Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Swifty Scootering Around Lake Sammamish

Yesterday morning Swifty and I set out for trip around Lake Sammamish. It was just getting light around 7:30 AM and the morning had a bit of light drizzle. The temperature was cool but not cold and it was a fine day for scootering.

The gateway door is a gift from Issaquah's Sister City of Chefchaouen, Morocco.

The Issaquah Train Station. The last trains came through here in the 1970s. This is now a museum.

Happy Chanukah

Starting at Gilman Boulevard, the old rail line becomes a multi-use trail.

Sammamish State Park. Ownership of this park is being transfered to the City of Issaquah.

At the Sammamish City line, the travel turns to gravel. Over the next few years, the entire trail will be paved.

Squak and Cougar Mountains in the background.

Sign explaining upcoming trail construction.

There are a lot of big houses with great views along the trail. Big mortgages and property taxes, too!






This is one of the older houses along the trail.


There's active construction and paving happening on the northern section of the trail.

The artist who lives here sells these various bits of fence art.

Here is where I switch over to riding on the Sammamish Parkway.

Detailed map of the construction area.

Construction on this segment should be completed in the spring of 2015.

Where there are sidewalks along the parkway, I make use of them.

When the sidewalks run out, I ride on the shoulder.

At the Redmond town line, I rejoin the trail.

There's a little tunnel that passes under the Parkway.

The trail in Redmond has nice, smooth pavement.

I stop at Peet's for fuel.

This is the Sammamish River crossing at Marymoor Park.

Rolling back towards Bellevue.

Here's where I turn south to go back to Issaquah.

I'm neither a walker nor a biker, but I mostly stay toward the right.

The PDW Lars Rover is a nice, bright light. Lots of debris on the shoulder left over from last week's windstorm.

One of the many nice entrances to the trail network we have here.

Details of the Lake to Lake Trail System.

Heading toward Issaquah.

This is an example of a climb that I can kick up.

This is the start of the prettiest way to climb up to the I-90 corridor.

It's not far to get to the I-90 trail, but there is a good bit of climbing.

First, there's this little bridge over a creek.

There's a series of switchbacks here.

You can tell that we get a lot of rain here, it's always mossy.

These switchbacks are too steep to scoot.

The spiral ramp leads to the bridge over I-90.

A better view of the bridge.

Going up.

The bridge over I-90.

It's a downhill run pretty much all the way into town from here.

I have to stop for one more picture at Montreaux.

Back in the Issaquah Valley, crossing the creek.
I was home by lunch time. This 27.45 mile trip was my longest Swifty trip to date. I'll be posting a detailed comparison of Swifty to my other scooters (a NYCEWheels Kickped and a Razor A5) in the future, but here are some of my impressions from the first week. Swifty is a larger, more expensive scooter but the extra money buys a much smoother ride. I feel like I go further with less effort on Swifty but the average speed on all the scooters are quite similar. As I've often said, scooters fall into the middle ground right between walking and biking. My average walking speed is about 3 mph, my cruising speed on a bike is about 12 mph, and I scooter at 6 to 7 mph. The rougher ride on the smaller wheeled scooters make them seem faster and "quicker" but Swifty is actually slightly faster in terms of average speed over the long haul. With the bigger wheels I can roll more places that I'd have to walk on with the smaller wheeled scooters. Swifty is more complicated to fold and heavier to carry than the smaller scooters, but he's quickly become my favorite scooter to ride.

More details to come in future reports.

2 comments:

trinh said...

kent theirs scooters with even bigger wheels are u going to get those next??? such as kickbike and some others who's names i can't remember write now.

chatty cathy said...

happy new year Kent!!! here's hoping for lots of your great blog posts in 2015!! Have a great year riding and scootering!!!!