Tidying Up While Making Things Messier
Hood Canal Bridge and Olympic Mountains - Near Port Ludlow, WA
We took some time off, away from the bike and just existed with no specific goals for a few days. We took advantage of the pending spring and spent a lot of time hanging out in the yard, going on daily walks, and playing at the beach.
This is great for a short time, but eventually, I always get the need to feel like I’m accomplishing something, so I started searching out goals that could be attained with the dogs and I settled on a really short one, we would connect the Olympic Discovery Trail to our house. It wasn’t a very lofty goal as a portion of the trail runs less than 10 miles from our home, but it would give us something to do and it felt nice to be out on the bike again.
Having connected the house to the trail, I then decided that we might as well ride another 3 miles to the Hood Canal Bridge as it would bring us to the end of the county. The Hood Canal Bridge is very unique in that it’s a floating bridge that is able to open to allow boats to pass through but it’s not a traditional drawbridge. Instead, a system of hydraulics is used to retract the bridge span, causing it to open. The whole process can take around 45 minutes.
Anyhow, when we got to the bridge, it was an absolutely perfect day and I didn’t feel like only riding 6 miles roundtrip in such gorgeous weather, so we decided to go out on the bridge as technically, the county ends near the middle anyhow. I didn’t realize it then, but the Hood Canal was our Rubicon; once we’d crossed it, there was no turning back…
Nearly 2 miles in length, the Hood Canal Bridge is the only road between Kitsap County and Jefferson County and is the main thoroughfare for the masses from Seattle to get to the Olympic Peninsula. Approximately 18,000 people cross the bridge every day. The west end of the bridge is home to one of the most dangerous intersections in the state. It took several minutes to find a break in the traffic, but when we did, we made a mad dash to cross the road and get onto the bridge to finish the county.
As we approached the Kitsap County sign, a realization hit me, we couldn’t just stop here in the middle of the bridge; the traffic was too busy to allow us to cross back over and return home, so we’d instead have to go all the way to the end of the bridge and turn around at the stop light. We would have to enter Kitsap County. I unwittingly pedaled on towards the traffic light; our fate had been sealed, our Rubicon had been crossed.
