Day 19: 400 miles down, 400 to go

We hit 400 miles today as we rolled from Issaquah down to the Seattle waterfront, overlooking Puget Sound. The day was cooler and the air crisp. We took the Mount to Sound bike path alongside the 90 which carried us westward over the Sammamish and Washington lakes. It was gloriously downhill for 22 miles, with an occasional roller. After our day of rest on Sunday we felt strong and hardly noticed that Daisy was fully laden.
Once we got to Seattle, we found many ways to commemorate the mileage, celebrate the end of the bicycling portion of our trip, and inaugurate our re-entry into urban life and it’s many pleasures (read: we found many ways to drop money):

1. Browsed Pike’s Place Public Market, where we bought ourselves lavender and blueberry smoothies.

1. Took our time walking through the Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park.
2. Walked to the City Center, home to the infamous InterGalactic Syringe.
3. Visited the MoPop Museum of Pop Culture. We both thoroughly enjoyed the Jimi Hendrix exhibits, which included his wild stage outfits, guitars, handwritten lyrics, diaries, passports, luggage, Ladyland Studio equipment, and recordings of his interviews.
4. Rode the Burke – Gilman Trail along Union Lake to the lovely Gas Works Park at Sunset. This photo was taken from the little peak at the park.
5. Threw back a beer at the obviously hip Fremont Brewery. So hip, in fact, that we are now both 5.6% hipper than before. We are also the proud owner’s of a stolen Fremont Brewery Pint Glass.
6. Ate a dinner of Korean fried rice at the Belltown Cafe at 11pm, which might have been quite mediocre if not for our hunger.
7. Capped off the night with mezcal nightcaps at a trendy restaurant-bar with exposed concrete walls and piping, minimalist wood and mirror decor and warm candle-lighting. We ended the day now 12.3% trendier than when we begun it.

A few observations:

• Seattle is so green. Emerald green. 50 shades of green. Except for when its’s pink.
• Seattle is full of water. Ocean, lakes, ponds, streams. Jackie has named it Watery City No. 3, after Vancouver and Victoria. She proposes an alternate name for our trip: The Great Green Tandem Tour of Watery Cities, Hilly Islands, and Hoppy IPAs.
• We have a lot of gear. We discovered just how much when we took it all off and rode to Gas Works Park. We were zippy.
• Money seems to disappear quickly in cities. 

Also, we must mention our stay at the City Hostel on Second Avenue where we slept Monday night. To avoid repeating adjectives, Steve suggest that it was “cool” and “slick.” Jackie offers “Berlin.” (Note: Though I’ve never been to Berlin, I imagine many alternative hair cuts, all black outfits, subtle synth tunes, and sterile, yet artistic ambience). We stayed in a room that has been entirely painted by a local artist. It was like sleeping in a creepy skitsofrenic forest. It might have been titled Sleepless in Seattle. Thanks to the nightcaps, we slept just fine.

P.s. To stimulate a memory of the Cascades Chapter of the Ready Riders, we stumbled upon the Moore Hotel and the Starlight Bar and Grill, which Steve remembers from the 2013 Cascades Tour with Mike, Bob, and Brent. It looks like the Moore franchise has overtaken the Starlight franchise with an expanded coffee shop and restaurant.