Permanently Lame

I tried to ride my first permanent this past weekend but due to poor planning, and poorer execution it just wasn't to be. For the non-randonneurs (hi mom!), a permanent is basically a brevet without all the planning and hoopla. You can ride a permanent by yourself or with others. You just tell the official permanent coordinators what route you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and then they send you the brevet card and off you go. You record the ride in the brevet card and send it in to be blessed by the Pope or whoever it is who blesses such things, and you get credit just like any organized brevet. And what do you do with that "credit" that you get? Um, I'm still trying to figure that out.

Anyway, I had planned to join a few other SIR members for the Three Rivers Cruise on Saturday at 7:00am. The TRC is a 200km route from Arlington that goes through Darrington, Marblemount, Concrete, Sedro Wooley and ends back in Arlington. I've heard it's a very pretty route and fairly flat the whole way.

Well, I slept too long and didn't have my stuff together in advance, so I scrambled around in the morning trying to get my gear together, my water bottles and tires filled, etc. I headed out the door about 15 minutes late and then half way to Arlington realized that I had forgotten the directions to the ride start and some other key pieces of equipment. So after some cursing, I turned around and headed for home.

But, with nice weather and permission from the family to go for a long ride, I figured I couldn't completely waste the opportunity. After a cup of coffee at home I headed out for one of my favorite routes. It's a route I've done several times and it never gets old. I rode up the Burke Gilman trail to Woodinville, then up back roads to Snohomish. A little north of Snohomish I picked up Dubuque Rd which connects with Old Pipeline Rd and took me all the way to Sultan. From Sultan there's another nice little country road called Ben Howard Rd that gets me back to Monroe. Then it's familiar roads to Woodinville and home on the BG trail.

Here's a little stretch of the Burke Gilman trail:



The whole ride is just over a hundred miles and spends very little time on busy roads.



The weather was cool and beautiful, the trees were turning all those great Pottery Barn colors and lamas were friendly.



It just doesn't get any better than that. I also found some interesting road side debris. Somewhere along Dubuque Rd there was a big pile of vinyl coated canvas in primary colors that I'm pretty sure was a deflated bouncy house. Adam would have been thrilled if I could have figured out a way to carry that home.

Somewhere Bollenbough Hill Rd...