Fifty-Three
Monday
I had a very good meeting with Michelle. More about that later. I've gotta get some sleep.
BYE!
Sunday
Met with Alex, Joe, and Ed (my excellent crew). Blah, blah, blah.
Saturday
4:30 AM
I'm awake.
5:20 AM
I just miss the train.
5:40-6:30 AM
I ride the train from Hillsboro to East Portland. A guy sitting across from me is in a talkative mood and tells me stories about his backpacking adventures in Australia. Sounds fun, actually.
7:00 AM Saturday - 2:22 AM Sunday
400K
Marvin gives us the obligatory pre-ride speech, and then we depart a few minutes past 7. The lead group takes off like bats out of hell. I keep up as we head down 33rd Ave. and then let them go as we make the turn onto Marine drive.
I'm wearing my heart rate monitor, but I forgot to change the recording interval from 5 seconds to 15 seconds. To avoid running out of memory, I'm forced to stop the stopwatch and restart it after making the change. The altimeter is acting funny. The absolute readings don't make any sense (e.g. negative 180 ft. along the Columbia), but the elevations relative to one another sort of jive. Maybe it's because I've got the watch on my wrist instead of on the bike mount? Around 200 miles, the monitor strap gets really annoying so I yank the thing off and stuff it in my jacket pocket.
Mostly, I rode by myself. Someone passed me on the way up to Crown Point, but he only had one water bottle, so I knew he couldn't be one of "us". I caught up and we rode to the top together. He's also signed up to do STP in one day. It was nice chatting going up the hill. He coasted faster than I could pedal on the way down, though.
84 wasn't the best part of the ride. But the shoulder was nice and wide, there wasn't too much debris - just lots of road alligators, and it wasn't raining, so I couldn't complain.
Around noon I got off the bike for the first time at Burger King. A whopper, large fries, and a giant plastic cup that I used to fill up my camel back with Coke. It was an interesting complement to the two bottles of concentrated Perpetuem that I had been drinking/eating. After I got back on the bike, it took a while for everything to settle in my stomach, but basically all those calories seemed to work for me.
There were some great back roads around the Dalles. (Was that before or after lunch?) Then we were faced with a major climb up to Goldendale after crossing the Columbia River. At the checkpoint I made the mistake of buying three large bottles of Sunny Delight. I was not delighted by the taste. Especially when I combined it with some left over Perpetuem. Bluck!
The ride from Goldendale back West was nice. A few rollers, but you were going down a lot more that you were going up. Very beautiful and remote.
It was getting dark by the time I reached the checkpoint in Stevenson at 8:45 PM. I had a couple of slices of pizza before getting back on the bike. Up until this point I had been averaging 15-16 mph. That went to hell in a hand basket. I got rather annoyed climbing some long hills in the dark, and then all those crazy turns from Camus to the finished were the icing on the cake. I tried really hard not to make any mistakes, but still managed to make a wrong turn that cost me a mile or two.
2:22 AM - eternity
The cherry on the icing was waiting for Julia to pick me up at the park. I called her an hour before I expected to get there, but I still ended up huddled up on the ground waiting for about an hour for her to find the place. We were able to call each other on our cell phones, but that wasn't keeping me warm.
4 AM
After taking a hot shower, I'm finally back in a warm bed.
Friday
"When it's not a garlic, it's an onion." (An appropriate Spanish saying.)
I was getting things ready for the 400K when I loosened the track nuts so I could tighten the chain. Out fell some pieces of metal onto the garage floor. I knew that couldn't be good.
Somehow I managed to break one of the lock nuts on the infamous Surly hub. Maybe I torqued the nuts too much. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that the lock nut had come loose earlier and I had just tightened it by hand. Probably both.
I've never overhauled a hub before. I didn't have cone wrenches. In fact, I didn't even know what cone wrenches were at that point in time. Fortunately, The Bike Gallery wasn't closed yet (6:30 PM), and I had a spare wheel with a similar Surly hub. Sake (pronounced like the Japanese liquor), the mechanic who installed my Chris King headset, saved my bacon. We cannibalized my free/free Surly hub, and I picked up a couple of cheap Park cone wrenches while I was in the store. Disaster narrowly averted.
Thursday
I started organizing all the "stuff" I plan to pack in the support vehicle. It soon became apparent that I need fewer and/or smaller boxes. The van looks smaller and smaller every day.
I had a very good meeting with Michelle. More about that later. I've gotta get some sleep.
BYE!
Sunday
Met with Alex, Joe, and Ed (my excellent crew). Blah, blah, blah.
Saturday
4:30 AM
I'm awake.
5:20 AM
I just miss the train.
5:40-6:30 AM
I ride the train from Hillsboro to East Portland. A guy sitting across from me is in a talkative mood and tells me stories about his backpacking adventures in Australia. Sounds fun, actually.
7:00 AM Saturday - 2:22 AM Sunday
400K
Marvin gives us the obligatory pre-ride speech, and then we depart a few minutes past 7. The lead group takes off like bats out of hell. I keep up as we head down 33rd Ave. and then let them go as we make the turn onto Marine drive.
I'm wearing my heart rate monitor, but I forgot to change the recording interval from 5 seconds to 15 seconds. To avoid running out of memory, I'm forced to stop the stopwatch and restart it after making the change. The altimeter is acting funny. The absolute readings don't make any sense (e.g. negative 180 ft. along the Columbia), but the elevations relative to one another sort of jive. Maybe it's because I've got the watch on my wrist instead of on the bike mount? Around 200 miles, the monitor strap gets really annoying so I yank the thing off and stuff it in my jacket pocket.
Mostly, I rode by myself. Someone passed me on the way up to Crown Point, but he only had one water bottle, so I knew he couldn't be one of "us". I caught up and we rode to the top together. He's also signed up to do STP in one day. It was nice chatting going up the hill. He coasted faster than I could pedal on the way down, though.
84 wasn't the best part of the ride. But the shoulder was nice and wide, there wasn't too much debris - just lots of road alligators, and it wasn't raining, so I couldn't complain.
Around noon I got off the bike for the first time at Burger King. A whopper, large fries, and a giant plastic cup that I used to fill up my camel back with Coke. It was an interesting complement to the two bottles of concentrated Perpetuem that I had been drinking/eating. After I got back on the bike, it took a while for everything to settle in my stomach, but basically all those calories seemed to work for me.
There were some great back roads around the Dalles. (Was that before or after lunch?) Then we were faced with a major climb up to Goldendale after crossing the Columbia River. At the checkpoint I made the mistake of buying three large bottles of Sunny Delight. I was not delighted by the taste. Especially when I combined it with some left over Perpetuem. Bluck!
The ride from Goldendale back West was nice. A few rollers, but you were going down a lot more that you were going up. Very beautiful and remote.
It was getting dark by the time I reached the checkpoint in Stevenson at 8:45 PM. I had a couple of slices of pizza before getting back on the bike. Up until this point I had been averaging 15-16 mph. That went to hell in a hand basket. I got rather annoyed climbing some long hills in the dark, and then all those crazy turns from Camus to the finished were the icing on the cake. I tried really hard not to make any mistakes, but still managed to make a wrong turn that cost me a mile or two.
2:22 AM - eternity
The cherry on the icing was waiting for Julia to pick me up at the park. I called her an hour before I expected to get there, but I still ended up huddled up on the ground waiting for about an hour for her to find the place. We were able to call each other on our cell phones, but that wasn't keeping me warm.
4 AM
After taking a hot shower, I'm finally back in a warm bed.
Friday
"When it's not a garlic, it's an onion." (An appropriate Spanish saying.)
I was getting things ready for the 400K when I loosened the track nuts so I could tighten the chain. Out fell some pieces of metal onto the garage floor. I knew that couldn't be good.
Somehow I managed to break one of the lock nuts on the infamous Surly hub. Maybe I torqued the nuts too much. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that the lock nut had come loose earlier and I had just tightened it by hand. Probably both.
I've never overhauled a hub before. I didn't have cone wrenches. In fact, I didn't even know what cone wrenches were at that point in time. Fortunately, The Bike Gallery wasn't closed yet (6:30 PM), and I had a spare wheel with a similar Surly hub. Sake (pronounced like the Japanese liquor), the mechanic who installed my Chris King headset, saved my bacon. We cannibalized my free/free Surly hub, and I picked up a couple of cheap Park cone wrenches while I was in the store. Disaster narrowly averted.
Thursday
I started organizing all the "stuff" I plan to pack in the support vehicle. It soon became apparent that I need fewer and/or smaller boxes. The van looks smaller and smaller every day.
posted by Sabertooth Salmon at 10:36 PM
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