It’s nice to have friends with benefits. For example, empty double wide stocked with whiskey and LPs. Those are friends to not only cherish but cultivate.

Taking Friday off, Dave, Vic and I journeyed through the north suburbs using the North Interurban. Tricky in places, it seemed underutilized, like its southern counterpart, compared to the bike highway that is the Burke-Gilman. After a much needed bite in Everett, we wound down to Mukilteo and the well-timed meeting of the ferry to Whidbey Island.

In Langley, we filled our panniers with beer and steak, and scratched off that last four miles to the Doublewide in anticipation of serious R&R. This involved drinking our hosts’ whiskey, eating cheese, and playing video games in the wood paneled living room. It was like being in the game-room basement of the coolest kid in school in 1975, except the parents weren’t nagging us and the view was better.

Yesterday, we made the return with slight hangovers and filled with spirit by heading north on Whidbey to connect with the Port Townsend Ferry, which was filled with chatty bikers and bicycle admirers. After a great 1 pm breakfast at Salal, we had a pleasant roll through Paradise Valley and a much improved crossing on the Hood Canal Bridge to our afternoon refreshment stop in a little bar at Big Valley Road. The rest of the ride was pain, suffering and heat, but we’re pretty tough and rolled on to the Bainbridge ferry with time and attitude to kill. It’s another 2 miles uphill to our house from the ferry terminal, but we handled that with aplomb and picked up yet more steak and wine for a quick dinner of self-congratulations, small lies, and further adventure planning.

50 miles out, 75 miles back, and an interlude of Jedi Knight training and learning more about the history of English Magic while surrounded by your pals, eating cheese and drinking someone else’s whiskey! That, my friends, is a fine, fine bike tour.