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 have participated in all prior Street Scrambles as well as Night and Day 2004. Our first Scramble was on foot with our kids in a stroller and a backpack, but otherwise we've used bikes. Neither of us had much familiarity with Lake Forest Park and Kenmore before the Scramble, apart from riding through them on the bike trail.
We entered the foot division of the Northshore Street Scramble and stayed out for 3 hours. Originally, we had planned to ride our bicycles; as the day approached and the weather forecast made it clear that rain was likely, we set up a contingency plan where we would take the bikes and decide once we got to Kenmore whether to ride or walk. I have bicycled in steady rain before, and I don't find it fun. Plus we didn't know if it would be safe to cycle on wet, unfamiliar roads, particularly with Elizabeth's road bike. Just before we left, it was clear the rain was not going to let up and we just left the bikes in the garage. This turned out to be a good call, as it rained fairly heavily (not just Seattle drizzle) and constantly until late afternoon.
Elizabeth was still feeling the effects of a cold, and I wasn't much better, so we walked the whole way, except for two short stretches when we jogged (see below). We ended up 2nd in our division, with the same number of points as the leaders, Whidbey Island Nerds (they came back earlier). We visited 15 checkpoints and got 370 points.
Our route was basically a direct route to the ferry on Arrowhead Point, taking the first ferry to Logboom Park, then performing a clockwise circuit of the somewhat obvious Kenmore/Lake Forest Park loop. We had to cut the loop short after reaching Linwood Park in order to return on time. If you have a map, it was:
13 [pro shop], 17 [fence], 37 [ferry captain's driveway], 61 [ferry], 16 [log boom], 22 [carrots], 19 [bench in grove of trees], 26 [Great Harvest], 18 [Subway], 41 [flood control feature], 31 [Animal Acres], 36 [hydrant at road bend], 51 [Horizon View], 33 [Linwood Park], 14 [Kenmore Air].
The night before, while looking over our maps, we figured the ferry had to be either between two shore points on the east shore of Lake Washington, or to the island in the middle of Lake Ballinger. (We were kind of hoping for the latter, since we figured we'd never again have a chance to visit that island, but in fact the checkpoints were all in King County). Anyway, we resolved to make the ferry our goal for the day, so we were the first to sign up for a slot (the first one). Strategically, I figured the first slot was the one most likely to be on schedule, and it looked like it was only a mile to the dock from the start, which we should easily make in 20 minutes. As it turns out, the ferry started late, but that was good because it was more like 1.5 miles. This was one of the times we chose to jog instead of walk (the other was near the end when we jogged back to the park from the bridge over the Samammish River).
When we reached Horizon View Park, it was clear we needed to go directly back to start if we wanted to return on time. It was also clear that I had made a navigational mistake: I thought the road roughly due east of the northeast corner of the reservoir would take us downhill, but it was clear there was no such road. My Seattle map made it clear we would have to go up to NE 204th St (the road just south of the Snohomish County Line), which wasn't much of a detour. I know some other people made a similar mistake, and had trouble either figuring out how to get back down or how to get up there from the east.
I figure we walked about 10.5 miles in about 2 hours and 45 minutes (figuring 15 minutes spent waiting for and riding in the boat). That comes out to about 3.8 miles/hour.
Walking in the rain was not particularly pleasant, but we had enough gear that it wasn't too much of a problem. It was worst when we stopped. That's when I started feeling gross and damp. Plus my glasses fogged up when I stopped. At the last minute before we left our house, I traded my new jacket for an older, leaky one that had a big waterproof inner pocket. This turned out to be a good idea, I think, since my map and answer sheet (inside a map case, inside the pocket) stayed dry the whole time (the other maps I stuck unprotected in that pocket, however, did not fare so well, since the pocket got wet due to the water on the outside of my map case). We brought umbrellas, which turned out to be largely useless and annoying. We put them away for good about half an hour into the event. Baseball hats and GoreTex shells were adequate protection. We also brought a dry change of clothes (including new pairs of shoes) which we were very happy to change into when we were done.
Three more random things we noticed: 1) Stoplights across busy roads in suburbia take a long time to change. 2) If it's raining and you're looking for a dry spot to read a map in a park, crawl into a play structure (we used the train in Horizon View Park to consult our maps and have a snack). 3) Before the event, look around for more detailed and more current local maps. For example, I found the Kenmore Parks map a handy little reference while we were in Kenmore. It's a larger scale, it has a few nice features like walking routes, and it's much more up-to-date (did anyone else notice that the official map showed 'St. Thomas Seminary' where Bastyr University currently is?). The Kenmore map actually was very useful right from the start, as Elizabeth kept pointing out that our route through the Inglewood Country Club did not at all match the official map. That was true, but that's because the streets have changed quite a bit since the official map was drawn. Presumably this is more likely to be true on the Eastside than in Seattle proper.
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gsbarnes [at] drizzle.com