i can't say that everything went as planned. But we did in fact make it. But let me start at the beginning.
We were a little late to the start line. Luckily we had secured our purple mohawks to our helmets the night before.
It was a beautiful morning rolling along lake Washington. We did our first support stop at the 30 mile mark. Jane and Marshall had chairs set up in the shade of the suburban. We had sopping wet wash clothes to wash the salty off our faces. It was very refreshing. We had our second support stop just past Spanaway. Guess what July 11th is free Slurpee day. They don't mention that the Slurpee's are about 4 oz. But still no Slurpee is too small for our support team.
After Spanaway we had our longest stretch without our support team. It was on this section that someone turned up the thermostat. We measured 84 degrees in the shade. For these parts that is hot. Particularly on the longer stretches without shade. The trail around Tenino was much better than last year. So that was nice. We also made a last minute mod to our bikes. We added a little piece of pipe insulation to the handlebars. We attached them right at the center. So for rough sections this gave us a place to rest our hands and isolate them from road vibration. It worked out really nicely.
I had hoped to make it to Vader the first day. But it became clear we weren't on pace to do that. So by Centralia we were pretty much done. This was the McDlt of STPs. If you remember the McDlt kept the hot side hot and the cold side cold. We went to bed at 7:30 and woke to thunder and lightening at 5:00. After a nice pancake breakfast we hit the road at about 6:30. The next section was much nicer than I remember from last year (when it was 95 degrees). We had our first support (and last) stop at Vader. It was right after this that the whole trip started to unwind.
Howard took a spill and broke a spoke. We stopped at Castle Rock to have that fixed. Then Jane called and the fuel pump went out on the suburban. She managed to meet us as planned at Les Schwab in Longview (with a cab ride). They were doing a car show and grilling hot dogs and burgers. So that was nice. We got our Camel backs and a few food items and we set off. Now we were dependent on the regular food stops. That isn't such a bad deal but now we also had no ride home.
We made it over the bridge into Oregon. I have been over that bridge twice now and it seems unnecessarily high. We really didn't have any more problems except it rained on us the whole way. At the last stop before Portland, Scappoose, we talked to a volunteer. She told us the last bus was set to leave Portland at 7:00. It was 5:15 and we were 18 miles from the finish. So we had to push the pace. For the first 5 hours on sunday we were averaging 12.5 mph. For the last 2 hours we averaged 17.5. We crossed the finish line at 6:40. We had the luxury of 20 minutes to buy some dry clothes and get on one of the sold out buses (without tickets).
We put on dry t-shirts and socks in the bathroom on the bus. But we still had to wear our wet bike shorts the whole way home. I got to my house at about 12:30. Had a hot bath and crashed.
Jane and the support crew were treated to a night in Longview and after a relatively quick fuel pump change came in Monday afternoon. So for those of you keeping score, the bikers beat the drivers. In the end we had a tough goal and we accomplished it. It didn't all go as planned but as I pointed out to Howard I bet the stories on the last bus were a lot more interesting than the stories on the first bus.
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