planning the next ride and see where it might take me....