Escapade Around Mercer Island, April 30, 2002
Sun. A three letter word describing the great fiery ball that infrequently appears in the Pacific Northwest sky, normally during daylight hours.
As is the standing joke in this area, the first sunny day after two rainy days is called "Monday". Not only was it sunny, but the temperature was in the upper 60's, and the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday was for more sun and warmer temps.
I had to do something...after all, I spent the weekend in my basement on work-related stuff, so ...
time to launch at the nearby Mercer Island Boat Launch and go pedal where ever I chose to go!
After forwarding my work phone to my cell phone, I headed off to the ramp. Strangely enough, there was but one other vehicle parked at the launch, and that one left shortly after I arrived at 10:30 AM.
The ramp is located nearly below the I-90 bridge over the channel between Mercer Island and the eastern shore of Lake Washington. The ramp is fairly small, with one floating dock and the obligatory sculpture, which is somewhat hidden on the right in the photo. I guess the $7 launch fee went to help pay for that, rather than something a bit more useful at the launch, such as flush toilets.
The Escapade was quickly put in the water, and off I went to park the car.
As this was my first time back in the boat since the American Lake race, I did my best to control my eagerness to get out and pedal hard. After all, I wouldn't want to be cited by the harbor patrol for going over the 8 mph speed limit!
My plan was to pedal northward along the shore of Mercer Island, pedal alongside the I-90 Floating Bridge, and then see if I had the time and energy to go the rest of the way around the Island. So off I went.
Fairly soon I came upon Luther Burbank park, which is located at the northeastern tip of the island. There are a number of docks here, along with playgrounds, picnic areas, dog swim areas, etc. There was a yellow kayak pulled up on one of the docks. Its former occupant was sitting on the end of the pier, catching some rays and reading a book as I went by.
As it was a truly nice day, the sun was making things quite warm for me in the Escapade cockpit. Shortly after leaving the boat ramp I decided to remove the windshield to let the light northerly breeze come through and cool me off. This worked very well, and the water was sometimes almost as smooth as glass.
A man's home is his castle, they say. Well, one of the houses along the shore had some of the appearance of a castle, too, along with a babbling brook, serfs, er, workers, etc.
The I-90 bridges soon came into view. There are actually two floating bridges here. The narrower one replaced one that sank a few years back while it was being refurbished. This bridge now handles all eastbound traffic. The wider bridge handles westbound traffic along with reversible lanes for HOV's (high occupancy vehicles) as well as the only bike/pedestrian path across the lake. A group of cyclist can be seen against the sky approaching the arch of the bridge.
The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. Yeah, sure...Anyway, right about noon as I was eating a peach and passion fruit scone from PCC (not too bad) the breeze picked up and a little chop rolled in from the north. The I-90 bridge made an excellent reflector of these waves, and created the bi-directional wave pattern you see in the pictures. On really windy days the action gets much more exciting!
After heading back to Mercer Island and south of the bridges I ran across one of the denizens of Lake Washington. Strangely enough, it did not flee as I approached...
As I was now heading directly into the sun, it was time to use the Escapade's bimini top to help keep the sun off my pasty white skin. Sunscreen was not enough today. With the windshield out of the way it was pretty easy snapping the fabric into place.
The architecture of the buildings along these shores varies wildly. Sometimes you find the ugliest boxes of glass and concrete. Other times you find houses that look from one side as though they are a large ship; yet on the other side they look merely like a contemporary building.
Feeling full of energy, I pedaled to Hawaii. See the palm trees on either side of the house above? Well, ok, so they are actually located on Mercer Island. Still, I was rather amazed that this sort of vegetation could survive in the land of cool, gray and wet.
The artwork that people display on their properties is also quite interesting. There are the typical statues, urns, etc., and then you have these large chrome mobiles, metal artwork, unicorns and other curious items.
As strange as it may seem, I was getting a little tired. Taking a look at the map of the island contained within my PDA (a pocket PC), it looked like it was about equi-distant going back the way I came or heading the rest of the way around the island. Hmmm. Oh, well, at least the northerly wind was helping to push me along.
The Mercer Island Beach Club has a rather striking club house, and a fairly large marina. However, today there were no boats whatsoever at the docks and, given the extreme lack of other boats on the lake, I guessed that they must all still be in storage somewhere.
Here are some more interesting houses.
My knees were starting to feel the lack of training, so I stopped pedaling for a while. From my waterproof gear box that I took along I extracted a carton of juice and a book, and proceeded to drift with the wind. Ahh, such is the life at sea!
After a while my legs had sufficiently recovered, and I continued northward along the eastern shore of the island. Along the way a power boat carrying several people played something of a game of leapfrog with me. They would stop every so often at a dock, with the passengers getting off for a short conversation with people on shore while I pedaled by. Shortly thereafter they got back in their boat and headed past me once again.
At long last the I-90 channel bridge came into view. From my vantage point I could see the afternoon (4 PM) traffic starting to slow down to a crawl. Why didn't I use Bellevue's ramp instead? The traffic would not be quite as bad, and I could have used surface streets. Oh, well.
It was a nice pedal back to the launch. By this time there were several more vehicles with trailers in the parking lot. Several more boats were getting prepared to launch by people who had just gotten off work for the day. Considering how these folks drove up to the launch, parked their vehicles blocking the roadway, and walked down the middle of the main road rather than use the sidewalk, I was glad to be leaving!
On Wednesday the clouds never did lift. The forecast is for drizzle through the weekend.
Estimated total distance traveled: 14 miles
To see all the pictures, in larger and better formats, visit this link.
The map of my route can be found through the link below:
