Easton to Cle Elum

May 9 - 15 miles. 1.5 hours of seat time.

I spent a few minutes and a couple of beers contemplating the challenges that had occurred. Clearly, I needed to resolve the tire situation. I searched around and determined that while Cle Eum is the larger town, Roslyn has the better bike shop. Also, Roslyn had a well rated breakfast place, and so a plan was made. Go to Roslyn in the morning, have a leisurely breakfast, wander across the road to the bike shop. Resolve the tire/inner tube situation, and then get a few more miles in before returning to the home base.

We drove into Roslyn at 7:45 AM and took Poodle for a walk around the town. Honey's Kitchen, the breakfast place was slow to open, but once we established that we were in no hurry and were happy to sip coffee while waiting for the kitchen to get up to speed, the vibe was wonderful. In a time when many small restaurants are getting the same base line ingredients from Aramark or Sysco, and you feel certain the biscuits and gravy you might be eating are the same biscuits and gravy you might be having at Denny's/Cracker Barrel, IHOP.....it is so VERY refreshing to find places that are still doing home cooked food from the heart. From the bread pudding, to the biscuits, to the sausage gravy, you know you are getting something someone cares about. If you're in the area, check them out please. You will not be disappointed.

After breakfast, even though it was incredibly close by, we moved the van to the bike shop to wait for it to open. Roslyn has an active and vibrant mountain biking community. From 9:30-10:30 AM we saw qt least 30 people getting together in bigger and smaller groups to go for rides around the area. After a quick consult with the mechanic, I bought some tubes and a 35mm Kenda tire that would hopefully solve my flat woes.

I think this is the last bridge over the Yakima before hitting Cle Elum.

I spent a little time on the picnic tables putting the new tire and tube on my rear wheel and then we returned to Easton. I rode a very short day to Cle Elum. I could have done a lot more distance on the day, in fact I considered taking a couple more hours to ride to Ellensburg, but we needed to return to home base because Supper Club was going to feed us....and I was on call Sunday. So a short day, but I could tell the new rear tire was a significant improvement.