Night and Day: The Cardinals report
This Street Scramble was more of a challenge for The Cardinals than other Street Scrambles, but, despite the rain, we had fun. Being wet by the end let us have a shared experience and the kids had fun seeing everyone wet and then changing their clothes in the van after finishing.
The night before this Street Scramble, we returned from a vacation in Vermont, so we were a bit tired plus we had the three hour time difference working against us, but the kids did great with it, anyway. We also found the checkpoints to be farther apart than “normal” Street Scrambles, but even more so than previous Night and Day Challenges. It was fun to have the dead end theme on this Street Scramble.
We planned an ambitious route. I don’t know if this was because we had more time than normal for route planning or we just felt strong before starting. We ended up cutting off an entire set of checkpoints north of Magnuson Park mid-scramble once we realized the folly of our original plan. On this Street Scramble, we rode 20 miles (the most we’ve done this year with all four of us riding). Our route was 35-30-44-50-74-57-42-61-37-65-55-39-54-40 for 630 points.
One of our favorite parts of this Street Scramble was crossing the street in front of one The Ducks (Ride the Ducks) trucks near Gas Works, hearing the “duck honk”, and then seeing it enter Lake Union as we were riding from checkpoint 74 (Gas Works) to 57 (Oceanography building). Cameron really wants to take a tour on The Ducks and we’ve never seen one of the trucks enter the water, so we stopped on the bike trail for a few minutes to watch.
Our favorite checkpoint was 39 (dead end in Wedgewood) because it was across the street from one of Corinne’s good friends from school (she wasn’t home when we rode by). We also discovered a path from checkpoint 57 (Oceanography building) up to Montlake that we had never been on before, so that was fun. The most difficult part of this Street Scramble for us was coming up the hill from checkpoint 65 (NOAA) to View Ridge. There was lots of walking up the hills there :).
That's almost the route we
That's almost the route we took. Here's the way we went up the hill: route. It was still steep, especially for Gwen, who hasn't been riding as much as I have this summer. It was probably good to make the kids walk part of the hill because it got them off the bike and moving a bit more.
Magnuson to View Ridge
I've frequently had to tow kids up View Ridge from Magnuson, and the best route (apart from going down to the bridge at Princeton near City People's Hardware), is
this.
It contains at least 6 uphill sections, 2 of them rather severe (up 77th from Sand Point, for instance), but the really steep parts are short, and they're spaced out enough that you have time to recover. Still, it's not easy by any means. Plus you have to practice a couple of times to get it right.
I also use this route to go down; the obvious route (on 70th) is ridiculously steep, with the steepest section right before the bike trail, when you're most likely to need your brakes.