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. We had some familiarity with the North Aurora area, but not a great deal.
We entered the bike division of the North Aurora Street Scramble and stayed out for 3 hours. I have a vague recollection that there might have been a rain shower during the event, but the chief obstacle was that Elizabeth's bike did not have a properly functioning rear derailleur.
We visited 23 checkpoints and got 760 points. This got us 2nd place (yay!) out of 2 teams (sigh). We also won a prize for best team name.
Our route visited the checkpoints around North Seattle Community College, then headed east and made a large counterclockwise circle until we returned to the Green Lake area, ending up picking up a few checkpoints near the finish line. Our raw route:
23 [NSCC model], 32 [metal boxes], 22 [bushes near pond], 25 [road end sign], 52 [Northgate Park and Ride], 35 [Maple Leaf Playground], 41 [Sacajawea Playground], 51 [Victory Heights Playground], 40 [Northacres Park], 50 [Roosevelt/Meridian door], 30 [padlock barrel], 31 [green street], 42 [Viewlands School], 45 [Soundview Playfields], 36 [Sandel Playground], 44 [Monkey Grind], 28 [fire station], 46 [underpass mural], 37 [bench with view of Duck Island], 54 [Super Jock 'n' Jill], 27 [bridges in backyard], 26 [street sign pole], 24 [City Light patio]
I think our major problem with route planning was that we passed up high-value checkpoints near the event center, thinking we could pick them up when we returned. While it's good to leave a few checkpoints unvisited in case you return early, these should be low-value checkpoints.
I believe we biked 19.6 miles in 3 hours, which comes out to 6.5 miles/hour.
Back to my home page.
gsbarnes [at] drizzle.com