Team Teriyaki Donut is Elizabeth Walkup and I, Greg Barnes. We have lived in Seattle continuously since 1998, and off and on for about 10 years before that. Greg had bicycled on West Seattle proper exactly once prior to Night and Day, Elizabeth never. Neither of us had much familiarity with Vashon Island at all.
In 2004, we chose the 7-hour option for Night and Day, and rode a tandem bicycle. You can see a picture of us riding the tandem in the Central District Street Scramble.
Our raw route was: 26 [Highland Park playground], 31 [Cloverdale Street end], 22 [utility pole], 86 [Hicks Lake], 56 [church], 37 [Chief Sealth HS], 25 [sewer cover], 57 [High Point], 79 [Camp Long], 41 [West Seattle Junction], 44 [sequoia], 24 [sunset circle], [ferry,] 66 [Vashon ferry terminal], 103 [flood pond], 68 [radio tower], 52 [downtown Vashon], 78 [greenhouse], 101 [fishing pier], 53 [Vashon Island HS], 42 [stream crossing], 107 [shrine], 84 [shrine], 77 [bug mailboxes], [ferry,] 64 [shore access].
Conceptually, we went to the nearby checkpoints to the east and south, then headed back north, crossed the Delridge ravine at Chief Sealth HS to get over to the High Point ridge, headed north along 35th, cut over to the West Seattle Junction, and then south along California to the ferry dock (6:40 sailing to Vashon). On Vashon, we took the clockwise route as long as we could, then hightailed it back to the ferry dock for the 9:50 ferry. Back in Seattle, we found an easy checkpoint near the ferry terminal in the dark, had a little trouble navigating to a second, and decided to go back instead of risking the overtime penalty.
As I'll explain below, this was not a good route for maximing points, but turned out to be the perfect route for us on this day. I estimate we traveled 46.5 miles on our bikes, not counting the mileage on the ferry crossings. Some numbers:
| 4-6:20pm | West Seattle |
| 6:20-6:55pm | ferry to Vashon |
| 6:55-9:40pm | Vashon Island |
| 9:40-10:05pm | ferry to Fauntleroy |
| 10:05-10:40pm | return to start |
| Location | Elapsed time | Mileage | MPH | Checkpoints | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle | 2:55 | 19.5 | 6.6+ | 13 | 530 |
| Vashon | 2:45 | 27 | 9.8+ | 11 | 780 |
| TOTAL | 5:40 | 46.5 | 8.2+ | 24 | 1310 |
I was sick on Saturday. I still don't know exactly what I had, but when you have two kids in day care, it's not hard to figure out how I got it. On the preceding Wednesday, I started noticing I was tired. Thursday I felt vaguely unsettled, but still played ultimate frisbee for an hour. Afterwards, I started feeling very tired, with nausea and a lack of appetite. By Saturday, I still had the nausea and lack of appetite, but wasn't exhausted, so I decided to go ahead. At worst, I figured I'd know there was a problem after an hour or so. At best, the adrenaline/endorphins/whatever might kick in and there wouldn't be a problem.
Before I got sick, I was hesitant about whether to go to Vashon. But on Saturday, I'd pretty much decided we would take the Vashon ferry no matter what, since it would provide me with 2 rest breaks. I planned the route so we would be on West Seattle for a couple of hours, then hit the ferry dock, bicycle on Vashon for a few hours, return and bicycle a little more (if there was time). I was very lucky to have chosen almost exactly the right time to hit the ferry dock. By the time we were at High Point, I was starting to feel bad: bicycling itself wasn't hard, but with a tandem you frequently have to perform small feats of exertion that I wasn't up to (like dragging it through a 180 degree turn). At Camp Long, I took the first of a series of 5 minute breaks at the checkpoint, while Elizabeth did the bike wrangling. At the sequoia (roughly at 6pm), Elizabeth wondered whether we should give up and get back in time for the 3 hour finish. I argued that we should continue to the ferry dock and take the ferry to Vashon. If I felt bad, we'd surely be over the 3 hour limit and out $10 or so for the ride, but that was a small price to pay for a pleasant ferry ride and a good rest. So we continued. Nonetheless, at the next checkpoint (24, the sunset circle), while Elizabeth climbed the 10 feet or so to answer the question, I was seriously considering giving up. After a short pep talk to myself, I decided to go with my original reasoning, and continue on to the ferry.
And I'm very glad we did. As soon as we got to the dock and in the shade, I started to feel better. We just missed the 6:20 ferry, but I was relieved to have an extra 20 minutes to rest. On the ferry, Elizabeth made me some Gatorade from some powder we had packed, we discussed the Vashon route, and I was feeling well enough to consider pedaling a least a little bit on Vashon. I don't know if it was the rest, the Gatorade, the shadiness of Vashon, my adrenaline kicking in, or what, but once on the island, it seemed like everything had changed, My nausea went away and I was able to bike as strongly as usual for the rest of the 7 hours. You can see the difference in the Seattle and the Vashon Island statistics, above. I even had a bit of an appetite when we returned to the event center.
[In case you're wondering, I wasn't miraculously cured, either, as I felt pretty bad all day Sunday. But on Monday I was largely over it.]
Most of our navigational mistakes were made on Vashon, largely because neither of us had any experience biking there. Originally, I wanted to take the counterclockwise route, but we missed the first two turns (to 77, and then to 36 and 45). I then realized that we could just reverse the route and go clockwise. We took a fairly leisurely ride on Vashon, running into a number of other teams. These were mostly runners and walkers, until we hit the fishing pier at roughly the same time as Wild World Bikers, who were going counterclockwise. We learned that it had taken them almost 3 hours to get there, which made it clear that we weren't going to finish the loop. When we hit our second shrine (84), a little after 9pm, I was already nervous about missing the 9:50 ferry, and after seeing the hill that we'd have to traverse to continue clockwise on Westside Highway, we decided to stop looking for checkpoints and head back to the ferry. We chose to go all the way back to the Vashon Highway, which is much more flat and probably safer, and zoomed back to the ferry at probably our fastest pace of the day. We made such good time that about one mile from the ferry we had time to detour a bit and pick up the previously-missed checkpoint 77.
Once we were back in West Seattle, we managed to get the checkpoint near the ferry dock (64), but blew our navigation while trying to continue to #76 (the far southwest one) in the dark. We probably could have still picked it up, as we knew where we were and could have recovered, but we basically decided we'd done enough for the day and headed back.
The only other bad thing I have to mention is the absolutely horrible job the Seattle DOT is doing with the signal loop detectors on West Seattle. In case you didn't know, the detectors at traffic lights are supposed to work for all bicycles, much less a monstrous tandem. But none of the detectors we used in West Seattle did. Zero. Twice we were left hanging in left turn lanes waiting for a green light that would never come. I will be reporting these two to the SDOT. If you had a similar problem, I urge you to do the same.
Vashon Island was very nice. As I mentioned above, it cured my ills, at least temporarily. And it was very relaxing. The ferry rides were nice, too.
We did all of the 2004 Street Scrambles. The University District Scramble we did on foot with a stroller and a baby backpack, the North Aurora Scramble we did on separate bikes, and the Central District Scramble we did on the tandem. One problem we had was with the maps and answer sheets. We either had to stop and look at a map, or pull a map out of a pocket at a stoplight and try to navigate before it turned green. For the CD scramble, Elizabeth tried to duct tape the map to my back, but the tape failed after about an hour of my sweating. Another rider showed us a nice map case that attached to the handlebars, but I couldn't find one in any of the bike shops I looked. I finally decided what I needed was something like a 'flip chart' of map and answer sheet cases, and from there hit on the idea of a 3-ring binder clipped around the handlebars. I extracted the snapping metal spines from a couple of large 3-ring binders, bent them a little so they would fit on our handlebars, and we were good to go. Since it was dry, we just put our maps and answer sheets in plastic sleeves that are designed to go in the binders. The maps fit easily in the sleeves by folding them in half, and we could easily pull out the answer sheet from the side and write on it. In case it rained, we also had a few 1-gallon Ziploc bags ready, with a strip of duct tape on the side of each with the 3 properly spaced holes. But Ziploc and similar bags are inferior, because they all have writing on one of the sides, preventing you from easily reading one side of the map.
This makeshift map case worked very well for me, and pretty well for Elizabeth, although she had to bungee cord the maps in half most of the time to prevent her knees from hitting them. If you look at our photo on the results page, you can see that I have more distance between my handlebars and my seat. I think it would work on a standard bicycle, but for the back of a tandem, I'd try safety pinning the plastic covers to the front rider's back (I saw some riders using safety pins to attach their map cases to their fronts).
The Seattle bike map is very useful for route planning, particularly fine planning (finding the best route from checkpoint A to B). It gives you a reasonable idea of where the hills are, and is invaluable when trying to figure out how to get across large obstacles like freeways and rivers. For Night and Day, we had enough planning time that we could mark the West Seattle checkpoints on a copy of the bike map, which helped in planning the route and while riding, as the map is a much larger scale than the official maps, and labels most of the streets.
The only bike map of Vashon Island I could find was the King County bike map, but it wasn't appreciably better than the official event map. Both the King County and the Seattle map mark uphills, but King County only marks the really steep hills. So, while the Highland Park Way hill and the road up from the Vashon ferry dock might be roughly the same degree of difficulty, the Seattle map gives the hill 13 chevrons, and King County 3. In the end, I marked our Vashon route on both copies of the official event map and we used them for navigation.
In case you're wondering, I don't think the tandem gives you a speed advantage in Night and Day, because you stop so often (starting and stopping on a tandem is somewhat onerous, and turning around in tight spaces is difficult). The chief advantages of the tandem were 3: It keeps us together, thus satisfying one of the race requirements. To some extent, it allows the stronger person to help the other (this is particularly true on hills). And it makes communication easier; anything the back person says, the front can hear. Most of the time, the back person can also hear the front, although not always. Either way, it's much easier than talking to a person on a different bike.
By the way, we borrowed the tandem from a friend.
Given how poorly I was feeling before we boarded the ferry, I doubt we could have done much better, pointwise (apart from fixing the navigational errors I mentioned above). But had I not been sick, it's clear that in hindsight, the best 7 hour route was not at all the one we took. The main problems were that I failed to take much notice of the closing times of various checkpoints, and that I ignored the huge valued checkpoints near the West Seattle bridge.
A better 7-hour route (which I'm sure some people must have taken) would have started largely like ours did, although perhaps skipping some of the low-value checkpoints near the event center. Anyway, after picking up the Hicks Lake checkpoint to the south (86), I would head north past High Point and Camp Long (say, 56-37-25-57-79), cut over to California for 41 and 46, then head down Admiral to the west end of the West Seattle Bridge to pick up 74 (south of the bridge), and 83 and 23 (on Harbor Island). From there, it's tempting to head up towards Myrtle Edwards Park (81-35-73-105), but there was a Mariners game at 7pm, and I don't know whether you could get past 81 [Starbucks Center] without having to face some nasty pre-game traffic. In any event, at some point you'd turn around and follow the usual Alki route, picking up 104 at Jack Block Park (a high value checkpoint that closes early), 61 [Duwamish Head], and 88 [Statue of Liberty]. Then head to the ferry dock along the shore, visiting 56, 71, and 24 (with 75 [Schmitz Park] an optional detour between 88 and 56, depending on how you feel about walking your bike through an old-growth forest near 8pm).
At this point, you might even not be able to take the Vashon Ferry and get back in time, but there are still 43 [Fauntleroy Park], 64 and 76 to try to pick up if that isn't possible (43 first, because it closes at 10pm). Even taking the ferry and immediately returning will allow you to get #66. But the ferry is such a time sink (I can't see taking less than 40 minutes on it) that if you're trying to maximize your score, you shouldn't take it unless you've largely run out of West Seattle checkpoints,
[I should emphasize that this is only true if you're trying to maximize your score. There are a lot of reasons to take the ferry: it gives you a rest, you can relax, eat and plan, and Vashon Island is pleasant.]
Another reason to leave the ferry until the end is that navigation gets much harder after dark. If you are going to take the ferry, it's better to return in the dark (the 9:50 sailing seemed best to guarantee you can get back to the event center in time on a bike). Returning on a daylight boat means you are spending precious daylight on the crossing, and spending more time trying to look for sewer covers with a flashlight in the dark.
Finally, the course as laid out gave almost no incentive for anyone but the 16-hour participants to cross the Duwamish (apart, perhaps, from the spur I mentioned from the West Seattle Bridge to Myrtle Edwards). As I explained in my bicycle directions to the event center, there is no rational route up West Seattle from the east by bicycle that doesn't visit the west end of the West Seattle Bridge. So if you are to leave West Seattle, you either have to exit and enter at the bridge, or go down the hill somewhere (most likely, Highland Park Way SW to checkpoint 63 in South Park) and return via the bridge. But checkpoint 63 is not very enticing, as there is no high value string of checkpoints that follow. To get to 82, you have to go around Boeing Field. From there it's an ugly ride to 106 or 62, particularly compared to the flat ride to Myrtle Edwards. The route to 67 is fairly flat, but only if you ride around Beacon Hill. If there were a number of checkpoints scattered around SoDo, particularly between South Spokane and Boeing Field, then there might have been a reason to venture this direction, but as laid out, you're much better off taking the ferry to Vashon instead.
For the benefit of anyone who cares, and for my reference next time, here are some strategic tips I've picked up in 3 Street Scrambles and Night and Day.
The white question sheet, which was divided by region (Vashon and Seattle Main questions on one side, West Seattle questions on the other), was much more convenient than the official question sheet, which you had to keep flipping over. I'd suggest that the organizers use the white sheet format for the official question sheet in future Night and Days (the Street Scramble question sheets, as I recall, all fit on one side).
As long as I'm making suggestions to the organizers, I'd like to be able to navigate the Night and Day website without enabling Javascript (which I think would allow me to link to individual pages as well).
For all 3 Street Scrambles and Night and Day, we paid something like $120 in entry fees, $9 in ferry fees, $10 babysitting (we got friends to do it most of the time), $20 for a compass, magnifying glass, and Ziploc bags (none of which we used) and $3 for a big roll of duct tape (which we did use). On the other hand, we won a Nalgene bottle, a $50 hydration pack, and 2 $50 Flexcar certificates, so I figure monetarily it was largely a wash.
Intangibly, though, we got a lot of exercise, had a lot of fun, saw lots of interesting places and got to go on two ferry rides, learned how to ride a tandem, and took a lot of family bike rides (warmups, you know). All in all, the experience was well worth it, and we hope to see everyone in 2005 in Seattle (and perhaps San Francisco).
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gsbarnes [at] drizzle.com