Ride: Snoqualmie Valley
Took the bike out in the company of 3 cars of which the largest was a Miata. We organized a Thursday afternoon ride with:
- Tom and Louise in their Caterham 7
- Andy Glaister in his Lotus Elise
- John Miles in his Miata
- Me, on my Suzuki VX-800 (Minus the windscreen for this trip.)
Jeff was supposed to join us in his Crazymobile, but had a family emergency, so bowed out of this ride. Hopefully we can get another ride in before the rains begin, since his car has less protection against water, wind, etc. than my bike.
The plan was to motor east on Novelty Hill Road, and hug the west side of the Snoqualmie Valley up to High Bridge Road which is a wonderfully bendy bit of two lane climbing out of the northwest corner of the valley, and from there, work our way more or less straight back to Kirkland.
We started off with a straight bit of highway driving, I405 S to SR520, which was relatively empty, allowing a bit of lane jockeying and Unseemly Displays of Acceleration. Taking Redmond Way east, we turned north at 204th Place NE (an inspired detour suggested by Andy), which was the best curvy section of the day, IMO. I'm actually somewhat embarrassed that I didn't know about this road, since it's less than a mile from my house. Heading through the boring bit of Novelty Hill, we hit the curves on the end, and turned north on NE Snoqualmie Valley Road.
This is where things came off the rails a bit. About a mile up the road, we found that the DOT had shutdown our route for maintainance. Bummer. This actually turned out to be fortuitous, since we decided to take a slightly longer route than we had originally planned. Off to Duvall! Cutting over to 203, we headed north to the start of Cherry Valley Road, a newly paved loop behind Duvall. Sadly, we got stuck behind a slow-moving Dodge Caravan for most of the fun bits. At the reconnection with 203, we stopped to grab a drink and found out from the woman working the counter that the section of High Bridge that we were originally aiming for was actually open once you were past the closure. We cut over the north end of the valley at Crescent Lake Rd, passing an odd farm with Department of Corrections signs all over it. Very strange, but since it was unoccupied (apparently), I couldn't quite make out what the deal was. Honor farm? Work release?
Connecting with High Bridge, we headed north up and out of the valley. More fun curves here, although again we got stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle. (Amy, stop reading here.) Probably for the best, since I blew an S-curve, and nearly entered the opposing lane of traffic. I was able to use the rear brake to get the bike under control before crossing the line, but I probably made Andy step on the brakes a little harder than he was planning. Need to practice those compound curve entries and exits...
From there, it was more or less just cruising back to Kirkland, via 522 and 202. There was a gratifying bit when we were stopped briefly on 522 at a light with nothing in front of us for at least a mile. This provided another great opportunity for an Unseemly Display of Acceleration. I was in the lead, and Andy was polite enough not to blow by me in the Lotus, which was a bit disappointing, since I wanted to see what the Elise could do from the line.
- Google Earth KML
- Load the track in Google maps