A Great Sunday
Published at 16:02 on 3 February 2015
I’m not much of a sports fan, so when it became evident that the forecast storm on Sunday was instead breaking up as it hit the Olympics, I decided to load my fat-tired bike in my truck and ride the logging roads near Port Gamble. Part of the motivation was that it’s one of the last good chances to go off-island (for outdoorsy stuff) in the next month, as the Agate Pass Bridge is scheduled to have maintenance done on it, which means huge backups for anyone using it. That leaves the ferry, which does not head to a convenient destination if easy access to outdoor recreation is one’s goal.
So, anyhow, after lunch I hit the trails. Well, the roads. But many of them in the northeast part of the Port Gamble tree farm are more like trails, because they are so overgrown they might as well be mostly fictional (if you can even find them in the first place). That made for some unplanned adventures and detours.
Overall, though, it ended up being a day of hitting an aggressive stride and trying to go as fast as possible down those old roads. I had them pretty much to myself, because the masses were at home transfixed by their electronic screens. It was a wonderful afternoon of feeling great to be alive, and great to be an animal on a living planet.
I have yet to visit the southeast part of the tree farm. It was on the route plan for Sunday, but the unplanned detours due to the differences between the map and reality put me behind schedule as the afternoon light was starting to wane. If the map was correct, I’d have enough time to take a route through the southeast quadrant, but I had just learned that said map cannot be completely trusted as to its accuracy.
So I played it safe and took the way back I was already familiar with. The southeast quadrant will probably have to wait until March.