Chilly Hilly is always chilly, hilly and wet but it is the official start of
the biking season for NW bikers. Hundreds of yuppy bikers from Seattle take the ferry boat to Bainbridge Island and attempt to intimidate the local riders with their speed and daring. I was suppose to ride this with a spin class instructor and spin class participant but we never really made the connection other by text of "where are you?"
My new Garmin was trying to tell me something was not right so it took more than the first 10 miles to get it working right. This ride is officially 32.7 miles long with 2,694' of elevation gain so I will have to manually add the lost data later.
Weather forecast all week was for rain and more rain today and then it added high winds last night so I was not sure I would go or not. At midnight it showed 40% chance of rain and 18-24 mph of wind. At 6;30 am, the rain had changed to 14% but the wind increased. Turns out they were right. Blue skies, not significant ran but the last 8 miles had strong head and side winds particularly along the water which had white caps on it. At 5 miles to the finish, my rear tire went flat and I did not want to try to change it as I could not find anything in it. So roughly every mile, I stopped and pumped it back up and kept going. Even used a CO2 cartridge in lieu of a hand pump. A couple people stopped with floor pumps and that made a big difference.