Out of the Suburbs

brace yourself. i'm about to extoll one of the (few) virtues of living on the eastside. are you ready?

you can ride for less than 10 minutes and essentially be in farm country.

there it is. an advantage of living in bellevue.

my dad and i went for a great ride today. out south of bellevue on coal creek parkway, and onto may valley road. we hit issaquah-hobart road to highway 18 and up past 90 to 202 by snoqualmie falls. into fall city, and down through preston to jump back on 90 to newport way, and home.

overall, it was a far superior ride to wednesday's. the weather was gorgeous and within 10 minutes (as i mentioned above) we were on a little twisting road heading past fields and horses. couldn't ask for anything more. no real traffic, good roads and very little getting lost (ok, i turned the wrong way on 18 at first, but there was an exit fairly quickly). had i known 18 was a limited access highway, i might have tried to avoid it, but we were only on it for 8 miles or so.

on 202 we hit the dreaded construction, just after snoqualmie falls. we waited for at least 5-10 minutes, but other than that the ride was blessedly orange-free. and technically we took the wrong turn out of fall city and got back to 90 further east than planned, but no worries. i don't know if i'd ever been through preston before, and now i have.

throughout the ride (and over the past few months) i've been trying to work on clutch and throttle control, and i think i've been making some good progress. for those who don't know, using the clutch on a motorcycle is much different than in a car. while in a car, you have the point of engagement and then you're going, motorcycles have this awesome thing called a friction zone, where you can use part of the clutch to help control speed, along with the throttle. also, if you have a sweet bike like vixen, the throttle control is nice and sensitive, so when you pull back on the throttle, instead of straight coasting, you'll slow down.

this technique gives you a lot more control over the bike as a whole, since you are hardly ever using the brake (and whenever you're braking you have much less control over any vehicle), and since you have constant contact with the throttle. plus, slowing down by down-shifting instead of by braking means you're always in the proper gear should you ever need to escape from a harrowing situation, or just put on some unexpected speed. you wouldn't believe the control you have. for instance, given the proper distance (not as much as you might think), i can slow from freeway speeds to a complete stop without touching the brake. i can also decrease my speed, while going downhill, without any braking. pretty cool, huh?

the whole ride was about 60 miles, and lasted around 2 hours. not a bad way to spend a saturday afternoon, really.

in other news, i'm getting ridiculously excited about my florida trip in april. i've considered trying it earlier, but i'm not quite sure about weather. onec i get south, it would be fine i'm sure, but you never know if it's february or march. i guess we'll see how restless i get.

until the next time, rftc.

scott