STP and beyond

I must say that the Seattle to Portland (STP) ride is a very well put together group ride. There was over 10,000 people on the roads between Seattle and Portland over two days. It was amazing looking at all of the bicyclists when there was a straight stretch of road. I am going to do this ride again next year.

Wendy and I left Moscow on Friday morning to drive to Poulsbo to stay the night with my sister Deb and brother-in-law Steve. It was a nice night of checking out their new place, eating dinner, drinking some homemade beer, catching up on old times, and getting ready for the first day of the ride on Saturday.

First day recap:

On Saturday morning we gathered all of our things and got them into the rig so that Deb could take us to the ferry terminal. We were catching the early ferry in order to make it to Seattle to join in with the other riders who started at the University of Washington campus. We rode our bikes onto the ferry and parked them at the designated bike parking areas and went up into the passenger area to rest up before the long day ahead. When we got to Seattle we followed a group of riders off of the ferry up and over to where we were going to join the other riders. The ride up the city streets was okay but riding down some of the streets was pretty interesting. I am just glad that there was no moisture on the roads otherwise it would have been a slippery mess.

I rode with Steve most of the ride but went out on my own after a bit after every rest stop. He had not ridden his bike very much over the past few years so he was not moving as quickly as he had in the past. He just told me to go on. I am so used to riding by myself that it was weird having so many other people riding at the same time. After a couple of hours riding Wendy and Deb let us know that they had taken off from the house and were going to meet us in Centralia to setup the tents and just hangout until we got there. Centralia is the midpoint of the ride and it is where most of the two day riders stay at. The rest stops were spread out every 20 miles or so. Every one of them that we stopped at had tons of riders there getting water and food. Steve was really starting to hurt at the last rest stop but he pressed on. I made it to Centralia and was wandering around with Wendy when Steve came in. We found the showers to get all clean and then found food to get all fueled up. Wendy and Deb had setup the tents before we got there and that was nice to have done for us. We played quite a few games of Crazy Eights before settling down to bed.

Statisitics for first day: 97.2 miles, 6 hours 22 minutes riding time, 9 hours 29 minutes elapsed time, 2167 calories.

Got up Sunday morning had a nice pancake breakfast and got ready to ride. Steve said that he was not going to be able to ride that day. This day was spent riding and stopping at most of the rest areas. I really had no reason to stop very long other than getting more water and food.

Statistics for second day: 104.6 miles, 5 hours 47 minutes riding time, 6 hours 45 minutes elapsed time, 2171 calories.

Next big ride that I have is the MS Ride on the 17th and 18th of September on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. Donations to the MS Society can be made on my MS Society page. Every donation helps those suffering from the effects of MS.