John, in his always-excellent Cycling Spokane blog, recently wrote about his
favorite hill .
That got me to thinking about my favorite hill. I rode up it, as usual, coming home from work yesterday. When the snow gets too deep, I will have to switch to going straight up Monroe.
When spring rolls around, I am always happy to be back on my usual route.
The usual route is to go up the hill on Wall St. between Deaconess and LC. When it dead ends, hang a right on the brick street which takes you up onto the parking lot. The trees smell very good on this brick-lined street - like pepper trees. Once you're in the parking lot, keep heading south and up. When you get to the street, turn right and head down the hill toward the stop sign. This is where all the Lincoln Streets and Lincoln Places and Monroe Streets funkify.
Take an immediate left at the stop sign - up Lincoln (trust me, it's Lincoln). It is one steep mofo. In the summer, the shade is fantastic though. Soon you peak out and, again, head down the hill. Lincoln splits up into 9th and Lincoln. Go left (Lincoln) - it's downhill and then back uphill, where you will see the stairs in front of you at Cliff Drive. Go right, at the stop sign, downhill and then, almost immediately, hairpin left up the hill. Turn right at the top of the hill and, guess what, you are back on Lincoln. Lincoln ends at Wall. That's right. You won't see Lincoln again for a while. Stay on Wall until it goes downhill and then hits 14th Ave. If you want, you can take a right on 14th and say hello again to Lincoln, where it seems to have jumped a couple of blocks to the west and is perpendicular to its former self. In fact, you really should. Me, I'll take a little jog to the west, and continue down and then up Wall.
Either way, you have to head up the hill some more.
I like this route because of the immediate and continual losses of hard-won gains in elevation. It is very cleansing - penitential if you will - after a night at work seeing some (and hopefully alleviating some) very strange, and often sad, problems. No matter how tired or cranky I am after work, this hill wakes me up and makes me happy.
As a bonus, I can always deviate a little and pay my respects to where all the street name weirdness comes to a
head.Here are some somewhat useless pictures of what I have been trying to say. The elevation is to 14th. I don't know if I believe the chart. I will have to GPS it someday.
has formed upon the head of one of our tikis:
Last week, Sarah and I were walking downtown and noticed that the stairs at Lincoln and Summit were "closed." Every winter the city does this. I would imagine it's a liability issue they think they are avoiding by hanging up the sign. As usual, we wondered how many people every winter, trip over the cable that is "closing" the stairs and actually take a tumble - thanks to the city trying to avoid liability. Sort of like when I witnessed a Spokane police officer on TV muse that the city should stop painting crosswalk lines because this opens the city up for liability, when someone uses a well-marked crosswalk, and they get hit by a car. His thinking was that the city guarantees safety in a designated crosswalk and when that safety is violated, the city is responsible.
A perfect day for running! The Turkey Trot is the funnest thing about Thanksgiving since Squanto convinced the Puritans that popping kernels of corn were actually demons which would possess their children if they did not worship satan. 
We were doing some remembering of a fire we had on the east side of town, years ago. It was mostly in the attic above a garage. I got up into the scuttle hole and was crawling around, putting it out. Someone above me was cutting a hole inches above my head to ventilate. It was really hot, but became much hotter as burning pieces of freshly chainsawed roof were falling on the back of my turnout coat. Ouch.
Ah, Spokane Valley, you truly are not in the control group. This was by the Lowes on Sprague. Or maybe Obama isn't a socialist in the a.m. That must be it. Don't forget to send in your Haiku (see post below).
I can't remember a nicer weekend. Lots of visits from family and friends. Watched the cyclocross races at Liberty Lake. Walked up to The Scoop for ice cream and coffee. Nice runs and rides. Homebrew after the ride. All the while, the fall foliage provided an unbelievable backdrop!
