Trees, Animals and the Rich

Long time no write!  We have done not too much interesting.  Bike, hike, watch the rabbits.  That sort of thing.  The rabbits remain as cute as always.  Apparently none of the hawks or eagles that live up the hill eat them, because they're often out in the open and are fairly relaxed.

There has been hiking.  We did one trail the other day (the Highschool Trail) which was not pleasant.  Too much gravel on the trail makes it uncomfortable.  We've been back on the Tradition Plateau trail system which is better.  There are mosquitoes.  I've started wearing anti-mosquito bracelets, it's like hiking carrying citronella candles.

Today we rode the mountain bikes up the East Lake Sammamish trail to see if any progress had been made on paving the last two trail segments.  We saw some wild life.  Look bottom right in the corner, there is a stag in the under brush.  He started out in full sun, but it took too long to get the camera out.

We also saw this bird, he/she is a Blue Heron.

This is one of the recently paved sections of the trail.  Notice the attractive retaining wall, and the width of the pavement.  It's 12 feet wide.

Here is a brief history of the trail which I found here.

In April 1997, the Land Conservancy purchased the active railroad corridor from the Burlington-Northern/Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) and then sold it to King County a year later. In March 2006, after nearly a decade of litigation, the 11-mile trail officially opened as an interim gravel trail, all with the hopes of paving it sometime in the future.

During that decade of litigation, the landowners along the lake encroached into the easement. They blocked passage along the trail with fences and large pieces of concrete.  They decided that they "owned" the corridor that separated their lakeside property from the land close to the road.  Had they taken the time to inspect their deeds and title insurance documents, they would have noticed the rail easement and the fact that no, they did not own it.

They have been fighting tooth and nail every step of the way against trail maintenance and upgrades.  One of the things they continued to do was the building of fences, gates and planting of landscaping on land they did not own.  It looks like they may have finally run out of options for suing King County.

East Lake Sammamish Trail – Federal Court Ruling in King County’s Favor

On April 20, 2016 Federal District Court Judge Marsha J.Pechman ruled in King County’s favor on property ownership and use issues within the East Lake Sammamish Trail (ELST) corridor. The ruling recognizes that King County possesses all property rights in the ELST corridor that were previously owned by BNSF.  Along substantial portions of the ELST, King County owns the corridor in fee.  Where the railroad acquired corridor property by “adverse possession” over 100 years ago, King County currently owns a “railroad easement” that is 100’ wide (subject to prior legal settlements or BNSF property sales).  Even where King County’s ownership is limited to a railroad easement, this robust form of ownership allows for “the exclusive use and possession of the area on, above, and below the surface of the corridor.”  The federal court’s recognition of King County’s property rights in the ELST corridor is important because it allows the County to move forward with completing the last section of the ELST, known as “South Sammamish B.” Once constructed, this “golden-spike” segment will complete the 44-mile regional trail corridor from Ballard to Issaquah for public use and enjoyment.

If you read the full article, you get a sense of the entitlement these people feel with regards to the trail.  They were told not to encroach, they did it anyway, and the county removed their structures.  There are fairly strict codes on trail widths and layouts and King County wants to adhere to them.

This one of the most expensive homes along Lake Sammamish.  Zillow shows it valued at $11.7 million, yearly property taxes are $88,973.  The person owns the end of the point.  We were driving by this afternoon on the way home and saw a helicopter landing on the front yard.  This Google Earth from 2013 captured a helicopter on the helipad.  How cool would that be?  I do wonder how the neighbors feel about the noise.

Other than this puny offering, I have nothing else to report.

Riding the Sammamish Slough

It is so hot, again.  Really hot.  My recliner is on the hot side of the bus.  I’m currently sitting on the bed because the rear air conditioner is doing a much better job on the bedroom than is the front air conditioner.  Today would be a good day for a third a/c, but we’re not going there.

This morning, before it was really hot, we drove out to Marymoor Park.  It is the jewel of the King County parks.  They have cricket, soccer, RC planes, climbing walls, a velodrome and more.  We just wanted to park there and ride up the Sammamish Slough. 

Staff was running a bicycling camp for little kids.  Some knew how to pedal and others were being pushed around until they found their balance.  They look like mushrooms in those helmets.

The slough, or river, drains Lake Sammamish into Lake Washington.  It doesn’t have a lot of current, today it was looking pretty brown.  It is, however, water.  And water front commands a premium price in the real estate market.  This makes the continued existence of this mobile home park, and another one up the road so astonishing.  I can not believe they haven’t torn these down and put up condos.

They have been here forever.  It’s kind of nice to see some of the old parts of the area surviving.

This is an older section of the trail.  The parts that are currently being paved, at great inconvenience to the people who fought the project in the courts for years and lost, will be 12 feet across.  It will be very pleasant riding, assuming they finish while Jim and I are still alive.  I wrote about the trail last year, and you can read it here if you are interested.

As we were leaving Marymoor we saw a Google motorcycle coming down the bike path. I’m assuming it’s Google, I don’t know who else drives around with a rotating camera.

I saw these photos on Facebook, this is the Cariboo wildfire.  This is the source of the smoke we are currently inhaling.  The number of fires in BC is just staggering.

This is distressing. 

Other than sweltering, we have not too much to report. 

A Ride to Marymoor

Yesterday we rode to Marymoor park up the East Lake Sammamish Trail.  It's a rails to trails conversion.  Yesterday's key learning is don't go to Marymoor on a weekend.  The little kids are out on their bikes riding S curves on the trail.  They're totally unpredictable, and therefore worrisome.  So, please make a note of that. 

The new underpass is much nicer than the grade crossing bikes used to have to do.  There is still a dangerous intersection to be survived.  Coming back yesterday, we had the walk signal, and someone ran a red turn signal.  If we didn't hold up for a couple of seconds, he would have hit us.  People are crazy.  Here is the underpass.  To the left is the new round about, and the elevated road over the wetlands that goes to Costco. 

The trail is still not complete.  There is a 3.6 mile stretch of hard pack with a little gravel sprinkled over it.  It's doable on skinny tires, but not really enjoyable. Why, you wonder is it not complete after all these years; it's the homeowners along the trail.  Even though their title insurance clearly stated they did not own the rail bed, they built on it.  For years they blockaded it with large concrete blocks. They have been in court for years, as well as the city of Sammamish who also hates bicyclists. There is a good summary of what's happening here.

More on the subject can be found here. This paragraph is just amazing to me.

King County won the lawsuit filed in 2015 in State Superior Court by a small group of trail side property owners seeking quiet title relief for their homes and other property that King County stated are on public land. Eight of those owners have homes either partially or completely located in the former rail corridor. On December 21, 2018, Judge Shaffer granted King County’s motion for summary judgement. She indicated that King County owns the corridor adjacent to the plaintiffs, that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge King County’s ownership because their deeds exclude the corridor and that King County has full authority to eject encroachments. (Bold print added by me.)

Apparently they are planning to appeal this to the Supreme Court, but I would be surprised if they would take this case.  

We spent a little time watching racing at the Marymoor velodrome.  They have quite the racing schedule in the summer.  We were there for women's Keirin.  It's a track sport originated in Japan in 1948, to provide people a sport to bet on.  The Japanese version had two riders, that has increased to more riders in other venues.  Here we see the women lining up for the race.  The men are holding them up while they wait.

The woman on the front is pacing the group.  She's riding an electric mountain bike.  The riders have to stay behind her until the bell lap.  She pulls off and the pack sprints for the line.  In the past, mopeds were used as the pacing vehicle.  

There is an article on BBC Sport about it, as well as a wiki.  Track racing is so interesting, it's all tactics and fast-twitch muscle.

Lake Sammamish

Another delightful day was on tap for the GPNW.  It's just eerie. It did not rain once in August, not once!  We rode around Lake Sammamish today.  It was good,  I did better on the three terrible hills than I have been doing.  This is the lake.  This is high dollar real estate.  Once upon a time, it was not high dollar, because it was "too far out", now it's smack dab in the middle of the eastern megalopolis.  The time to buy was decades ago.  Ah, the benefits of 20-20 hindsight.

 

Some years the water is high enough to submerge the docks.  This year the water levels are quite reasonable.

 

We have new technology for the trip.  Rather than taking a stack of books, we bought Nooks.  They're pretty cool.  I registered both of them to me, and every book I buy shows up on Jim's Nook.   We have recently discovered Vince Flynn, and we like his books.  They're of the "CIA shoots the bad guy" genre, and are a fun read.  So we downloaded a few of them, and some Jane Austen as well.  There will be a new Jack Reacher book out the day before we leave, so I'm hoping we can get that, as well. 

Farmer's Market, Housing and Track Racing

The Seattle heat wave continues unabated.  It's difficult for the inhabitants because very few people have air conditioning, because it's "never hot here."  Hah!  Our last summer here as residents in 2007 it was 103 several days. 
Saturday morning we walked over to the Farmer's Market.  It's a good market, there is more produce than there are crafts.  There are also food stalls which smelled wonderful, but we did not partake.

Look at the beets.  This is the only place we buy them because they are so expensive in grocery store.  Here they are $2 for a bunch of four.  Jim likes them, I have not yet acquired a taste for them.  I associate them with school lunches when they were sliced with something that left ridges.

From the Carnation Valley.

It was good. We remembered to take a shopping bag which was very helpful.  By the time we got back, it was really hot and humid; all clothing from that trip went into the laundry basket.

This is one of the dogs in the site next to us.  They have two boxers, both of whom spend a lot of time on the dashboard.  The other one is very mellow, this one is a barker and he paws frantically at the windows.  I wonder if he bites.

This is part of why traffic continues to get worse.  This is the Grand Ridge development which is east of Issaquah where we are.  I think there are 5,000 new homes up there.  They started building in 2006 or so.  While they have put in all of these homes, there are no new roads to support them. 

It's a Traditional Neighborhood Development which is new housing on previously undeveloped land.  They deliberately mix single family with multi-family housing in close proximity. 

We looked at a 2900 square foot home with four bedrooms for $725,000.  It was a nice house, but it has no yard and no privacy.  Your bedroom looks directly into the neighbors'.  It's actually more crowded feeling than an RV park.

These houses are in the at least $1.5M range.

And then there is this.  This is single family.  It is the most ostentatious and unattractive house I've seen in awhile.

We were up and out early today to ride.  We did the loop around Lake Sammamish again.  We stopped for a nosh at Marymoor park.  They were racing!  These are Washington State Track Championships.

These are masters racers.  They click in to their pedals with someone holding them up.  The first lap is slow while they engage in strategy with each other on the track.

Here they are on the back field riding fairly high on the track.  After the first lap they jockey for position some more, and then someone will jump and start the sprint.  These are the fast twitch muscle people.

I am riding well this summer.  The vacation in Europe on the very heavy hybrid bikes was a training camp for me.  Two weeks of pushing those things up and down the hills made me stronger.  My climbing is much better now, and I'm not suffering the way I did for almost all of 2013.  Life is much better with some muscle and cardio.  Riding is now fun again.

Jim Fails to Keep the Rubber Side Down

Yesterday we rode around Lake Sammamish.  It was a very expensive ride.  We were almost home, when Jim reached down for a water bottle, rode over a reflective dot on the road way, and slammed to the pavement in a split second.  Remember Arte Johnson on Laugh-In falling over with the tricycle?  It was sort of like that.  Anyone under 45 will probably not get the reference.  Go Google it, it was funny television.
Anyway, here is the broken helmet that had to be replaced.  Notice the vertical crack where the arrow is pointing.  It goes all the way through.

 

Additionally, the sun glasses, the bike shorts and the carbon fiber handlebars had to be replaced.  We took the bike in to get the handlebar tape replaced, and they uncovered the crack in the carbon fiber.  I'm glad it was discovered before they broke on a ride. 
This is a shop dog in one of the stores we visited yesterday.  Is he not adorable?  He's Chihuahua and Jack Russell.

 

We saw this on the way home.  It's a motorcycle with a mountain bike rack on the back.  Pretty cool.

 

Sorry about the back picture quality, I took this through the window.  The dog wanted to eat that hamburger really badly.

 

So, how is Jim, you wonder?  He's banged up some.  This was the major point of impact on his hip.  There's also road rash on his shoulder, elbow, knee and calf.  All damage is on the left, which is not the side of his pelvis he broke in 2006.  He didn't feel too awful this morning. 

Jim spent the day on The Rock, taking May back to the dentist.  I had an appointment with the podiatrist, and then I did the 5 mile walk with the giant hill.  Tomorrow we'll try riding again, hopefully with a better outcome.

Weird Weather and a Better Back

Greetings!  My back is better.  Happy I am about this. Sunday I did another flat short ride in Carnation Valley, and then waited for Jim as he went out and rode without me.  The sunflowers were very attractive.
Yesterday we took the mountain bikes up the East Lake Sammamish bike trail (also flat) and managed 17 miles, which was pain free.  So there is hope that this will be over soon.

The weather has taken a turn for the weird.  The Seattle area is not known for thunder and lightning.  We've had a fair amount of this.

It rained like hell all last night.  This is just down the hill from where we are staying.  Factoria had 4 feet of water in some of their parking lots and streets, probably a combination of much rain and blocked storm drains.

Water has not fallen from the sky today, but look at the humidity.  98% is also not usual for the area.  Today is supposed to be the last bad day.  I'm really hoping the forecast models are correct.  It's only  been a couple of bad days, but it's aggravating.

Since the trails are full of mud and the streets are full of wet leaves and road gunk, there was no riding today.  We walked over to Costco to pick up my new contacts.  One of the things that was really good on the trip to Vienna was disposable contact lenses.  Instead of taking a pound of solutions, I got by on less than two ounces of liquid for the entire month.  They don't correct my astigmatism, but since it's not that bad it wasn't a problem.  After I use up my current supply of monthlies, I may convert to the single use lenses; I'm thinking they will be better during the season of steeeenking blooming yellow trees in Tucson.
So - nothing much is going on here.  We're departing September 8, and I am looking forward to being somewhere different.

More Osprey

Yesterday we rode up to Marymoor again.  It was a very noisy ride, there were a lot of side dumping trailers and dump trucks with pups.  There is a lot of construction everywhere.  Oddly enough, there was also a double UPS tractor trailer.  One does not usually see them on local roads.

In my last post I had pictures of the Osprey chicks.  This is them again - they're more grown up.  The parents were flying overhead, the babies were yelling for food.  The parents may be trying to encourage them to start flying and hunting.

This is a cute little float plane, tied up in front of someone's house on Lake Sammamish.

Look at the sky.  We're getting smoke from Siberia, Alaska and Eastern Washington.  So far there is no ash on the truck, and we don't smell it, so summer is still a success.

Today we had a significant marine push bringing us clouds in the trees and cool temperatures.  We are not complaining, on the east side of the Cascades they are cooking.

Traffic, Bridge and Road Closures and the Back

The RV park is taking out trees at a rapid rate.  Three days before the work was supposed to start, a giant poplar went down.  It landed dead center on a brand new 5th wheel.  It still had temporary plates on it.  So tragic.



The laurel next to our site continues its path towards world dominance.  As we do every year, we trimmed it before putting out the slides.  It’s now taller than the RV.



May I complain just a bit?  I know I can be a whiner, but really.  A new Ford dealership is going in somewhere in our vicinity.  The local environmentalists became concerned that oil might leak into a tiny creek and possibly hurt a fish.  Apparently the dealership was considered more threatening than all the water that runs off the roads into the creek when it rains.  So, the creek has been rerouted.  A major road in Issaquah was closed for 6 days to put the culvert in. During this process they removed access to the East Lake Sammamish trail.  Now we will have to ride on sidewalks, and on the street with 50 mph traffic and maniac drivers to get to the trail.  Once we reach the trail, we won’t be able to stay on it for long because they’re repaving a paved three mile stretch, and they still haven’t started on the gravel section.  I would very much like to talk to their project manager about scheduling.



To leave the RV park, we have to turn on this street.  Good luck with that!



There is also the Southeast 62nd Street project.  It’s a new road, which really decreased traffic jams in Issaquah.  Unfortunately, it’s now closed, and will be closed until 2019.  In the meantime, traffic volumes are just unbelievable.  We’ve returned to the practice of using the freeway to get across town. 

So we thought we’d go ride the Carnation loop.  Nope!  This is a brand new bridge.  King Country tells us this:

King County’s structural engineer reviewed the work of the private firm that designed the Tolt Hill Bridge. The County discovered discrepancies between the design calculations for the bridge and the plans provided by the private firm to the builder for construction. While an investigation continues, the bridge will be closed beginning at 8:00PM on Friday, June 16 for an indefinite time to design and implement repairs.

OK, I get it, no trucks on the bridge.  Couldn’t they have left it open to bikes and pedestrians until they start work?  No, no they could not.  Anyway, there’s not even a guess as to how long this will be closed.  Needless to say, traffic volumes on the alternative route are just horrific.



There is a gravel trail we can ride on to get into Carnation – but I really hate gravel roads with skinny tires.  I think I’m just going to have to get over that.



This is in Renton.  More roads dug up!  This is the route to our doctors’ offices.



We’ll be traveling this route more than once this summer.  Since June 27, Jim has had pain radiating down the back of his left leg and down his calf.  It’s just excrutiating.  Sleeping is very difficult since rolling over is like being stabbed with knives.  An x-ray reveals that there is displacement of the L4 and L5 vertebrae.  This causes the disc to press on the nerve roots which causes the pain.  The impingement is severe enough that it’s causing foot drop when he walks.  Suffice it to say, we are devastated by this development.  He was finally recovered from the Achilles and now this.  There will be an MRI on Thursday and then a followup with the doctor.  I don’t know what the next steps are.  Getting old just sucks.

So, my advice to you dear reader, is to gather ye rosebuds while ye may.