| Hurricane Ridge 08/04/07 What to do today. There is a VTXOA ride to Mt St Helen's. Roland is riding to Winthrop. Hub City is having there annual One Night Stand Rally. Well I would go to the One Night Stand. The Hub City abate group is great and the rally should be a blast. But I am on call. So I have to stay in the proper portion of the State just in case something comes in. We usually don't get anything we have to go out on. But Murphy says. Wait the Cycle Barn is having a club ride to Hurricane Ridge. That is perfect plus I have never been there before. |
| So lets do that. It is only around 200 miles or so from Kingston. So it is a relatively short ride. If anything comes up I am close enough. There are around 18 or so bikes leaving The Cycle Barn. These club rides have been getting popular. We take the Olympic View Drive road to Edmonds to catch the Ferry. It is a short ferry crossing to the other side of the sound. After crossing the Hood Canal Bridge we take al little swing north on Paradise road for a scenic and nice road bypass of Hwy 104. We have a little excitement on a forgotten decreasing radius turn. I am tooling along. All of a sudden I am rapidly catching the bike ahead and there is something wrong with my line. I do a little aggressive corner braking. This gets the attention of the guy behind me. He later thanked me for reminding him of the decreasing radius turn he was about to be hot for also. |
The rest of the ride to Port Angeles was pretty much non eventful. Except for our little group traffic stop. I was riding second to last bike as we approach PA. I noticed that the Yellow Triumph that was behind me had fallen back out of site. There was a large dark dodge in my mirror. I thought nothing of it except at times he seemed to be pretty close. As we hit the outskirts of PA I heard a siren? Took a minute to find it. As I look in the rear view mirror I see the big dark dodge is lit up like a Christmas tree and making siren noise. DUH We are in the big sweeping turn just east of PA. See the W on the map just East of PA. I pull over wondering if he just wants by and that is why he is tailgating me? I pull over and phew he drives by. But it is soon apparent that he is pulling over the whole group. He pulls up to the leader who is at a stop light and motions for him to pull over as a group. Everyone starts to pull over except one other and myself. I have a couple of seriously BS (Baloney) speeding tickets that are about to drop off my record. I don't need a new one. We both hesitate for a moment but turn down the road just before the pull over. Circle back a 1/4 of a mile or so and park just off the road behind a bush. The officer finally leaves and we rejoin the group. I guess we were doing 60 in a 45. But we were a large group riding in a very good formation. He said while we were a little fast we looked like an experenced group. The officer gave everyone a little education and a warning. Then we sped up the mountain. I was a Hurricane Ridge virgin. Not quite sure why but this was my first time. This is a very enjoyable assent to the top of a mountain. It is around 18 miles from the entry to the park. There is a fee station a few miles in so you will pay. It was $5.00. The road surface is ok to good and there are no lack of twisties. For me most twisties are not radical just nice. Several areas of 3 or 4 switchbacks in a row. I love those. Total millage on this was a little over 200. A nice ride. |
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