Teriyaki Donut Route and Report

Our route. We visited all checkpoints except the two on Queen Anne Hill, which means we should get 940 points. As always, we shall see.

Just as you should have gotten the checkpoints in the park first, I reasoned you should get the checkpoints near the park sooner rather than later, since the crowds were just going to get worse as the day went on. (My wife confirms that they did). So we wended our way through most of the Wallingford checkpoints south of 45th, before heading on a sweep of the outer checkpoints, ending up crossing the Fremont Bridge without seeing it rise, and getting just a taste of the crowds on the way back from the bridge to the park.

At 35 (Lincoln High) I decided there was no answer and did my best to convince the many other people there that this was the case. This did indeed turn out to be true, but didn't help at all two checkpoints later at the very difficult 32 (John Stanford School), where I was almost convinced there was also a problem. The trouble was that the circle was ambiguous (who knows whether the buildings were renovated) and there were tons of 'play areas' and 'north walls' that were likely candidates, including a lot of whitewashed parts of the school (which was effectively the north wall for the whole play area). Finally I read the bit about painted tiles and found the right spot, but this clue really needed to be better specified.

Starting at Lincoln High, we were pretty much running neck and neck with Jake Reeder. I showed him the rough area where 32 was, since I didn't think anyone needed to spend as much time as we did. At 56 (houseboat mailbox), I offered to watch the bikes at the top of the stairs while he and Omar got the answer. The University Bridge rose up just after we crossed it, and luckily it was just opening again as we came back. Finally at 57 (Burke-Gilman Place) we had a snack while he continued on, after showing us his recent scars from a small crash at one of the Wallingford checkpoints.

I almost forgot about 31 (music store), and then Omar and I had a small argument about whether the woman in the mural had another face behind her (I think he was confused by her white hair). We had a little more trouble at 44 (Meridian Playground) before I finally figured out which building the clue had to be pointing to. But we managed to make it all the way west on 46th/47th, meeting the Whidbey Island Nerds heading the opposite way, and even crossing Stone and Green Lake Way with no cross-traffic to get to Woodland Park Ave N and into the park. The utility pole checkpoint (37) was probably my favorite. A lot of sidewalk riding on Aurora and 80th followed, and we saw Elizabeth and Emmett at 51 (coffee shop hours). They diverged from us on the nice downhill to the Fremont Bridge, but we caught up with them at 43 and I asked whether they had trouble with the purple trash can (35) as well. They hadn't been there yet. On the way back down to Leary, Omar and I both balked at one too-steep block, which explains a little of our meandering.

Apart from the slow, silly people near Gasworks, the only other really hazardous traffic was on Westlake, of all places, where people were driving rather stupidly in the parking lots to the east, and we got buzzed a couple of times by cars that apparently felt 1 lane was not enough for them. We caught up with Elizabeth and Emmett again at the last checkpoint (13 - phone booth), and rode in together with a few minutes to spare.