Teriyaki Donut is my son, Omar Barnes (age 6), and me, Greg Barnes. I ride a mountain bike with Omar in a Trail-a-Bike behind, and we compete in the 3-hour family bike division.
Apart from riding through the city during STP this year, I had nearly no experience in Puyallup. I could tell from the Pierce County bike map that roughly half of Puyallup (near the river) was flat, and the rest was above the Puyallup River valley. I'd ridden up from the valley in STP, so I knew about how much of a climb it was, and I knew I didn't want to climb it over and over again.
Fortunately, it seemed from the topo map that we could climb the hill only once, do all the checkpoints we could at the top of Puyallup, then descend into the valley. Sadly, this turned out to be mistaken (see below), but that was my plan at least. I measured with a marked string and knew that getting all the checkpoints would be beyond our usual 21 miles, but I also knew that in more suburban and rural areas (like Crossroads or Everett) our average speed increases because there are fewer stoplights. So I plotted a course that picked up most of the checkpoints, and made preliminary plans on what to skip. Checkpoint 22 was an obvious one to skip, since it was halfway up or down the hill, and thus would require an extra climb. Checkpoint 21 also sounded like it might be hard to find based on Terry's report of construction in the area, and it and 56 looked like good candidates for dropping if we were going slow. Based on this, I decided to do the circuit in a clockwise direction so that I could postpone the 56 decision as late as possible.
The only other bit of strategy I made beforehand was to choose to go for 35 across the railroad tracks as soon as possible. I knew that if a train came we'd be stuck on one side of the tracks or the other, so, for instance, if the train blocked us from getting 35 initially, we could pick it up at the end, or if it trapped us on the north side of the tracks, we could go over and pick up the two checkpoints on the same side of the tracks while we were waiting. As it turned out, the train was not a factor for us.
Anyway, we visited 30 checkpoints and got 960 points: 32 [Baskets and Things], 13 [newspaper boxes at the train station], 35 [Relatively Rustic], 53 [Meeker Mansion], 26 [National Guard], 31 [Spinning School], 14 [alarm sticker], 47 [bear statue], 33 [Shaw Road School], 52 [mailbox], 54 [Wildwood log shelter], 48 [Rainier Woods Park], 55 [Sunrise School], 34 [Ferruci Jr. High], 45 [Lake Bradley], 51 [Woodland School], 56 [mailbox in cul de sac], 24 [substation], 44 [watershed sign], 43 [cemetery gate], 37 [fish hatchery], 46 [creek bridge], 36 [fire pit], 41 [park dedication plaque], 15 [Karshner School], 11 [Maplewood School], 42 [Sparks Stadium], 25 [fairgrounds hydrant], 23 [church cornerstone], 12 [neck fragment]
You can view our route on Gmaps Pedometer. My odometer said we went 26.28 miles.
This is the best Omar or I have ever done in a Street Scramble in any category I can think of: points, checkpoints, mileage, and (of course) mph (9.1). We came in 7 minutes early, so we undoubtedly could have gotten checkpoint 21 as well (but at the time I chickened out, because there were a lot of checkpoints left to go and it was already after noon). Of course, the reason we did so well is that this Scramble was noticeably easier than any other I have competed in. Six bike teams swept the course; the first of these completed it in around 2:10. Probably if we had 3:10 we could have swept the course, too, so we were around an hour slower than the fastest team. Still, it felt great to do almost as well as we could, and Omar was very happy.
We got a late start, plus Omar wanted something to eat, so I decided to let him eat a Clif Bar as we walked to the first checkpoint, which was close by and required him to walk into Baskets and Things to ask a question, anyway. As it turned out, Omar had to get off the bike many more times during the Scramble.
I had originally had us skip number 14 [alarm sticker], but things were going pretty well and there was no hill to climb to get it, so I went for it early. This turned out to be a fine choice. We passed Whidbey Island Nerds, just after the previous checkpoint [Spinning School] and passed them again just after the next one [bear statue], so they must have skipped it. Passing the Whidbey Island Nerds was something we did over and over during this Scramble. In fact, during the Scramble we kept running into teams, even at the most far-flung checkpoints. Usually we see a lot of teams during the beginning and the end, but only rarely see them in the middle. I think one partial explanation is that there were many more bike teams than usual.
After Shaw School came the anticipated hill climb, to the decorated mailbox [52]. 27th Ave looked like the best way up to the mailbox, but it was a private road and Terry said to avoid these, so we had to go up 25th. We made it; partially, Omar said, because he'd eaten that energy bar at the start. So he demanded another energy bar at the mailbox. This gave me time to examine my map, where I discovered to my dismay that the nice gentle climb I had mapped out to 23rd St. did not, in fact, exist. I (and, as I found out later, many others), was led astray by a contour line that looks like it connects Tartan Court to Brookmonte Dr. SE (see the gmaps link above). I had printed out and taped together some maps of Puyallup from Google maps, and they verified that this route did not exist. It seemed possible that Brookmonte Dr. might take me up the hill, but unfortunately the topo map was ambiguous and my Google map ended just to the west, so I couldn't be sure. If the route did exist, though, it would seem to involve going all the way back down to the river valley, whereas I could see that continuing down the hill to the NW along Vista Drive and back up 21st Ave would lose not quite as much altitude. Plus the fact that the official map bothered to show a trail connecting through 21st up the hill indicated to me that this route would definitely take us up the hill. So we decided to take Vista/21st.
[Just after we hit checkpoint 52, Nikolay Nachev caught up with us (although he needed a little help to find the mailbox). I say caught up because Nikolay apparently took exactly the same route as us up to this point, but he started 5 minutes late as he had to go buy a bike helmet at Fred Meyer. After this checkpoint, our routes diverged (he chose to climb the rest of the hill via Shaw Road)].
On our way down the hill from the mailbox, the map blew out of the map case and we had to stop and go a few dozen feet back up the hill. I was feeling rather low. As we started climbing 21st, I was definitely feeling fatigued and winded, and a sunny spot made me feel worse. The 'trail' connecting 21st turned out to be just a closed section of road, but I couldn't see an easy way around the gate, so I stopped about 50 feet shy of it, exhausted, and told Omar to start walking. The road leveled off a bit after the gate, so we went back to riding, but he had to get off to navigate around the gate at the other side. Shortly after, we finally got underway again.
After cresting the hill, I wasn't exactly sure how to pick up the checkpoints in the southeast, but I decided to hit Wildwood Park first. After some initial confusion and consulting a not very helpful park map, we found the water towers and the checkpoint. I believe at this point we ran into Matt Hayes, the rider who ended up finishing the course in 2:10; I imagine he had already gotten the other southeast checkpoints at this point.
I decided the best route was 48, backtracking to 34, then taking the spur to the far southeast checkpoint 55 [Sunrise School]. I noticed that the best way to 48 was to turn off 23rd early onto Forest Green, which we found easily. On Forest Green, I was counting intersections until we had to turn left, but ended up looking at the wrong street on the map, so we went a bit too far. At checkpoint 48, I revised my route, since it looked like going out to Shaw Road avoided a steep hill. I had already noticed that climbing up to Pierce College on 39th west of Sunrise School was a bad idea.
Going up Shaw Road, we passed John Lee, who we hadn't seen in a while. After Sunrise School, we also passed the Whidbey Island Nerds again, as well as Targo Tennisberg, the winning male runner. But they passed us as we were looking for the path that went east to 45 [Bradley Lake], and stayed ahead of us for most of the path. The path was okay, but many spots on it were too scary for me to take Omar over, including a new road with steep embankments, and a bumpy downhill section.
At the Lake Bradley checkpoint, we stopped for a snack. I noticed that the Whidbey Island Nerds headed north, either to Wildwood Park or checkpoint 22, which we were avoiding. Jake Reeder showed up soon after, and I gather he headed in the same direction. We were probably the only ones who went all the way from Lake Bradley to the SW checkpoint [51, Woodland School]. I really didn't want to climb that hill again. Especially after climbing it an extra time. The route to 51 was by South Hills Mall, full of stoplights and traffic and not particularly fun. After the mall it returned to a more relaxed and rural pace.
I had noted after 51 that we were to turn on Fruitland Ave, but I couldn't easily figure out where to turn for our last 50-point checkpoint, 56 [cul de sac mailbox]. I noted, though, that if the road started to curve, we had missed the turn. Sure enough, we missed the turn, just as we were passing a cyclist going the other way. But I noticed the road was curving, so I turned back. In retrospect, as I mentioned above, I should have continued on to get 21, but I was nervous about making it back in time, and at the time it looked like a choice between 21 and the much more lucrative 40's and 30's to the east. In hindsight, though, getting 21 would have involved very little elevation change, so we should have gotten it.
Oh yeah, and the cyclist we passed near 21 must have also missed the turn, as we passed him going the other way again as we were leaving 56.
After we got 56, I told Omar we had all the 50's and would now proceed to work on the 40's. It was looking to me like it was quite possible we would get everything but the two 20's we had deliberately skipped, but I didn't mention that to him immediately since I wasn't sure. Particularly since I rode past 24 [substation] and had to double back again. By the time we picked up the two following 40-point checkpoints at the watershed sign and the cemetery gate, I was telling him I thought we'd get 900 points for sure. We were heading off the hill and feeling great.
After not seeing anyone since the lone biker near 56, we ran into another bike team at the fish hatchery. By this point I was telling Omar we were almost done with the 30's as well. We polished them off at the church fire pit (36), where we once again ran into the Whidbey Island Nerds. They had their own problems dodging a couple of kids racing go-karts in the parking lot.
After 36, we headed across the railroad tracks for the second and final time. I swear my Google map showed that 17th Ave ran across the tracks, but it certainly does not. We crossed them the old-fashioned way: I looked carefully both ways, sent Omar running across, and dragged the bikes over.
Omar was sure the answer to 15 was 'pigs', since that's what the sign at his school says (no dogs, cats, or pot-bellied pigs). Furthermore, his school's sign was a Night and Day checkpoint in 2005. But I thought horses might be the answer, given that Puyallup is more rural. We both agreed goats was not it: who would drag their goat into a schoolyard? Horses turned out to be the right answer.
We crossed back over the tracks at 12th Avenue on an actual street, having seen no sign of a train. There were about 15 minutes left, and now I was telling Omar it was basically a sure thing we'd get 960 points.
At 42 [Sparks Stadium], I saw some pedestrians hanging out near the sign, but they didn't look like a team. Before we even got there they demanded to know our number, and I realized we had run across the course checkers Terry had mentioned. Apparently they had been told to pack up, but they first had time to tell us the checkpoint answer and to quiz us about whether we'd seen any other checkers. They thought there were some more, but unless they were at checkpoint 22 or 21, we must have missed them.
Just before our final checkpoint, we passed the Whidbey Island Nerds one last time. At the finish line, we had plenty of time to double check our answers. I should have jumped into the lunch line immediately, but instead we messed around picking out soda, and a long line appeared in front of us.
There was no question that 960 points was going to win the Family bike category, and indeed we did, for which we got candy bars. Omar also won a prize in the raffle, a year's membership to the Meeker Mansion, which Terry graciously said he could exchange for a T-shirt or something in the leftover prize box. He chose a big piece of candy.
Fiddling around on gmaps, it looks like picking up checkpoint 21 would have added around .9 miles to our route. Adding 22 after the cemetery (43) would have added around 1.5 miles, but the trouble with that idea is that we would have to have known that 15th St crosses the freeway and 23rd does not. It's probably for the best that we skipped 22.