Shakedown Cruise

We decided we needed to take a Shakedown Cruise to make sure all our equipment was working as planned. So, after looking at some old local guidebooks, we settled on a loop trip through Snohomish, since neither of us had ever biked past Bothell or Lynnwood in that direction. This would give us a chance to explore the entire Interurban trail all the way to Everett, which seems like an obvious thing to do, since we practically live on the trail.

Jennifer adds: We stayed overnight with someone we found on the Warm Showers web site, which is a place where bicycle tourists can find accomodation with other bicycle tourists. We enjoyed our overnight stay with Bob, who also rides recumbent bicycles.

Not to be outdone by Jennifer in the “unusual bike” department, I’ll be riding an HP Velotechnik Scorpion Fx trike on the trip, which I got from Dale down at Angle Lake Cyclery in Seatac. Although the trike can be folded, it does not collapse down small enough to fit into a suitcase. I’ll have to settle for a cardboard box..more about that in a future posting.

One thing we were testing on this trip was my ability to capture a usable GPS trace on my Android phone, and post it to this blog. It works fine, if the map below is any indication.

Jennifer says: We did encounter some technical difficulties with the GPS trace though – Zach had recorded one trace for Saturday and another for Sunday. When we tried to import them, we ended up with a bunch of points mixed together – not good! And then later on we had some problems importing our revised GPS tracks at all… But since I’m the person who wrote the Routes plugin (the WordPress plugin that manages and displays the routes on the maps), I was able to fix the problems We also found out that Zach’s GPS tracker came up with some very questionable elevations (like negative elevations, and we definitely were not below sea level!). [EDIT (JH Aug 21): I updated the Routes plugin so it could recalculate elevations with one click of the button, so that is not a problem any more.] Also, just as a note: Zach’s phone captured a LOT of GPS points. We just didn’t import them all. The GPSBabel program came in handy for reducing the number of points to something more manageable for this site.

Here are some more photos from Jennifer:

Jennifer adds: We’ve put markers on the map for some of the photos, and other points of interest along the route… Click the markers for more information!