Bike Ridden: | Gold Rush |
---|---|
Distance: | 197 miles |
Cumulative climbing: | 2700 feet |
Seattle to Portland, July 8, 2000 - Ron Bobb and I started from the Edmund Meany Hotel in north Seattle and rode down to the University of Washington, the start of the ride. At exactly 5a we began our long ride south to Portland, OR, passing around Lake Washington, then south through Kent, Spanaway, to Chehalis for lunch.
Somewhere before lunch Ron got ahead of me (or more likely, I started to slow down to a sustainable pace). Ron was riding strongly this year; he would ride the Furnace Creek 508 in October.
At lunch I spoke with Joe Kochanowski while I ate some pasta. Joe was going on about how no one could stay on his tail for more than a few miles at a time. He was riding one of his custom open-top streamliners. After lunch the course thinned out considerably as most of the riders were planning to ride over the course of two days.
At about the 200k point just south of Vader, WA, David and Kay caught up with me on the course. It was a welcome relief when I stopped to rest in the van, change my wet jersey into something dry, and get a bite to eat. For the rest of the course we leap-frogged each other southward to the Lewis & Clark Bridge and then on down to Portland.
At the end I was completely exhausted. Not as spent as I was in Death Valley earlier in the year--I had eaten and hydrated properly, but I was physically and mentally exhausted, although the photos don't show it.
That evening we checked into our hotel, got cleaned up, and went out to dinner at Marrakesh. It was a good meal, and it was acceptable, indeed, expected, that I should shovel in the food with my fingers, but then anything edible put in front of me at that point tasted good.
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