Tuesday after work I headed downtown on my lightly-loaded Trucker and hopped on the Ferry to Bainbridge Island, the first leg of my journey that would take me from Seattle to Guemes Island to celebrate our nation’s independence with my family.
The Seattle to Bainbridge run typifies the things I love about a ferry ride. You get on downtown, in the shadows of huge office buildings and an elevated roadway. The Seattle waterfront is dense and busy, as unnatural as a seascape can be. The ride away from the city is both a literal and figurative journey away from city life. Watching the city float away and the natural elements (puget sound, mount rainier, the cascades) occupy an increasingly large portion of the landscape is a fitting start to any trip out of town and similarly an excellent way to ease back into life in the city at the end.
Unfortunately I was just a hair late for the 5:30 boat and ended up on a 6:10 ferry, dropping me on Bainbridge a few minutes before seven o’clock. I headed directly up the highway across Bainbridge to the bridge over Agate Pass. The highway on bainbridge is by no means the nicest ride on the island, but the shoulders are wide and the hills are few. Traffic was not bad and compared to my usual rides in the city and the eastern burbs the scenery was not too bad.
After Agate Pass I made the mistake of going off the highway in search of quieter, more senic roads to the Hood Canal Bridge. Due partially to a map of questionable quality, partly to my own navigational ineptitude and partly to the unfriendly nature of the Kitsap Peninsula natives, this portion of the ride was rather unpleasant. I spent much of the time guessing at the proper roads to take. I found that instead of quiet side roads with little traffic I was travelling on small roads without a shoulder and lots of cars (and trucks!) travelling at 50 mph. Two seperate junky old station wagons full of young men went out of their way to yell to me as they passed by. My favorite was the beer-holding yokel who angrily told me to “Put on some fucking pants, ya numb-nuts fucking faggot.”
I’d read before that crossing the Hood Canal Bridge was one of the scariest things you could do on a bicycle, as such I was intent on arriving at the bridge before the sun fell below the horizon. When I arrived at the east end of the bridge I found the sun just a couple of degrees above the horizon … which was made up of the the olympic mountains cascading down into Hood Canal and the islands spreading north. Gorgeous. The only problem was that the sun was lined up just so that it was point directly into drivers eyes as they headed west. This scared me, but i pressed on. I found the bridge to be a fine ride, you are close to the cars but there is a wide shoulder and the scenery is second to none. I even stopped for a spell in the middle of the span to take some pictures and soak in the golden mountains and intense green of the forest. Lovely.
After crossing the bridge I took a quick rest and checked my phone to find that my friend Denny had called. I knew he was heading out in the same direction via car to do some mountain biking on the Olympic Peninsula and we’d discussed sharing a campsite that night. When I called him back he realized that he was just about to drive past me, a happy coincidence. He pulled over and we agreed to meet at Old Fort Townsend State Park in a couple of hours.
I’ve always underestimated the distance between the Hood Canal Bridge and Port Townsend, even when traveling by car. This time that left me stuck riding in the dark for a couple of hours, which was actually quite beautiful.
Around 11:00 I pulled into site #5 at the park and found that Denny and his friend mike had a delightful little fire crackling away. We sat around the fire for a half an hour before I retired to my bed which consisted of the footprint to my tent, my thermarest pad and my sleeping bag. I had made an executive decision that it would not rain on this trip. I also washed my hands and face with extra as Amanda had asked me to, to prevent bears from eating me. 
I woke up to the alarm on my cellphone at 6:30 and took a few minutes to break camp. After riding just a few hundred feet on the highway I saw signs pointing to a bike path. This ended up being a delightful mostly unpaved path that lead through the forest and out along the water, eventually dropping me right at the ferry dock.
I was in plenty of time for the 8:00 ferry and met a fellow bicyclist named Glen who was on tour here from New Hampshire. We talked for the entire ferry ride and he shared with me his observations on the differences between New Hampshire and Washington. The ride was gorgeous with the Olympics and Mount Rainier climbing high above the assorted islands. It was quite comfortable outside on the ferry at 8:00 am, a sign of how hot it would become.
