Welcome new readers, and welcome back to those regulars who have been following us since we began this blog in 2007. For 12 years we wrote stories from our lengthy bike travels each summer, until the pandemic made a trip to Europe (or even to an adjacent county) no longer an option. At the end of 2020 we did write a long blog about how we stayed active during that difficult year with a mix of biking, walking and canoeing close to our Seattle home, but with nothing much more to write about in 2021 and 2022 the blog went dark.
In the summer of 2023, however, we went to a tandem rally, had some great rides, and got convinced to turn our tandem into an e-bike. We wrote a new blog post, and among other things said we'd write again to let you know how that worked out. But somehow or other, we never got around to writing.
Until now.
So, dear readers, here's how the active life has unfolded for us since our beloved tandem, Little Red, became Little Red 2.0. The short version is that it has greatly reinvigorated our biking and made it possible to ride further and in hillier terrain, thus keeping us more active. It's counter-intuitive, but adding a motor to our bike led us to get much more exercise, not less.
The sea lions are amusing, but also less than ideal neighbors. It often sounds like we're down the street from a dog pound. Did you know that sea lions stay up all night chatting, as it were? We now know this! Fortunately for us, though not for some of the marina residents ten wharfs north of us, the sea lions found a new home for their last two months in Seattle before they left for their trek to Oregon and California, their summer homes. Fingers crossed about next winter.
We have continued to enjoy canoeing both as cross-training for our biking and walking as well as for the wildlife and beauty it brings us to. And speaking of that wildlife, while paddling a canoe with friend Sam in the bow, he captured this wonderful video of a sea lion enjoying a mid-afternoon meal on the Duwamish River near downtown Seattle.
Boaters are supposed to stay a certain distance from seals, but the seals don't seem to know or to obey the rules. Indeed, one day one even followed us all about in the marina, as you can see in the next video.
While canoeing close to home is convenient, it's the trips that start an hour's drive or more from home that are really stunning. We've done quite a lot of paddling on the Snohomish, a major river north of us that is strongly influenced by tides, sometimes flowing upstream as much as 12 miles on an incoming tide. Jeff has done so much study of tides, currents and the like that he has teamed up with canoeing friend Sam, and the two of them will be teaching a class for our canoe club next month explaining all the fine points of working with tides, currents, wind and waves, both through a narrated PowerPoint and also with a nine mile tidewater paddle.
Here's a glimpse of one of our favorite tidal areas, a side
channel of the Snohomish River called Steamboat Slough. Over a century
ago vast rafts of cut timber were floated down the river and tied up to
pilings like the ones we're paddling by, waiting for their turn to visit the
sawmill.
With a drive of 90-120 minutes, we can reach truly wild areas. Here are two shots from the south end of Lake Whatcom, and a third one from Lake Spada with friends John and Jacquie. Spada is a reservoir for drinking water, so nothing is allowed into the water but paddles and the bottoms of canoes and kayaks. Even dangling your toes in the water is a no-no. The trade-off is clean drinking water for the City of Everett and an untouched landscape for us that has not changed since time primordial.
We've also kept up with walking, and try to do 1-3 walks every week of up to 6 miles in length. We can walk 20 minutes from home to the Ballard Locks, where every later summer and fall one can see steelhead and salmon headed upstream to spawn by way of the Fish Ladder. Here's granddaughter Draelen admiring the salmon waiting their turn to battle against the current where it enters the waiting area through a small window-like opening out of sight to her right.
Most of our walks are in places we've previously written about and shown photos of, so no reason to repeat. But here are two points of interest that are new to Seattle that were the focus of different walks. A Danish artist named Thomas Dambo has created sculptures of trolls made entirely out of recycled wood, branches and stones, and placed them around the world. Greater Seattle is now host to five of them, one of the densest concentrations outside Denmark. Below, behold Bruun Idun, who is playing her flute for nearby Orca Whales that sometimes float near her lookout in West Seattle, and Jakob Two Trees being visited by our friends Bob & Nancy at Jakob's home in Issaquah, in the foothills of the Cascades. His necklace and bracelet were crafted by members of the Snoqualmie Tribe, on whose ancestral land he stands.
As our speed edges over 21, the motor ignores whatever power setting we're on
and starts showing a negative number on the main screen and the vertical arm
of the L on the controller screen bends to the right, showing us we're now
into regenerative braking. Single digits momentarily, then double
digits, then about 300 watts on most hills when we hit 23 mph. That's a
lot of braking power, and our speed often stabilizes at this point. On
steeper descents our speed might continue to go up, but the regenerative
braking goes up faster, and we max out at 24 or 25. And all this happens
without Jeff using the brakes at all. Of course our front and rear
brakes are still quite serviceable, with the result that we have yet to hit a
speed that has frightened us. Quite a change from when we were
young-and-foolish 50-somethings and maxed out at 52 mph twice on
Little Red's predecessors, and at 40-plus so many times we lost track.
We picked up Little Red the second week of July, and in the next 5 months did 1,300 miles of riding. For a month it was mostly shorter rides not too far from home to get used to the new feel, but with the approach of our 25th Wedding Anniversary we felt it was time to Go Big. We loaded the bike onto the roof of our car and drove north. We warmed up with a ride on the Skagit River Flats, where we revisited a nondescript house with a yard full of creatures that were anything but nondescript. Each one is made from driftwood brought home by Joe Treat, a guy who had never taken an art or sculpture class nor woodworking lessons before he started this hobby. But what vision! As he looks at a batch of wood, he gets inspired -- what do I see this becoming? -- and here are some of the results.
With a drive of 90-120 minutes, we can reach truly wild areas. Here are two shots from the south end of Lake Whatcom, and a third one from Lake Spada with friends John and Jacquie. Spada is a reservoir for drinking water, so nothing is allowed into the water but paddles and the bottoms of canoes and kayaks. Even dangling your toes in the water is a no-no. The trade-off is clean drinking water for the City of Everett and an untouched landscape for us that has not changed since time primordial.
We've also kept up with walking, and try to do 1-3 walks every week of up to 6 miles in length. We can walk 20 minutes from home to the Ballard Locks, where every later summer and fall one can see steelhead and salmon headed upstream to spawn by way of the Fish Ladder. Here's granddaughter Draelen admiring the salmon waiting their turn to battle against the current where it enters the waiting area through a small window-like opening out of sight to her right.
Most of our walks are in places we've previously written about and shown photos of, so no reason to repeat. But here are two points of interest that are new to Seattle that were the focus of different walks. A Danish artist named Thomas Dambo has created sculptures of trolls made entirely out of recycled wood, branches and stones, and placed them around the world. Greater Seattle is now host to five of them, one of the densest concentrations outside Denmark. Below, behold Bruun Idun, who is playing her flute for nearby Orca Whales that sometimes float near her lookout in West Seattle, and Jakob Two Trees being visited by our friends Bob & Nancy at Jakob's home in Issaquah, in the foothills of the Cascades. His necklace and bracelet were crafted by members of the Snoqualmie Tribe, on whose ancestral land he stands.
OK, time to show you our reinvigorated Little Red 2.0. First, the "old" Little Red:
And now the new:
The two most obvious changes are the addition of the battery and the new front
wheel containing the motor. Other additions are a metal arm on the right
side of the wheel that is anchored to the right fork for the motor to push
against, plus a number of cables that connect the battery, the wheel, the
controller screen and two controller switches. The battery itself weighs
almost 7 lbs and the motor adds about 9 lbs to the weight of the front wheel,
so this is not a lightweight bike. Thanks to the robust engineering of
our Rodriguez, however, we have no concerns about how it will hold up, only
how well we will.
There are all sorts of ebike systems, and we think we have one of the very
best. Our battery has a capacity of 475 Watt-hours, enough to power us on easy
terrain for about twice as far as we're likely to ride in a day, and more
than enough for the hilliest rides we've done in these first two years.
Since it has regenerative braking, on a hilly ride where we might regenerate
10-12% on the downhills we can theoretically have up to 50 Watt-hours more. In
short, the only way we'll ever run out of power is if we take off without
having remembered to recharge the battery.
Many, perhaps most, ebikes have power settings where each level adds a
specific amount of power. Our controller tells us that we put out
approximately 125 watts of human power from start to finish of almost every
ride, not counting the motor assist. If speed setting 1 adds 75 watts
from the motor, then one has 200 watts of combined energy in this
system. If the cyclists pedal harder to climb a hill with 200 watts of
human power, the combined output is 275 watts.
However, our system has a torque sensor, the device that tells us how hard
we're pushing, and our speed settings work differently. When we push at
125, the motor adds about 60% more, adding 75 watts for a total of 200.
So far, same as the first system. But if we push our human output to 200
watts, the motor adds 60% more and we now have a combined 320 watts.
Much better! AND we have the pleasant (albeit fictional) sensation that
our muscles are much stronger than they truly are.
Like most ebikes, one has to pedal for the motor to provide power. This
is a good safety feature, so that the bike doesn't keep us moving when danger
suddenly arises ahead of us. But there is an override called the
throttle, which adds power whether we're pedaling or not. We rarely use
it because it provides a LOT of power, but sometimes as we go up a steep hill
we see our speed dropping too low but Jeff doesn't want to take his hands off
the handlebars to shift gears or speed settings. The throttle will kick
in and provide the highest level of power with the slightest movement of
Jeff's left index finger to the throttle switch, and stop doing so the moment
he releases it.
The final great feature, at least for us, is the fact that the regenerative
braking starts to kick in at about 21 mph. There was a time in our
tandeming lives when we rarely came home without the maximum speed reading on
our bike computer telling us that we had broken 30 mph along the way.
After having now broken bones from a crash at less than 20 mph, we're much
more speed-averse, and this feature is helpful.
So, how has our electrified Little Red been? Terrific! Rides that were pleasant exercise a decade ago had become cardiac stress tests the moment we hit hills, sometimes not even very big ones. No more! We still shift gears down a bit, but Jeff at the controls up front will also up the power 1, 2 or 3 notches depending on how steep and long a hill is, and up we go. We are pedaling harder on these hills -- we never let the motor do all the work -- but the climbs are now ones we can handle. Louise keeps saying that she rarely knows when Jeff has upped the power, and loves that fictional feeling of stronger legs our lithium-ion battery has given us.
Getting back out from Rosario, however, was anything but calm and relaxing for us as we prepared to depart. To reach the resort two days earlier we had descended one mile down a 9% grade. That climb now looked like the Great Wall of China to us. We lingered around the resort entrance, hoping to see a pickup truck come by with the hope we and Little Red could hitch a ride uphill, but none appeared. The idea of pushing our heavier-than-ever bike uphill for a mile did not appeal. What to do? Well, let's see if we can possibly ride it in one of the highest power settings. Now, keep in mind, in the prime of life 2-3 decades earlier, we had found that an 8% grade was our absolute limit, and even that was something we could only do for a fraction of a mile.
OK, here goes. We started on flat ground in 8th gear (out of 14), our usual starting point. In a few dozen yards as we approached the monster hill we shifted down a few gears and up a few notches on the power setting. Up we went at 7 or 8 miles per hour, briefly. Very briefly. OK, shift down again, power up again, rinse, repeat. By the time we were at the half-mile point we were in our lowest gear and highest power setting, but we were still upright on the bike and making our way up the hill at 3 mph. Math quiz: if your speed is 3 mph, how long does it take to go 1 mile. Answer -- seemingly forever. But shortly before the legs gave out the gradient started leveling out to a mere 5% and we knew we had it "in the bag" as they say. That first mile was a humdinger, but the day was not over. Orcas Island's beautiful and bucolic roads are nonetheless an asphalt roller coaster. By the end of the day we had ridden 34 miles with 2,400 feet of climbing, not bad for a couple in their late 70s who were walking their bike up small hills a few months earlier. As we said earlier in this blog, having the motor gave us more exercise, not less, odd as that may seem.
One thing we discovered in 2024, however, was that we could once again do rides with our tandem club. For a year of two before the ebike conversion we could rarely ride at a consistent pace much above 13 mph anymore, and club rides usually have cruised at 15-17 mph. But with Little Red on the lowest power setting we could now easily keep up with the low end of that range, and still have 5 more power settings above that for higher speed or extra help getting up hills. Riding in a line of half a dozen tandems is an exciting experience, one we had missed for a while. Twenty years ago, when our typical pace was 18 mph, we were usually at or near the head of these pacelines, but now we're happy just to blend in with the crowd and not get dropped. And where have we ridden with the club? Well, the tulip fields at the Skagit Flats, of course!
The Redtandem blog was created in 2007 to capture the excitement of a series of long bike trips, starting with a 5-week-long ride from Milwaukee Wisconsin to Ithaca New York. At this point we don't see any trips that long in the part of the future we think we can dimly see ahead of us, but this summer we did do two 5-day-long trips that are a suitable coda to today's blog post.
corner of Washington just beyond the Skagit Flats we have already mentioned. The first day of riding was in fact on the Skagit Flats, so just off the map to the right of Fidalgo Island. The tulips were long gone, but the flat floodplain of the Skagit River is fertile land, easy flat riding but with snow-covered Mt. Baker only 40 miles away. Though we have often ridden here, we were somehow able to find 5 miles of roads we had previously bypassed, and were rewarded with an area where the farmers thoughtfully labeled their fields for us ignorant city-dwellers. Who would've guessed that a field thick with green leaves was full of white, starchy potatoes. Hiding underground, of course.
One of the things we like about Anacortes is its short but interesting railtrail, the Tommy Thompson Trail. For almost a mile it crosses Fidalgo Bay on a trestle, and on this occasion as on one earlier one we had a pleasure of seeing harbor seals cavorting nearby. And when we say "nearby," we really do mean it!
After crossing the bay we biked up to March Point and pointed the camera due north. The mountains you see as a thin smudge on the horizon on the left side of the photo below are the ones that tower above Vancouver BC. From here they're about 60 miles distant. We're forever amazed at the clarity of the air out here. I can remember a visit to the Empire State Building as a kid, and New Jersey was hard to see just a few miles to the west.
After our second ferry of the day we were indeed in Friday Harbor, and on our way to the Kirk House B&B and its elegant Veranda Room.
San Juan Island was almost the scene of bloodshed during the late 1850s when the border between the US and Canada was still undetermined. The "Pig War" was averted when a British pig was shot by an American farmer for eating potatoes out of his field. Tension and hard language followed, then calm took over and it was agreed that the British would maintain English Camp near Roche Harbor, with American Camp at the opposite end of the island, 7 miles away.
We had never been to English Camp, so off we rode to see it. It was always a rather civilized "camp," we learned, thanks to its nearness to Roche Harbor and to regular visits from Victoria BC, where the locals gathered and shipped off goodies to ensure that the British soldiers remained "happy campers," so to speak. American Camp, by contrast, was a typical army camp with maximum order and minimum amenities. When the border dispute was finally settled 12 years later, however, it was the Americans who came out happiest, with San Juan Island and many of its neighbors on the Yankee side of the new border.
English Camp today is a very quiet place, so quiet it's hard to imagine it once was home to a batch of soldiers. Here's a look about. The first is a barracks building, and the last photo is a view through one of the windows at the inside of what was once the army field hospital. It may be one of the few such clinics that never had to treat gunshot wounds, unless someone was careless while out deer hunting during their stay there.
The bike ride back to town was quite pleasant but hilly. Indeed, our 24-mile route took us up and down over 1,600 feet of elevation that day, the second-hilliest ride after that humdinger on Orcas Island two years earlier. We had brought a change of clothes with us to the B&B for our dinner out, and cleaned up well for our celebration of Louise's 80th at a nice Italian seafood restaurant.
As we waited in the morning for the ferry back to Anacortes we struck up a conversation with three cyclists who were doing a camping trip in the San Juans. Bella had a nice SLR camera and decided we were a suitable subject for her photography. Here are the results, including a candid shot during the ferry ride.
Back in Anacortes, it was time to load the bike up once more. How do we get that long, heavy bike on our car? First, we remove heavy stuff like the battery and lock, then the front wheel with its heavy motor. With the front wheel off and the rear wheel on the ground we can now pivot the front fork up to a quick release clamp at the back of that tray. Then with some of the bike's weight now on that clamp, we're able to lift up and pivot the rear part of the bike until the rear wheel is in the tray, where a velcro strap keeps it from bouncing out. To keep the bike from swaying left to right as we drive, Jeff and Louise's brother created a sway bar that clamps onto the bike and the rooftop rack (Jeff is cinching it down in this photo), and the bike is ready to brave the highway with no fear of it taking flight.
Not a lot of teenagers get excited about spending a week with grandma and grandpa, but when you get one, he's a real "keeper." And we most certainly have one in Cedro, who we were able to "book" for an 8-night, 9-day stay at the end of July. The highlight of his time with us was the second 5-day bike trip of the summer. We started with a ferry ride across Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula -- those are the Olympics ahead of us as we head west. On the boat, Grandma Louise is pointing out where we'll be biking, some on the south side of the wide Strait of Juan de Fuca that divides the U.S. and Canada, some in the area around Victoria BC.
After the ride we returned to the car, picked up some bike panniers, and headed into Port Angeles for the ferry to Canada. Our tandem and Cedro's borrowed ebike (courtesy of some great neighbors on our condo floor) are lashed down on the bow deck, but the crossing was quite calm and in 90 minutes we were in downtown Victoria, having passed a pair of cruise ships just outside the harbor and a houseboat community just inside. Five minutes before berthing the elegant Empress Hotel came into view, enjoying pride of place in this lovely harbor.
former Esquimalt and Nanaimo train line. And follow it, it does. Almost every other rail trail we've been on has been built on top of the former train line, but for some reason this one is built next to it, even though the train tracks do not connect to any active train line, and frankly could not function any more as an active line. So strange! The trail also had a clever new device we had not seen before, a "bicycle detector." At 4 or 5 intersections where we encountered it, it correctly activated and sent a signal to the traffic lights for the car traffic to stop and let us cross. So cool!
When we reached the shoreline, we had a good view of a lonely lighthouse off to the left. Just before the end of the ride we entered Beacon Hill Park with its stunning flower gardens. A nice end to our second tour around Victoria.
To return to the ferry we had to ride a mile through downtown Victoria, but it was a breeze as the first half-mile was down Government Street, which has been turned into a pedestrian and cycling mall, followed by a half-mile of a protected bike lane alongside otherwise traffic-heavy streets. Along the way we stopped to photograph the Empress Hotel and the Legislative Assembly, British Columbia's parliament, plus the Coho, our ferry boat parked just a city block from the Assembly.
Our crossing was again quite smooth, but this time enlivened by a massive fog bank stretching along the American side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca as far as we could see, most likely all the way to the open Pacific Ocean sixty miles to the west. At one point we approached a second fog bank and the bow deck was cleared of passengers. The reason why became apparent as soon as they were all indoors -- the fog horn started blasting away at a volume that would have been most unpleasant to hear from close by.
Once landed we biked 2 miles to where we had parked the car, loaded up the bikes and drove to the start of the Spruce Railroad Trail. It's so-called because it was built in a hurry during WW I as a way of bringing spruce to market to make biplanes. As fate would have it, the war ended a month before the railroad was ready. It did operate from 1918 to 1954, however, and it did bring a lot of timber out of the woods for things other than biplanes. In more recent years the land became part of Olympic National Park and the National Park paved the trail and repaired the two tunnels. We rode ten miles out, mostly flat for 3 miles along the shore, then steadily uphill for the next 7. The flip side, of course, was a most enjoyable coast downhill, mostly at 18 mph on the not-quite-2% gradient.
And after 87,000 miles of riding tandems together since that fateful day, as you have seen, we still have the excitement.
Happy Trails to one and all of our readers!
