Epic Day

Yesterday started innocently enough. We ate a hearty breakfast of blueberry pancakes (Thanks, Peggy!), finished loading our bikes and were on the road by 10:00.

We didn't fight urban traffic leaving the Seattle area. We contended with it. Cyclists who fight traffic will lose.

We took a rest stop in Sultan. On the way out of town My bike started to make a strange sound. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. I stopped to investigate and found a tetanus-y looking nail in the side wall of my rear tire. It was bent at a 90 degree angle. With each turn of the wheel it struck the seat stay and chain stay. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

I made the repair and threw the dead tube into a pannier for patching later.

In Illinois rumble strips mark the shoulders of the road. On parts of rte 2in Washington, a rumble strip runs down the road's center line. Riding on a shoulder back home, the sound of car tires on a rumble strip signals approaching danger. Out here it means a driver has gone wide around you.

We took another short break at a wayside espresso hut that was used as a set for the movie Harry and the Hendersons. After this, things got unpleasant. Seattle lies at about 200 feet of elevation. We planned to stop for the night before reaching Stevens Pass but missed the campground and kept climbing.

And climbing.

My smallest gear is a 30 x 32. It wasn't small enough. First I ran out of gears. Then I ran out of legs. The sun was setting as we approached Stevens Pass, elevation 4040. Altogether we climbed about 3000 ft in the last 15 miles.

I am not ashamed to say that I pushed my bike part of the way. I am only slightly embarrassed that it was about 4 miles.

Altogether we made about 67.5 miles.

We made it to the closed ski resort just as the last light of the sun vanished from the sky. We set the tent up in a gravel RV parking lot and spent a cold, waterless night. Frankly, I didn't care if I ever rode a bicycle again.