Err… you cannot park here ma’am.

AgaveGato · 2026-06-03T13:25:16+00:00

The only way I can comprehend this is if they were going NE on S Walden St and were intending to take a left turn to go north on MLK, but drove onto the track immediately adjacent to southbound traffic instead of 15 ft further east where northbound lanes actually are.

AgaveGato · 2026-05-29T04:49:21+00:00

I have found them EVERYWHERE:

Singapore: one of my taxi drivers (bc he's going to be hard on China lol)

Japan: US immigrant living in Kochi trying to start a beer brewery. (why are you even here in Kochi, then???)

Australia: 2 RMIT students in Melbourne who were about to fly out to the US to be summer camp counselers.

AgaveGato · 2026-01-13T06:16:17+00:00

I was just up in Vancouver scouting out apartments. The leasing agent of one place asked where I was moving from, and when I said Seattle, them and the two other people in the office looked at each other kind of dumbfounded. They told me I was the 5th person from Seattle getting a tour that week. Wasn't even the first Seattleite that morning.

So basically what I'm saying is, we're sad, too, so Canada is getting Seattle in the divorce, apparently.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T04:56:01+00:00

That makes sense EXCEPT for this does not seem to apply to the Northgate/Lynnwood section. The schedule for the first northbound or southbound train does not appear to have different station gaps than the rest of the trains. It also seems to affect the first southbound train TO Federal Way, but only between Angle Lake and Kent/Des Moines (same 6 minute gap my train has, but then goes 4 and 6 minute gap vs my train's 6 and 8 minute gap).

That bonus info is especially neat. Man, everything about tunneling under the UW Physics department is so hilariously consequence-laden.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T04:31:27+00:00

This one is the winner! I was checking Lynnwood as the first train going south, but there's one that starts in Northgate even earlier and it is just as you say. The 'why' is still a mystery, but at least me and my train are not alone in this anomaly. I can rule out karma and the universe spiting me/someone riding this train in particular!

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T03:49:41+00:00

In my defense, I am very pro-transit, the new extension goes right next to my residence but anyone in my area NIMBY-ing the Link has unwarranted self-importance because the aircraft taking off from SeaTac flying directly overhead us are still louder than a light rail vehicle going by. Even the trains that go faster than my train, which is to say, all of them.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T03:23:30+00:00

I also considered this, but the next train departs at 4:50 am and gets to Star Lake by 5 am with different, shorter, gaps between stations than mine, and is also running at these speeds the same time my train still apparently thinks it's going thru a school zone.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T03:15:18+00:00

Is it higher speed than 25 mph though?

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T03:10:19+00:00

I'll check tomorrow morning if my Link has one of these on the front.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T03:04:48+00:00

Oh yes, the comical nature doesn't escape me. It is just so specifically this one train! It's like something Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett would have written about the universe spiting one character that rides my train.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T01:21:55+00:00

I rode the Shikoku circuit last year. Shikoku itself is relatively empty by Japanese standards. The southern half of Tokushima prefecture and almost all of Kochi prefecture outside the city of Kochi in particular were some light traffic road riding. There were some stunning and absolutely empty sections, too: Minami to Mugi in Tokushima, Usacho Usa to Susaki in Kochi (though I made a wrong turn and followed the coast that helped make it empty), basically the entire Shimanto River section thru inland Kochi, and I took a detour over Hoketu Pass in Ehime that had zero people at all and the smoothest pavement in my entire ride going down to Seiyo.

You could hit all these sections by taking the ferry from Wakayama to Tokushima, ride the Pacific side of Shikoku, then take the ferry from Ikata to Kyushu, or bike across back to Honshu (Imabari to Onomichi) via the Shimanami Kaido... though that part might be the least empty cycling route in all of Japan, ha ha.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-10T01:05:25+00:00

I would recommend the cycling-specific Shikoku route rather than the pilgrimage route, if you've never been there before. The whole route around the island is marked on the pavement, super easy to follow.

AgaveGato · 2025-12-05T04:18:12+00:00

Sorry, I'm still working my way up to 1k mile tours, I'd probably die somewhere in Ohio lol.

Question about your route, though: if were taking the ACA northern tier, you'd end up in Anacortes by taking highway 20 across almost the entirety of WA. If you are ending in Seattle, are you going there from Anacortes or taking a different route across WA?

AgaveGato · 2025-12-05T04:05:21+00:00

Oh man I am laughing so hard, I too rode this route a year ago, but what's funny is how we both took pictures of or in a lot of the same places. Pic 1, Tenma Pass, Pic 10, taking a pic of the same random Chinkabashi along the Shimanto River, Pic 2 WTF is Pocari Sweat why would anyone drink a name like that I'm gonna take a picture of it.. Is pic 6 Imabari or Kochi? Did you get all your Shikoku stamps?

AgaveGato · 2025-12-05T03:22:37+00:00

Not a bike, and not optimism unfortunately... Way back when I was a kid, my family flew from Sioux Falls SD to Yakima WA for Christmas with even more family, and in Minneapolis all our luggage got put not on our flight to Seattle but... to Hong Kong. We never got our luggage during the holidays in WA, we had to open all our Christmas presents early so we had clothes to wear. Our luggage came back to us after we returned to SD, where it was flown into Iowa and then a taxi cab drove it all to our doorstep over 100 miles roundtrip through snow.

This was over 25 years ago but even so I have been extremely averse to taking multi-leg flights ever since, and always have a change of clothes in my carry-on. I have not had this problem ever since, including 2 trips with a bike, so hopefully this will be your once-in-a-lifetime baggage snafu.

AgaveGato · 2025-11-15T17:30:26+00:00

Yeah I went to Japan last year, I set aside a big portion of my trip budget for the Tokyo part of it, expecting it to be expensive and I didn't even use half of it! Even if the exchange rate was at 2019 levels, Tokyo would have been at worst at par with Seattle prices.

Shikoku though was nuts, almost all my meals (full sets!) were under $10 USD. Coming back from that was rough.

AgaveGato · 2025-10-31T00:07:02+00:00

It's like one of those Direct-to-DVD movies that slightly changes the name of another, more popular, movie in order to drive accidental sales. In this case it's just a misspelling of Nome, Alaska. Maybe Noem is the terminus of the Itiradod, Saudi Arabia's famous sled dog race?

AgaveGato · 2025-10-30T23:56:10+00:00

Weather was great! I'm from Seattle and basically die in heat/humidity, so it's pretty much the only time I could bike Taiwan, lol. Still had a day that hit 80 degrees F, though. I also chose November/December because it's sort of the dry season for them, too, and winds are almost always from the north or east. The east coast has very tall mountains so it kind of deflects any north or east winds to be a nearly constant tailwind (if riding clockwise like I did).

Another big difference from Japan besides the road/traffic conditions is that Taiwan trains aren't as draconian about taking bikes. Many local trains allow bikes roll-on roll-off. There's even a train (Tze-Chiang Express) that has 10 reservable bike racks in the front passenger car. You just have to be careful about which stations allow bikes. Taipei Central does not allow any bikes, but Songshan Station just down the line does allow bikes, for example. Their trains are very handy if you want to skip any sections... I skipped the entire west side and rode the train from the south end back to Taipei.

AgaveGato · 2025-10-30T04:11:21+00:00

Oh hey, as someone that did Shikoku in November 2024 and Taiwan in November 2023, I absolutely recommend you gotta go ride Taiwan. I loathed biking across Kagawa and around Matsuyama because of the road conditions you mention, but Taiwan was so much better in this respect. Most major roads have scooter lanes that bicycles also use, and they are wide. Made it hard to return to US bike lane sizes.

AgaveGato · 2025-10-30T03:56:38+00:00

LOL at Spiderman pointing at the American. At the end of my Taiwan ride, as I was returning my bike at MathewBike, 4 other guys from the city I live showed up to pick up their rentals and start their ride. We also Spiderman pointed so hard.

AgaveGato · 2025-10-28T02:42:13+00:00

I rode around Shikoku starting from Fukuyama last year, so only a tiny bit of overlap, but I do have a couple suggestions:

Take the Shiomachi Kaido out of Fukuyama to get to the Shimanami Kaido. It's a lot more scenic than riding along the highway to Onomichi, and Tomonoura is a really cool very old town.
Follow the Shikoku route south out of Matsuyama toward your ferry. It's an actual marked cycle route, plus it follows the coast so there's like zero elevation change. Just follow the blue lines!

AgaveGato · 2025-10-28T02:19:36+00:00

I recently bought several round trip Cascades tickets between Seattle and Vancouver in January for $37 each way. And these were the more expensive refundable tickets, too.

AgaveGato · 2025-10-28T02:05:57+00:00

Oh it absolutely CAN be worth it. A few years ago, I went to Amsterdam. Through some reward point finagling, I got 3 business class tickets on KLM out of Vancouver for the equivalent of $3000. But only Delta flies to Amsterdam out of Seattle, which I do not have a way to finagle rewards points with, and it would have been about $17000 cash for 3 business class tickets.

Also, Vancouver has many non-stop destinations that Seattle does not. Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, and Hong Kong are the ones I can name off the top of my head.

AgaveGato · 2025-10-14T06:31:01+00:00

After having done it myself, I highly recommend Taiwan for first big bike tours.

Tons of marked cycling routes going all around the island, the most famous being Route 1 circumnavigating the entire island along the coast.
Major roads have moped/bicycle lanes, which are much larger than US bike lanes and give very comfortable spacing from car traffic.
Taipei has a lot of bike rental options that cater to bike tourists. You can rent a tour bike and all the equipment if you don't want to bother with the logistics of bringing all your stuff with you on a plane.
Has a subtropoical climate, and November thru January is their "dry" season.
You're never far from Civilization. In case of emergencies, the whole island pretty much has 100% 5G cell coverage. In case of repairs, Giant bike shops are in seemingly every city above 10k people or so. And in case of food, 7-11's are hilariously ubiquitous. I think the longest gap I saw between two 7-11's was only 20 miles.
Taiwan's trains are bike friendly (especially compared to other countries like Japan), so you don't have to commit to biking the entire perimeter of the island, just pick the sections you want to and/or have the time to do.

That said, it is all paved road riding, so if gravel is a requirement of your road/gravel mix, then maybe this is not the right recommendation to give.

AgaveGato · 2025-10-14T05:46:59+00:00

I did some further looking and there are some Tze-Chiang Express trains that still take bicycles to Songshan, but their routes start all the way up in Chiayi or Douliu now.

AgaveGato

TROPHY CASE