The Cardinals: U District Street Scramble experience

We really enjoyed the U District Street Scramble today. The weather was great and we found a great pace for ourselves in our first Street Scramble of the season.

We’re the family team The Cardinals: two parents and two children. Today our eight-year-old was sick, so just the three of us participated. We usually ride on bikes; our eight-year-old on a pedal trailer and, until this year, our five-year-old in a bike seat. This year, we wanted to move our five-year-old to the pedal trailer and have our eight-year-old and I ride a tandem. This didn’t work out as planned, see my blog Bike configurations for the 2007 Street Scramble season. With just the three of us riding today, our five-year-old was able to ride on the pedal trailer.

Our route today was S-15-54-33-28-17-44-12-35-55-22-45-24-29-42-23-36-19-34-46-32-38-14-13-18-E for 610 points. We rode 18 miles in 3 hours.

Our favorite checkpoint was the one in the wetlands/marshlands of the UW: checkpoint 45. We hadn’t ever been on the trails back in there and would like to return sometime, plus the gravel trails on a bike were kind of like a roller coaster (according to our five-year-old). We stopped for a snack at checkpoint 24 (climbing rock), which was fun.

We had mapped out a fairly conservative route to begin with, but after the first couple of checkpoints, it was clear that we could expand on our planned route. From checkpoint 54 (Roosevelt High School), we added checkpoint 33 (Fairview). From checkpoint 44 (Ravenna Park), we added checkpoint 55 (church). As we were riding to checkpoint 55, we weren’t sure of the cross street from the Burke Gilman, and we found ourselves at checkpoint 35 (electrical box). After checkpoint 46 (tarnished plaque near Agua Verde), we added checkpoint 32 (houseboat entrance), which was across the University Bridge—a risk if the bridge opened while we were on the other side, but the waterway looked clear of tall boats as we crossed and we made it back across without having to wait for the bridge. As we headed back toward the finish, we added three ten points checkpoints: 14 (apartment building), 13 (Hotel Deca), and 18 (brick building).