30 days of biking: Riding a bicycle becomes a routine

Beware of bicycling; it can be habit forming.

That what I concluded as 30 Days of Biking came to a close today.

The scheme was hatched by some cyclists in Minneapolis to get folks out on their bikes in April. Even though I’d been riding all year, I knew there were plenty of dates in April that I wouldn’t get to ride.

I had to use a little ingenuity, but I only missed one ride the entire month.

Even though I regularly run errands on my bike and ride for exercise, 20 to 25 days of bicycling is a good month for me. This April, I rode on 29 days. Not all of the rides were super-long, but a ride is a ride and it forms a habit.

Sunday’s discovery

For instance, Sunday was a day I probably wouldn’t have gone for a bike ride — house chores, work, family. But after already missing one of the 30 Days of Biking in April last week, I didn’t want to lose another one.

With an hour to ride before dinner, I headed out on my mountain bike for a trip down the pipeline trail to a cross-town road on an errand to drop off movie at the video store. On the way home, I turned into a service road that I had noticed on earlier rides. It seemed to go into a wooded area.

I rode to the end of it and a small sign was posted that essentially said to proceed with caution, trail work in progress.

That piqued my curiosity, so I pedaled off the asphalt and onto the narrow dirt path. It looked like single track taking off through the forest.

Single track

The path twisted and turned downhill, passed beneath low hanging branches and over a creek on a substantial bridge. It followed a salmon stream then took to a hillside.

I had gotten off my bike at a muddy area when I encountered another cyclist. He was a member of the work crew out for a spin.

Volunteers had been working on the trail for about a year and were expecting to finish by the end of the summer, he told me. When it’s done, the city will post signs and invite mountain bikers down here. In the meantime, they were shoring up some unstable areas and putting in drainage at this year-round muddy area.

As my hour before dinner was nearly over, I followed him out of there and hurried home.

What a great discovery for me. And to think I might have skipped today’s ride. First chance I get, I’m swapping out the road tires on my Rockhopper for the knobbies hanging in the garage and heading back there for some riding.

Highlights

All in all, it was a good riding month. I explored Hobart, May Valley Road, and Luther Burbank Park. I made some early-morning excursions (something I rarely do) to the Wilburton Trestle and Coulon Park, and a balmy evening ride down to Newcastle Beach Park. I got bit by a dog at the old whaling station in Bellevue and enjoyed the entertainment at the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair.

I ran up 418 miles this month — the longest ride being about 40 miles and the shortest being just a 1-mile errand. Except for a couple of trips to the store, all the rides were different. And as is usually my custom, I just rolled out the driveway on my bike without using the car.

30 Days of Biking

Total days — 29/30

Total miles — 418