Team Teriyaki Donut in the University District Street Scramble 2007

Introduction

Teriyaki Donut is me, Greg Barnes, and Omar, our 6-year old on a Trail-A-Bike. Elizabeth pulled our 3-year old, Emmett, in a Burley trailer as another team, Maybe He'll Nap. Both Teriyaki Donut and Maybe He'll Nap stayed out for 3 hours.

Elizabeth and I have lived in Seattle off and on since at least 1988 and live and work near the University, so we know the area well.

Teriyaki Donut visited 32 checkpoints and got 880 points, which not only won the family bike class, but was (by 10 points) the top score overall. We rode about 27 miles, the farthest we've ever gone in a 3-hour Street Scramble. Maybe He'll Nap came in second in the family bike class with 630 points (24 checkpoints).

28 [Cowen Park], 54 [Roosevelt HS], 33 [Fairview School], 52 [horseshoe pits], 43 [Wide World], 11 [Latona School], 38 [Eastern Ave viewpoint], 51 [Terry Pettus Park], 37 [Roanoke Park], 32 [Houseboats], 14 [11th Ave Apt Building], 13 [Hotel Deca], 18 [Wilsonian], 36 [Shiga's Import Shop], 19 [Bus Stop kiosk], 34 [Campus Parkway bench], 46 [Sakuma Viewpoint], 24 [climbing rock], 29 [AYP plaque], 42 [Spanish Civil War memorial], 23 [Lewis Hall], 27 [UW Stores], 22 [IMA fields], 45 [Union Bay Preserve], 55 [Laurelhurst church], 35 [65th St. electrical box], 53 [Inverness house], 12 [water fountain], 44 [Ravenna Park], 21 [21st Ave house], 17 [17th Ave house], 15 [Wayward Cafe]

Our route, courtesy of Gmaps pedometer.

Maybe He'll Nap roughly followed the same route until they recrossed the University Bridge, except they skipped Roanoke Park. After that, they took a different route through the University District, and did no checkpoints east of 22 and 45 in the wetlands. But this relatively flat route was still good enough for a respectable 630 points.

Notes:

• It seems like we always follow the same general route on U District Street Scrambles: start out north and west, loop around counterclockwise, end up looping east. Since there were no checkpoints near the Montlake Bridge, and many more in the University, the south looping was replaced this time with snaking about in the U District. I had a few segments of the final route planned out, but was still undecided how to hook them up, until I finally decided the checkpoints to the east were the ones I wanted to leave until the end. This would allowed us to, for instance, drop 53 [Inverness] if we were low on time.
• We started out in a crowd heading north toward Maple Leaf. Most of the crowd peeled off for 15 [Wayward Cafe], which I decided to save for the end in case we had extra time. (We ended up getting 15 as our last checkpoint.) By the time we got to our first checkpoint in Cowen Park, we were all alone. But apparently we were followed by other family bike teams, including Maybe He'll Nap and The Cardinals.
• At Roosevelt High, I was hoping the name of the contractor would be on a banner visible from the street, but instead we had to go east to 15th to access the wheelchair route that led to the plaque with the answer. From the checkpoint, it was easy to continue north on 12th. Traffic was so light I left 12th for 11th to avoid a potential delay at the stoplight at 75th. But traffic on 75th was not light, so I had to wait a while to make the left onto 75th, anyway.
• Checkpoint 33 was our high elevation for the day (on Maple Leaf), and not too difficult at the start of the ride. From here it was a nice downhill and flat route until the climb up the Woodland Park road to the horseshoe pits, where I was somewhat annoyed by someone driving by making patronizing remarks about Omar pedaling. Not what I really need to hear when we're working hard to climb a hill. At the pits, I let Omar get off to count them. At this point, it had been about half an hour, and we had 150 points (or 170 --- I was unclear whether 28 and 44 had had their point values switched, or just their questions, but I assume the latter). At this rate, we'd make 900, but that seemed unlikely given how many checkpoints I'd left off the route.

• While making the small climb from Stone Way up to Wallingford, I briefly considered adding the Tangletown checkpoint (25). Given we returned with three minutes to spare, I should have, but I couldn't have known it at the time.

  Other route improvements seem much more dubious. The Madison Valley checkpoint (41) I didn't even notice until I'd planned the route, and didn't give it a second thought even after I had (too far removed). If Omar or I were much stronger, we could have climbed View Ridge after Inverness (probably using a snaky route above Magnuson that we use to take him home from summer camp, which dumps you out on 75th), and picked up at least 16 and 34. These would have been especially easy, since we live nearby and I knew the answers to these checkpoints without visiting (Omar attends Kids Time (16), and 34 is our local library branch), so we could have just given them a glance as we passed by. The route along the trail from 53 to 12 was completely devoid of checkpoints, and the mileage would have been similar, so it might have worked, but even in retrospect it seems too risky for 40 points.

• I chose to go to 11 [Latona School] before 38 to avoid a steep uphill, even though it probably added a small amount of mileage. When using the Trail-A-Bike, going uphill is much harder than on a regular bike, while downhill and the flats are only a little slower. At 11, Omar found the engraved rock while I was looking at the other side of the path.

• I decided to do the three checkpoints south of the University Bridge in this order: 51, 37, 32, for reasons I cannot fathom now. I think I'm more comfortable with the counterclockwise route (down Eastlake/Fairview, then climbing up to Roanoke) than the other way around, but why I left the houseboat checkpoint to the end is a little mysterious to me. I guess it avoided a left turn right off the bridge, and it worked out in the end, since just as we were approaching the parking lot above the boats, the bridge went up, and we had plenty of time to leisurely answer the question and grab a snack while a large barge (with a tall captain's cabin) went under the bridge.

  We had not seen another team since the start until we reached 32, where there were two foot teams.

  Going from 51 [Terry Pettus Park] to 37 [Roanoke Park] was probably the steepest sustained hill we went up in the Scramble, but we broke it up into three sections and didn't have any trouble. For the second section (Boston from Eastlake to Franklin) we had to take the sidewalk, as Boston is cobblestones east of Eastlake.

  We hit the one hour mark on the climb up to Roanoke Park, so we got 280 points in the first hour, and broke 300 soon after.

  After the bridge opened, we had to dodge a number of foot teams who were heading south on the bridge in the bike lane. Tsk tsk.

• The section through the University District featured a lot of slow uphills, but with so many checkpoints and stoplights, there was plenty of time to rest. I didn't have this part of the route completely mapped out, but by the time we had recrossed the University Bridge, I had decided just to grab every checkpoint instead of saving any until the end.

  A family team called us by name (Teriyaki Donut, that is), on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Deca. I don't know who this was.

  I'm very familiar with the University District, so I was not fooled by the Tully's in the Wilsonian Building, and I knew enough to jog into the alley east of the Ave for checkpoint 36 [Shiga's Import Shop]. In that alley, we met gobs of other foot teams going the other way, which in retrospect was because the 90 minute competition was nearing an end. I wasn't paying close enough attention to know exactly, but we probably had about 400 points at the 90 minute mark. The next half hour, though, would be a bonanza.

• In previous U-District events, I had wondered why there were so few checkpoints in the University proper, so I was pleased with the number of University checkpoints this year. I had planned to go from 46 [Sakuma Viewpoint] to 29 [AYP plaque], but the bike access to Sakuma was so ghastly I didn't want to turn around, and headed east along the water. I know this section pretty well, due to the great restaurant next to Sakuma, Agua Verde Cafe. Anyway, once we headed east, we were behind the UW Medical Center, with no way out except to double back, so we decided to pick up 24 [climbing rock] next. This actually turned out to be a good choice, since this allowed me to next pick up the three checkpoints on the main campus, then head down Pend Oreille to the University Stores (27), then out to the two checkpoints in the wetlands, a much better route than what I had originally mapped.
• At the climbing rock, someone was having a kids' birthday party. The main difficulty here was actually the stoplight at Pacific and Montlake, which made us wait a long while. On the way back to the light from the rock, I noticed that the light had just turned green for us, so we turned on the gas to avoid having to wait through another cycle. We made it with a few seconds to spare. Unfortunately, I hadn't written down the climbing rock answer, and the birthday party and the light made me doubt my memory, but I went with what I thought it had said, and was right.
• I knew the answer to 42 [Spanish Civil War memorial] before I got there. I pass by this memorial frequently on the way to the HUB, as I work a couple of buildings away. But most importantly, I knew the number of UW students who had been in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was in the dozens, not the hundreds or thousands.
• Three of us (me, Omar, and a solo guy on foot) had to peer in the door at Lewis Hall for the answer to 23.
• I can't be certain, but I believe we hit checkpoint 45 just before noon. This would give us 660 points after two hours, and between 200-260 points in one half hour (on 8-10 checkpoints). Probably only the section in downtown Everett in 2006 was close to this fruitful.

• I know we headed off toward Laurelhurst (55) at around noon, as I was still unsure as to how far we could go along the trail, and set 12:20 as a marker in my head as to when we should make a decision. I had planned on accessing 55 via 47th Ave NE, the street just west of Great Harvest Bread Company near City People's, which I knew had one short, steep uphill, but then was a fairly level route to the area. I also knew there was no easy access to this street via the Burke-Gilman, so I followed Sand Point instead. But there is an uphill on Sand Point after you leave 45th, and I decided just after Children's Hospital to turn right and see if we could find a shortcut. I didn't even consult my map, but after a couple of somewhat steep blocks, I found 47th, and turned left. This turned out to be a mistake, as the street we'd turned onto off Sand Point, NE 50th St, was the street the checkpoint was on. Fortunately, we didn't really lose any elevation on this pointless detour.

  A priest saw us looking at the statue (55), and asked how we were. I said I was fine, except for the sweat dripping down my nose. We both agreed it was a good day for it. I actually consulted my map to get back down to Sand Point, instead of winging it. For some reason, I thought the next checkpoint (35) was where Sand Point intersected 65th, but when I got there and read the clue, it was clear we needed to go up to the trail. But we were planning on doing that anyway, so no big deal.

  At this point, it was still only 12:15 or so, and we decided to head up to 53 [Inverness]. A quick glance at the map had me thinking the checkpoint was on a backstreet in the Inverness housing tract, which I was hopeful meant we could use one of the small paths off the trail which hook up with these streets, and avoid the big hill up from the trail. But when we got to the Inverness trail crossing and I consulted our map, I could see that the checkpoint was on the main street, and there was nothing to do but climb the hill. This was the steepest hill we took all day, and Omar even suggested we get out and walk, but I was pretty sure we didn't have to go all the way up, and I was right. It's a good thing we went all the way to the house, as you couldn't really tell the difference between a vase with flowers and an urn with grapes until you got up close.

• Traffic on the trail was somewhat bad on the way back, but manageable. And, of course, it was flat, so it wasn't too hard. We caught up with a men's bike team at 12 [water fountain] (Got Beer, perhaps). I think they were the first to ask us if we went all the way to Matthews Beach (Inverness). Both teams made it to the next checkpoint, 44 [Ravenna Park] at about the same time as well, where we all agreed the answer had to be 'Creek' (it was ambiguous which of the many flyers was 'the sign on the bottom').

• After 44, I knew there were no big points to be had, but we still had 15 minutes or so to go (at this point, I started ignoring my watch's countdown timer (which I had started too late and was hence too slow) and my bike computer (which I knew was way too fast) and started relying on my watch (which I knew was about 4 minutes fast compared to the official clock). The highest valued checkpoint left to hit was 21 [21st Ave NE house], which was okay, since this gave us a gradual climb up University Ridge. I read the clue aloud on the way up the hill, and Omar called out the answer before we passed by. We turned right on 50th, and started catching up with foot teams who were heading back to the start. We still had plenty of time for 17 [17th Ave NE house], which we accessed by making a complete loop of the roundabout at 17th and Ravenna. A family (perhaps the one that lived at the house in question) encouraged us up the short hill to 56th, where we turned right for our last possible checkpoint.

  By this point, Omar was getting a little anxious, but I told him we had at least eight minutes left for one last checkpoint. The hardest part was crossing Roosevelt, which seemed to be packed with cars both times we crossed. The second crossing, on the way back, we just merged into the right lane, signaled that we were getting into the left, and the cars let us in so that we could make a left turn. I told Omar we had at least two minutes to go when we were two blocks away. In reality, as I said, we arrived with more than 3 minutes to spare.

• Soon after we arrived, Elizabeth showed up, madly dashing to turn in her answer sheet seven seconds before the deadline. We should also congratulate Jake Reeder (arrived at 1:00:00 exactly) and Team Sunshine (arrived at 12:59:59) for their excellent sense of timing.

• With 880 points, I knew we'd win our class, but I didn't know we had won overall until all the results were announced (not to mention that I may have forgotten to mark an answer --- I had plenty of time to check our answer sheet before I turned it in, but I'd missed an answer under these conditions in the past). Once I found out that I had, in fact, marked everything correctly, and heard Ben Hall had an announced score of 'only' 840 (a mistake; he really got 870), I thought we had a chance (and Omar was excitedly telling us that we had the best score so far), but it wasn't until they announced all the men's bike teams scores that I knew for sure.

  I think the only reason we were able to win is that the course was harder than usual. Other teams got more checkpoints (MerGeo.com) and went farther (Ben said he went 31 miles), but we went just far enough and the checkpoints we needed to ignore (on View Ridge, in Madison Valley) were just the right ones to give us a winning score. Even so, we just beat Ambiguously Disgruntled (Jake Reeder) by one 10-point checkpoint, and Ben Hall because he came in at 1:02:06 instead of 1:01:59. If the course had been as difficult as it usually is, we would not have beaten these teams (or MerGeo.com).

• As our prize, we took two chocolate bars: dark for me, milk chocolate for Omar.

Back to my home page.