Team Teriyaki Donut in the Everett Street Scramble 2007

Introduction

With Omar out until late July at best, Teriyaki Donut is me, Greg Barnes, and our now 4-year old, Emmett, in a Burley trailer. Emmett's birthday was the day of the Everett Street Scramble. We stayed out for 3 hours.

My wife was in the other 3-hour family bike team, Maybe He'll Nap, with a friend of ours, Erik Selberg, pulling his 3-year old daughter Laura in a trailer.

My knowledge of Everett basically consists of last year's Everett Street Scramble. I also studied last year's map pretty well to figure out where the hills were. My conclusion: Everett is pretty flat, except in the southwest.

Teriyaki Donut visited 29 checkpoints and got 920 points, including a 20 point late penalty. This was the highest score overall (the second time we've outright won a Street Scramble this year), but the steady rain depressed both the turnout and the scores. As at Crossroads, we rode a little over 26 miles.

Our route:

23 [Althea], 25 [Children's Museum], 24 [Everett Theatre], 26 [Renee's], 37 [Solovei Art Gallery], 22 [Sno-Isle Food Co-op], 54 [Depot Park], 46 [Port office], 51 [boat launch sculpture], 52 [bluff sign], 44 [ECC clock], 32 [Under the Red Umbrella], 15 [Grand Avenue Park], 14 [flagpole], 42 [fire hydrant], 36 [Summit Avenue Park], 33 [overpass date], 48 [credit union], 27 [staircase painting], 21 [iron pillar], 34 [Aquasox], 31 [Olympic Physical Therapy], 43 [Alta Dr. Park], 38 [road end guardrail], 55 [power station number], 41 [walkway posts], 47 [Johnston-Kelly Environmental Park], 53 [railroad bridge], 45 [Floral Hall]

Our route, courtesy of Gmaps pedometer.

The weather

We'd known for some time that there was a danger of rain during the event; not just light rain, but a steady downpour. Still, as late as Friday night, forecasts were that the rain would develop in the early afternoon, so we were hoping we'd escape the worst of it. But when I checked the weather Saturday morning, the rain had already hit Port Angeles, and it was drizzling at our house in Seattle, so I knew we wouldn't be lucky. There was basically a steady rain from 9am until 4-5pm.

We've participated in the other two rainy Street Scrambles, but only on foot. For Northshore 2005, we had the bikes packed in the car, but unpacked them at the last minute and decide to go on foot. This time, though, we had recruited Erik and Laura, and there was no backing out.

Fortunately, the weather was relatively warm (around 60), so I didn't suffer in a Goretex jacket and shorts. Also, the Burley is fairly waterproof, although water did end up collecting in the bottom. I think this is because I left the back plastic cover off to keep Emmett from roasting. Speaking of plastic covers, Erik forgot to bring the one for his trailer, and had to rig up something with a few map cases and duct tape when we got there, which apparently worked pretty well.

The rain, of course, affected everything. Before the map handout, I scouted around the plaza and found a dry place to do route planning on the upper level next to the nearby administration building. This worked out fine for both our teams, as we both went south and it was easy to get to Pacific (the street to the south) from this location. To hold the map and answer sheets, I use plastic holders for 8.5 x 11" paper, with holes so you can put them in a binder. The 'binder' clips onto my handlebars, with all openings in the plastic on the right side. I fold the 11 x 17" map in half, with the current side on top, and can flip it back and forth to see the two sides. For the 8.5 x 14" answer sheet, I make a couple of folds on the margins to shorten it, which makes it almost fit, but leaves a fraction of an inch sticking out. But that's okay, since then I can pull it out and mark the answers. Since the answers are on the side of the opening, I only have to pull it out a little ways. When it's dry, it slides back in easily.

But, of course, it wasn't dry. The edge of the answer sheet that was sticking out got wet immediately. The answer sheet had to be forced back in after marking an answer, and my hands were wet, so the rest of the answer sheet got pretty wet pretty fast. Fortunately, it's printed on semi-waterproof paper, so it didn't fall apart. But writing answers was a problem, since my waterproof Sharpies decided to get a little finicky when they had to write on wet paper. I had to pull out all three we had after the first stopped working; the other two managed to last for the whole race. But it wasn't easy to make a convincing mark, and I even noticed late in the race that one of the answers had been seemingly washed off. I re-marked it and apparently didn't have the problem again.

The map was not printed on waterproof paper, and early on I could see the water seeping in from the right hand side. Most of the checkpoints were well away from the right margin, but when it came time to flip the map over inside the plastic sleeve so that the south half was on top, I couldn't do it without risking the whole thing falling apart. Instead, I spent the rest of the race flipping the whole sleeve back and forth to navigate, which slowed me down a bit. I did manage to extract the map from the holder relatively intact after an hour of drying on the vent at home.

The other notable effects of the rain were that my stopping power decreased substantially, and my glasses became useless. I noticed the brakes were having problems up near the far north of Everett, luckily long before we needed them. Afterwards, I had to be even more cautious on downhills than usual. The glasses kept fogging up, and I finally abandoned them near checkpoint 36 [Summit Avenue Park], as they were fogged up and covered with water. My vision is good enough for cycling without them, but it made it hard to, for example, read street signs as we passed by.

And, of course, I was wet. But I didn't notice much, probably because about an hour in, heading south from checkpoint 45 [fire hydrant], one of the numerous large trucks on that street kicked up some speck of something that lodged in my left eye. I was basically in minor pain from that the rest of the ride, which kept my mind off the fact that my feet (and the rest of my body) were soaked.

Notes

• Last year, I had skipped the northern checkpoints and regretted it. As I said, I knew that the hilliest parts of the course were in the southwest, so I elected to loop clockwise and leave the southwest checkpoints for the end. I also knew that the downtown checkpoints were collectively worth a fair amount and were easy to get, so I decided to pick them up first on the way to the western checkpoints. Finally, we could have left 54 [Depot Park] until the end, but I decided it was smarter to pick it up early and not risk skipping it as we were running out of time.

  I mapped out a route to pick up everything, since we had come close to sweeping the course at Crossroads. However, I was quite willing to skip 12 [Animal Shelter] if you couldn't access it from the west (my Everett street map said you could), and to drop one or both of 53 and 13 if time was running low. Apart from 53 and 45, the hill-climbing on the route seemed minimal, and this turned out to be true, with most of the hills being short, such as the climbs out of 38 [road end guardrail] and 41 [walkway posts].

• Emmett got clocked by a bathroom door just before the start, so we got rolling a minute or so late. But Emmett was largely silent for most of the ride, asking me to close his Ziploc bag of trail mix a few times, and taking a nap for most of the first half.

  Laura, on the other hand, apparently was not happy, which severely cut into Maybe He'll Nap's score. Apparently her trailer is also not as waterproof as ours, and she had legitimate complaints about the rain. Still, apparently later in the day, she said she had a good time. We hypothesize that is because she got a ribbon (no spoiler; there were so few 3-hour teams that everyone got a ribbon).

• Through the downtown checkpoints, we saw a lot of other teams, but they started to get scarce along the waterfront. We saw a family bike team (Lamnation?) near the boat launch (51), but after that things really thinned out until we got downtown again. After 34 [Aquasox], I don't think we saw another team, which isn't surprising, since I think a lot of people opted to only stay out 90 minutes.
• As it was last year, downtown was lucrative: 130 points in about 10 minutes. Add in 54, and we had 180 points in about 15 minutes, and 270 after the first half-hour.
• After 54 [Depot Park], we went down the supposedly closed street to the port bike path on the other side of the railroad tracks. I think that street was supposedly closed last year, too, when we took it in the reverse direction. We started on the west sidewalk of W Marine View Dr (legal in Everett if you're not downtown) to get to 46 [Port office], and ducked down under the flyover, which took us on a more worn road with a lot of railroad tracks, but worked out okay.
• Leaving 46 to get back onto W Marine View Dr, I saw what I took to be a pavement marker for bicycles indicating where the traffic light sensor was (a white circle, similar to the white T in Seattle and the white X in Bellevue). The strange thing was, it was a fair distance away from the intersection; most of these markers are at the edge of the intersection, not the approach. But sure enough, I rode over the circle and the light changed to green just as we got to the intersection. In general, I thought the bike light sensors in Everett were pretty good, although the one down by 41 [walkway posts] didn't work for me.
• 51: Surf II? I saw that movie.
• Approaching the uphill near 52 [bluff sign], I first noticed my brakes were getting rather soft (why was I braking before an uphill? Dunno). At the top of the rise, a man on foot (another participant) was jogging in from the east. I thought it was pretty impressive he got that far north in roughly the same time it took us (assuming he wasn't a volunteer who got a head start).
• The clock at 44 struck 10:45 just as we were leaving. So 360 points in 45 minutes. I believe we had 450 at the hour mark (after leaving the fire hydrant at 42). That's about the time the truck kicked up something into my eye.
• Many times during the Scramble I underestimated map distances. For example, we almost missed the turnoff after Riverdale Park because I thought the park would be bigger. Immediately after, I was suprised at how close 33 [overpass date] was to 36 [Summit Avenue park].
• For the second time in two years, I tried to go west under the freeway at Hewitt, which is not allowed. We took the sidewalk, which looks like it should work, but ends up blocked by a fence, requiring you to duck into an opposing traffic lane to get back onto the spot where it picks up again. Sheesh.
• At 43 [credit union], we were nearing the halfway point timewise, and Omar woke up, asking if we were done. Not quite. It couldn't have been 90 minutes yet, as just after 27 [stairway painting], we passed by More Cowbell, who finished the 90 minute Scramble on time. The answer to 27 was not through the west door as the question implied, but the east door (and both were locked --- someone left the answer on a sheet of paper on the east door). I checked both out after noticing the west door didn't have the right suite number.
• Just west of 12 [animal shelter], there is a sign saying 'mill access only'. It seemed that's where we were going, so we went east on 36th, only to find access was completely blocked under the freeway. As I wrote above, we weren't going to visit 12 if it meant we'd have to take the long looping road up from 41st, so we continued on (after consulting the map in the dry area under the freeway).
• At the Everett Aquasox office, the guy asked how I was doing. "Fine", I said. Then added, "but very wet". I almost forgot the answer to the checkpoint, until I remembered they had a note on the counter that said it was 'C'.
• The area around 41st and Broadway seemed just as messed up as it was last year. I was hoping to cut across 41st to take the diagonal road east of the cemetery, but there was a median blocking that route. Oh well. 31 [Olympic Physical Therapy] was easy to find, as it had been a checkpoint last year as well.
• From 31, we headed down the extremely unfortunate Interurban Trail. In north King and south Snohomish County, this trail is a joke because it consists of disconnected 3-block intervals, with long gaps between. In Everett, it's largely done, but it's still a joke due to the ridiculous chicanes they put on all street crossings. Basically, these are 3/4 length gate arms, about 5' apart, which require you to make an 'S' maneuver to get past them. This really isn't easy to do with a bike trailer. The next day I took the Centennial Trail from Snohomish, and they had the same things, so apparently someone in the county transportation department thinks they're a good idea. No, they're not.
• I think we hit the two hour mark at around 43 [Alta Dr. Park], when we had 690 points. Shortly thereafter, I decided we needed over 750 points at the 2:15 mark to justify going for checkpoint 53 (750 being 3/4 of the points, and 2:15 being 3/4 of the time, you see).
• Heading down Broadway toward 38 was when I really noticed my lack of glasses. I couldn't read the street signs, which seemed to all be on the opposite side of the street, behind tree branches. Apparently putting them on both sides of the street is too much bother. Luckily, the street we were looking for, Madison, was major enough to get a big sign stretched across the road.
• We joined up with the Interurban and its chicanes again to get to 55 [power station number], and I once again overestimated the distance, overshooting the checkpoint by 100 yards at least. I was also a little thrown shortly after when we got back on Madison heading west, and passed Colby Ave, which the map has a block to the east. To further confuse things, I knew the street we wanted to turn on was Beverly [something], and the street right after Colby was Beverly Blvd. But I was not fooled, and continued on to Beverly Lane, where I again overshot the turn for the next checkpoint (41) by counting the streets on the left instead of the right.
• We had 770 points (after reaching 55) by 12:15, so I decided we were going for checkpoint 53.
• At 41 (walkway posts) I realized why "3-4" was one of the choices: there are 3 obvious posts, and a fourth (I think it was a post) hidden under some tree branches. The 'pedestrian walkway' sign on the street made it easier to find this checkpoint, since the question mentions a 'walkway entrance'. Otherwise we might have missed it.
• After 47 [Johnston-Kelly Environmental Park], we had a little over half an hour left, and I was relieved to see that Mukilteo Blvd heading west wasn't as steep a hill as I thought it would be. It was a no-brainer to try for 53 first instead of 13, but once again, I overshot our turnoff --- we wanted to make the second right, but passed it right by and would have gone even farther if I hadn't seen the sign for Howarth Park (the name of the park 53 is in --- incidentally, Elizabeth told me they made the same mistake, and also stopped when they saw the park sign). This was no big loss in time, and we were soon at the parking lot above 53. After a jog down some stairs, I was confused to see the bridge was built by the Continental Custom Bridge Company, which was not one of the choices. I wrote down the full name in my disappearing purple ink, and noticed that two of the choices were nonsense: 'Bridge' and 'Construction'. This was an Excel error, as it turns out. Note that the answers appear in full on the back of the maps; it was only the answer sheet that had this problem.
• My street map of Everett showed a street connection between 13 and the two streets that form a loop just southwest of it, so we climbed the hill to the east of 53 to hopefully pick up 13. This street connection turned out to be non-existent, and we now had less than 20 minutes left, so we headed to Forest Park. On the steep hill up to 45 [Floral Hall], my chain dropped out. I put it back on. At the top of the hill, both my eyes were burning from sweat and I was nonsensically cursing all the families crossing the street to get to the pool. Luckily, Floral Hall was easy to find, and we drove onto the porch to the north entrance, where I saw a plaque above the doors that I couldn't read without my glasses. Fortunately, I then saw a larger, more legible plaque on the doors that had the answer.
• 45 was our last checkpoint, as there were now fewer than 10 minutes and around 2 miles to go. If we'd had more time, we would have headed north to get 35 and 11, which I believe would not have involved much of a climb (if anything, it's a steep downhill). Instead, we headed back east on Mukilteo, riding the brakes down the steep part, then waiting a long time at the light at Rucker. I figured busy Rucker would be the fastest route north, but instead we got stopped at a light at 37th, and turned right to get on the next avenue over. This had no lights until Pacific, so it turned out to be a better choice. Nevertheless, my watch alarm (which for once I had set correctly) went off just as we turned onto Wall. We had to skid to a stop at a red light at Colby or Wetmore (the police officer across the street didn't seem to mind that we'd passed the stop line), rushed up to the plaza, and I abandoned Emmett in the trailer while I ran the answer sheet down the stairs to the finish line. Jana Dvorak copied my answer for 53 when I told her what it was. We were 1:30 late, for a 20 point penalty.
• There really weren't many 3-hour finishers at all, so the results were done pretty quickly (about the time it took me to clean out my eye, put some stuff in the van and get our dry clothes). Everyone who was left fit under the largest canopy, where we all got ribbons and prizes (including Aquasox tickets). Afterwards, I changed into dry shoes, which didn't stay dry for long.
• The most interesting checkpoints were, in my opinion, the bluff sign (52, for the content), the iron pillar (21) and the railroad bridge (53).

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