Lotta Watta - Riding the Centennial Trail this Weekend

My original plan today was to go out to the Valley via the Palouse. I like taking Sands road over the hill. I went about 4 blocks in the direction of the Palouse and changed my mind. The wind was blowing too hard. I've been caught on epic wind rides on the Palouse before and I'm not into it.
I figured I would check out the the flooding on the Centennial Trail. Consider this a public service. If you're thinking of riding the Centennial Trail this holiday weekend, be sure to ride in shoes you can submerge.

You can read more on the flooding in Peaceful Valley at the Out There blog.

The Edge Water Village Apartments on Upriver Drive. Can't get much edgier than that.
There were 2 sections of Upriver that were too deep to go through. One in front of the retirement place, and another about 1/4 mile down the road. Both are easy to avoid. This section, in front of the "Edge Water" ended up being deeper than I liked; my bottom bracket got submerged, but not my hubs... just barely though.

There were 3 sections of the trail east of Argonne that were too deep to ride through. Each was passable though.

This one required shouldering the bike and rolling up the knicks past the knees. I had to slog through the water on the left side of the photo, along the fence line. It's deeper than it looks from the this photo. It went up to my knees at the shallowest point.

You can see the trail going up the hill to the right to get by this one. It's easy enough to ride. There's a short and steep little descent in soft dirt on the other side.

Since I had planned on going to the Valley yesterday afternoon, I had called my mother-in-law, who lives on Pines, to see if she'd be around for lunch.

Indeed.

When I showed up, I could smell her kitchen 100 yards away.

Maria had just finished making a big pile of bread. She also made polpetta sugo (meatballs with sauce). I tried to have just 2 meatballs, but I ended up having 4. I also had a huge still-warm roll.

When it comes to good food, I'm so lucky. In addition to Maria, who is my Valley connection, my mother owns a Spokane cooking class company. She's on the south hill, so if I'm strategic in my timing and routing, I can usually score some great lunch fixings as she is preparing for the night's gig. She also has amazing bread. I created the natural starter that she still uses for her bread before Maddie was born, over 5 years ago. I named it Owen. I'm such a junkie for good bread.

Friday Ride-About

8 AM: Off to pre-school. We've been walking to school a lot lately. Maddie prefers to walk and sing, but on the mornings where she wants more time to draw at home, we leave later and take the bike.

8:30 or so: Rare day -- Liza doesn't have to work until 10:30. We've been wanting to go and try the Natural Start bakery for a while and we finally got in there this morning. My new favorite. My daily shop is The Scoop for the best drip coffee (Bumper Crop) in town and my ritual multi-grain bagel with peanut butter and banana. But I will be making special trips to the Natural Start bakery. It's exactly what you want in a bakery: yummy, home-cooked, healthy food. They go out of their way to source local and organic ingredients and products. The vegan morning glory muffin was the bomb. I also had their Shepard's pie. Liza had a cookie and quiche. It was all fantastic. They also have a good out back picnic table deal going. They're on Hamilton (1718 N Hamilton to be exact), so it's just off the Centennial Trial. Hours: M-F 7-6; Sat 8-5; Sun 9-4 (? I think -- that's from memory).

After our breakfast, we tooled around, hit the Sandifur bridge, rode around Summit ave, and dropped Liza at work.

10: 45 - Lehman Road

I've been feeling like a hotshot lately after loosing some pounds and racing around on my fancy new bike. I wanted to see what Lehman hill felt like with my new setup. Lehman is a good barometer of where I'm at fitness wise and hill-mentally-wise. I've written about it before.

Well, my hotshotiness went away about 1/4 of the way up the hill. I swapped the 53/39 chain ring on the RB-1 for a 48/34 this winter. That didn't help here. This hill crushed me and nearly made me turn around. The only thing that kept me going up the hill was thinking about descending down Forker, which is so much fun on any bike, but I'm really learning to enjoy fast cornering on the RB-1.

At the top of Lehman, I took a right on Fruithill Rd, thinking that would take me to Forker. It doesn't. It takes you to the Cliff House, where I filled up water at the visitor center and talked to a cool guy named John who used to race. He was into the RB-1, so he won me over right away. The descent down Fruithill is not so great. Too many hairpin gravel-laden turns.

Noon: Lunch at Vien Dong's with my Vien Dong homies

I love Vien Dong's. I love the block it's on, with Bay Market and the Checkerboard Tavern. I love the Vien Dong coffee with condensed milk and I love menu item #36. Jon and Brian are great company for lunch too. They both have ridiculous looks here. Poor bastards. That's the John-tax: the phone-camera is going to come out at some point.

2: 30 Pick up Liza and try some wheat grass shots.

Fusion is another local business. Liza has been wanting to try this place for a while. They gave us 3 samples as we stood there wondering what to order. Wheat grass shots are like drinking a concentrated summer day. They come with an orange-juice back to combat the grassy flavor.

Good day: lots of good food and good riding.

Palouse'ing

Since moving back to Spokane about 3 years ago, I've stayed clear of the Palouse as a riding destination. I think the reason is that my memory of the Palouse is two roads: the Palouse Highway and Valley Chapel Road. The memory of driving around these roads as a teen hadn't inspired me to go and ride them later as an adult. This last summer I spent some time getting reacquainted with the Palouse.

I was pretty much right in my memory of the Palouse Highway. Not ideal -- lots of loud, fast traffic. But it has a nice shoulder and serves as a good arterial to many back roads and dotted lines.

I've not taken a ride beyond 15 miles or so for at least a month, maybe longer. So I decided that Friday would be a longer ride. And I would ride south.

I wake up and it is 23F. If I wait a while -- take my time packing a lunch, have coffee, read the paper, have another coffee -- then it may warm up a bit. It does. By 10AM it is 25F and I have fussed all I can.

I ride a couple miles and begin to rethink my ride. I'm warm, but I just feel so slow and heavy. I'm wishing for gears, but I'm riding fixed today. I'm carrying extra gear because it is so cold: an extra wool shirt and neck gator; my jetboil; a liter of water; an extra hotcup of ginger-water. Plus, I have a lock in my front bag, along with lunch and the other crap that finds its way into my bag. And of course my tool kit. A lot of crud... I am planning on a 5 hour ride in sub-freezing temperatures and I want to be prepared for it. The weight is worth the piece of mind.

As I pass Luna's Bakery, I notice both of my friends are working, so I stop by and said hey. My buddy Joe gives me some input on my route and suggests a couple cool roads. He had driven all these roads during high school with his buddies.

I pedal on a couple more miles to the Palouse Highway. The wind is sharp. I also don't want to listen to the traffic; I need quiet. So I pull on to Ben Burr road instead.

Most of my day rides share the same goal: to find some dirt roads that I've not ridden before. I head up Ben Burr road thinking of this goal. I've been down Ben Burr before. But I remember wanting to check out "Willow Springs Road." It's just a couple miles south. More climbing and Willow Springs leads me to Big Rock Road.

Big Rock Road is a fine dirt road that goes straight up for about a mile. I enjoy the first of 2 long walks as I push my bike up the steep grade. I am rewarded at the top: Big Rock levels out and curves it's way around the side of a mountain; the icy-cold winter views are stunning as I look out across Spokane to the north and the Palouse to the south.

I end up popping out on the Palouse and immediately find another road that I've wondered about: Weger Road. Like any good road, this too starts out with a mile-long walk up a steep hill. The reward on Weger is a long, rolling stroll through the Palouse on frozen dirt roads. The wind is still fiercely cold. Luckily, among the crap in my bag was a pair of sunglasses. Without them I'd be tearing up from the constant cold wind.

I enjoy lunch on Valley Chapel Road, amid high school memories of driving out Valley Chapel to go to "the bridge" and swim.

Lunch is soup: bullion cube with mushrooms, spinach, chopped onions and some dehydrated sun-dried tomatoes. All brought to a boil in an instant in the Jetboil. What a great device the Jetboil is. I also have some caponata; my Sicilian mother-in-law makes this for me. I can't get enough of it. I'll document it sometime because it is the perfect cycling food. Bread, banana, and a hard-boiled egg complete the lunch. Bumble bar for emergency. In this weather, a warm lunch is such a huge treat. I also keep my hotcup full of hot water -- I have a piece of crushed fresh ginger in the hotcup too. This makes for a nice flavor and guards against stomach troubles.

As I finish lunch, it starts to snow. It's coming down lightly and swirling in the wind. By the time I arrive in downtown Spokane, the snow is coming down harder and I'm glad to be getting home. Thanks to the chemical foot warmers and my wool I am never freezing. But I am cold. The ride only turned out to be about 3 hours and about 30 miles, but I found a couple new roads and found a way to enjoy the cold weather. Map of route is on bikely.com.

OT Post -- Bread Here, Bikes There

OT item #1.

David Blaine has a cool local food blog. He's a cyclist. He did an OT post where he mentioned my blog. When I posted my "tried and liked" list, he sent me his "tried and liked" bike list, with the regrets that he couldn't do another OT bike post on his blog. Well, I'm happy to post it. So, if you are interested in what local chef David Blaine has tried and liked in the bike-part of his life, go to the old site and check it out: http://www.johndogfood.com/john/db.html.

OT item #2.

Liza and I make bread. We've spent some time trying to streamline the process so that we can put about 20 minutes a day into it and doesn't require throwing out a bunch of flour that natural starter requires.

The process provides 3 small loaves every 2 days. As we have developed our bread/process, we have given a lot of bread away. Folks are always asking for the recipe/method. So we wrote it up. It looks long and laborious. But it's not. The description is just verbose. Once you get in the groove, this bread just becomes part of the background of your daily stuff. So, here's the recipe: http://www.johndogfood.com/john/bread.html.