One benefit of traveling on business is that sometimes I get to visit friends. In that regard, this week’s trip to Seattle was the best ever. After today’s meeting, my friend Dennis came to get me at the hotel, and we headed out east to Carnation where we met Mike for a couple of hours of mountain biking followed by an evening of burgers and beer at a pub in Sammamish. The weather in the Seattle area has been uncharacteristically mild, which made for near perfect trail conditions. I haven’t been mountain biking much recently so my bike handling skills are a bit rusty, but all that road conditioning has left me in reasonably good shape and I was able to keep up with the guys on the trail. Days like today remind me of why I got into mountain biking in the first place. I’d be hard pressed to find better friends than Dennis and Mike. It’s too bad they had to move up to Seattle.
The picture, by the way, is just a bit of goofiness I concocted at the top. You’re looking at a 300 foot vertical drop. I’m standing on a ledge that’s just a few feet below the lip. No, I didn’t climb that, and I didn’t wreck the bike right there.