"Daddy made the trailer go sideways"

Teriyaki Donut's route. 24.4 miles, 5 minutes late, 880 raw score, but announced as 780, either due to an error in the preliminary scores, or me forgetting to mark an answer (again!).

I tried a number of ways to get the bike with the trailer down the stairs to the Day Street Boat Ramp on Lake Washington. The title quote was a result of one of my less-successful methods, as relayed to Elizabeth by Emmett.

I spaced out in route planning, with the result that I just threw something together at the last minute, and modified it on the fly. Because I'm pulling a 50 pound kid in a trailer, I tried to avoid climbing up and down hills, perhaps a bit too much this time. Also, instead of starting out with the lower-value checkpoints on Capitol Hill proper, I should have done the more lucrative outer loop first and left the checkpoints we did first until the end.

Apart from the horrible steps at Day Street, I did manage to keep the hill climbs and descents to reasonable routes: down Lakeside, up Pike (well, and then Minor). Up the usual Lake Washington route, followed immediately by the worst hill climb of the day to 47. Did we pass by the UW President's mansion at the top of the hill on 36th Ave E? Sure looked like it. I finally ended up by climbing Interlaken, which wasn't all that hard. It wasn't the route I wanted to take, but when I left the Arboretum with 13 minutes to go, I knew I had to cut things short.

I almost fishtailed heading down from 47, and a van almost ran us down at 24th and Lynn (check the sidewalk before you turn right, folks!). And, of course, we were 5 minutes late. But it didn't rain (much) until we finished lunch and were on our way home, so all in all it was a good time.

Also, they appear to have closed off the access to the roof of the castle in Powell Barnett Park. Boo! Hiss!