cycle 600 miles in July

Our tour took us to the top!

Did the shake-out ride with the saddle bags loaded on the tandem.

Ground it up Multi-Deity Hill on the way home, no problem.

I really need to work on powering up the steep hills to get me into shape for the High Pass Challenge. I’m thinking about doing Zoo Hill Road after work a couple of times a week.

Nice on the way in, but muggy on the way back. And a migraine both ways. Maybe I’m driving tomorrow…

Some need for the car at work, so I’ve done some riding of the bike to work but not back, and riding back but not to.

Really, the preparations for STP began on Thursday, when we did our “first cut” on the packing for the weekend. Since my office building closed down a couple of hours early on Friday, I came home early, and had the chance to completely repack the bags. We then loaded our single bikes on top of the car, tossed the bags into the back. We immediately were mired in commuter traffic as construction work had partially shut down one of the bridges into town. But we eventually made it through, and got to REI for package pick-up. After sitting in traffic for so long, we were happily surprised to find ourselves sailing through package pick-up with no wait. Then, it was off to the start line, where we dropped off our bags with the new baggage service, and re-parked the car near the bike corral and near a light post so we could find it again, even if brain-addled, on Sunday. We hoisted our bikes then off of the car rack, and caught a bus from Montlake to Microsoft, and had an easy couple of miles home.

Saturday morning, I was out of bed by 5:10 and frying up breakfast. We were not operating with military precision that morning, unlike before some other rides, and didn’t leave the house by maybe about 6:15 or so. We started the ride from home, and passed a handful of other cyclists with their STP numbers on, working their way on to the ride course.

We joined the course in Renton near the municipal airport, and were immediately plunged into throngs of cyclists. Since, as a tandem team, we are faster than most STPers, especially on this relatively flat course, we spent most of our time passing others. We pulled into the Kent rest stop, and it was bedlam – thousands of riders and bikes. I saw fellow cyclists Lisa Lawrence and Leo Stone, and Lisa was kind enough to take our picture, but I admit I was distracted and looking to mostly refuel and go – which we did.

We continued our fast pace through the valley and up the fabled Hill, with a brief potty and refueling stop at the top. Then another tear up and down the plateau to the Spanaway stop, which was as well organized as I’ve ever seen it. This year they were pretty adamant about riders not handling the food directly, and hurray for that. My hands, other than being on the handlebars, were last applying chamois butter – god knows what other cyclists had been doing with theirs.

Then it was back on the bike, and the heat of the day was definitely rising. We stopped at the Yelm ministop, and got orange Fantas from a vending machine. We both spent some time simply pressing the frosty cans on our hot and sweaty foreheads before consumption. I also took off my shoes and let my feet air, for fear of getting a case of hot foot.

This was our first experience doing the whole Yelm – Tenino trail. The trail suffers from too many gratuitous stop signs, with a sign for cyclists to stop at even a gravel driveway to someone’s home. These are ludicrous, and only encourage scofflawing, which then means people are more likely to get hurt at the intersections where stop signs are actually necessary. Since every stop sign had posts, there were far too many posts on the trail, and we saw several cyclists down who had hit these posts. The builders of the trail hurt cyclists in their efforts to protect motorists – feh.

Now, all this time, we had been passing lots of other cyclists, and rather than me calling out “on your left” continually, I had been honking our horn, a Mattel Barbie horn, white with a purple bulb, that made a loud and somewhat humorous “eeker-eeker” noise. After years of use, and then all the work-out it got on this ride, the bulb fell off twice, and then finally fell off and dropped to the ground and bounced away somewhere out of Tenino. David threatened to stop the bike and hunt for it, but my feeling was – it was time for replacement.

We came into Centralia around 2:30, and ate our free creamsicles. I hunted for a replacement horn at the repair stand, but oddly, they carried things like spokes and tubes, and didn’t have a horn. So, we got on the bike and rode just a few miles further down the hot chipseal to Chehalis, now about 105 miles from our starting point at home. We got our luggage, got to our motel, stripped off our sweaty, gritty, slimy bike clothes and took showers that bordered on a religious experience.

After that, David took a nap. I was working on the crossword puzzle at the desk at the motel, and fell asleep on the table. We woke up and decided, at 4:30, that it was late enough for dinner. We walked to the dinner next door, ate chicken wings with beers, and then scarfed down the prime rib special. After that, we walked a little around town, David had a massage, and we went to bed early.

I woke up the next morning around 4:40, and shortly thereafter David cuddled up, and I thought, oh, we’ll get getting out of bed, but we ended up falling back asleep and didn’t get up until 5:40. When we left for breakfast, it was now completely overcast and maybe 20 degrees colder than it had been the day before. We had a reasonable breakfast at the diner, and when we got out, there was thunder and lightning. We dropped off our luggage at the truck, and hit the road maybe around 7:15 ish. It started to rain, big fat heavy drops of rain.

Shushes of rain soaked our feet and ankles as we rode. The rain slacked enough that we shed the jackets for the second biggest hill of the ride, before Napavine, but the intermittent showers meant that we were alternating shedding and donning jackets throughout the morning. The whole 50 mile section from Chehalis to the Lexington foodstop, being mostly downhilly rollers, is really made for tandeming, and we simply kicked butt on the road, slowed down really only by some caution due to the wet conditions. Only problem was, with my horn gone, having to call out “on yer left…left…left…left” as we passed scores of other cyclists.

The rain stopped while we were eating in Lexington. After crossing the Columbia River, David wanted to stow the jacket he’d put on while cooling down waiting for the escort over the Lewis and Clark bridge. At this point, because the wheel felt a little odd under my seat, I suggested that we check the spokes. Sure enough, we’d broken a spoke on the back wheel, most likely on the expansion joints of the bridge. (I had broken a spoke, more catastrophically, on the same bridge back in the 2001 STP.) David was slightly more conservative in his captaining of the bike, and we rode it somewhat cautiously 8 more miles down the road to the Goble mini-stop, where there was a mechanic.

There were a number of bikes in line, and only one guy working, but he was manically fast. We finally made it to the front of the line. He was out of some spokes in some sizes, as we were not the only ones to break a spoke on the bridge, but we lucked out as he had one for us. He quickly whipped the old spoke out, whipped the new one in, put the wheel on the truing stand & gave it some spins, and before we knew it, he was done, the wheel was remounted, our tip was put in the jar, and we were on our way again.

We said we’d stop just a short bit at the St. Helens food stop, but by the time you get your handfuls of food and eat them, and wait in the potty line, the time just melts away. At this point, about 30 miles out of Portland, we were both starting to flag a little.

David suggested a very short stop in Scappoose, and all we did was have some goos and a shot block a piece. Who knows really what’s in those goo shots, but it seemed to go straight to our legs. David simply dropped the hammer at that point, and we cruised at 21 mph on the flats, 30ish mph on the drops, passing line after line after line of bikes. (“left…left…left…”)

Finally, we were off of the “Dirty Thirty” of US Highway 30, and on the streets of Portland. A train came through, crossing the route twice, and twice we got caught up in a huge bunch of bikes. We threaded our way through the crowd, and finally made it over the finish line around 3:30 PM.

We dumped the bike on the truck. It started to sprinkle. The men’s shower line wasn’t that bad this time out, so David and I both had showers (the women’s line is always short, and this time, non-existent), and then gyros and beers. While in the beer garden it started to rain again, this time in earnest. We saw no reason to hang out any longer, so we loaded ourselves on the bus back to Seattle. I snoozed on and off on the 3½ hour ride home.

Lo and behold, our bike was waiting for us upon arrival. The car was easy to find because we parked it next to the light post the Friday before. We threw the bike on the top, our things in the back, and drove home – my 8th STP complete.

Hardly worth recording – dropped off the car at the start line for STP, then rode to the Montlake Flyer Station, caught the bus, and rode home through Microsoft Corporate Campus.

The usual in-to-work-and-back.

That might be the last ride for the week – I have to use the car Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I usually want a day or two off before the big Seattle-to-Portland ride.

In to work, then out via the Farmers’ Market with David. I got a little competitive wild hair, and really did a strong spin up Bel-Red, leaving my poor husband in the dust.

I got a lift up to the office from my husband, with the bike (and helmet, gloves, shorts, and shoes) in tow.

It kept on looking like it was about to rain. I worked until 5:00, then picked up a pack of tofu at the QFC. Coming out of the shopping center, it started to rain.

I hadn’t planned on it raining, and not only did I not have a jacket, I was just wearing a lousy cotton t-shirt. The shirt first got wet, and then downright soaked in places.

As I rode over the freshly-poured asphalt near Marymoor, it was steaming in the pelting rain.

Once I was at Marymoor, I figured I could bail if I wanted – I could ride to the bus stop and take a bus home. But the thought of having to ride an extra half mile out of my way to the bus stop (and another half mile home from the bus stop where I’d get off)...and to wait maybe as long as 20 minutes for a bus, when it only would take, at most, 20 minutes to ride home…

I decided to ride anyway. So I did. Deity Hill now I can ride up the first two stair steps without getting out of the saddle, but the final steep step – all that slippery moss? In the rain? I dismounted and walked up.

Despite the risk of chilblains, I took a hot bath when I got home, scrubbed the road grime off of my shins.