The rain didn’t worry me too much.  I wasn’t looking forward to it, but it didn’t worry me.  What worried me was my legs.  Building bicycles isn’t paying the bills yet, so I’ve been digging clams for the past five and something years.  During the winter, we work at night and we work at the behest of the moon.  Living lunar in a solar society has serious drawbacks.  While other Seattle Randonneurs were out on training rides this past winter, I was usually in bed trying to get some sleep and trying to warm back up before my next night’s work in the cold Puget Sound rain.          

    There were over 130 of us at the start of the brevet, and since it was still kind of dark and overcast, I was a bit disoriented.  That was all right though, because with so many riders all the turns for miles to come would be obvious.  I was concerned about the chance of a pile up. That almost happened as a rider next to me swerved to miss another rider who had stopped to pick something up off the road.  If they had collided, I, and a dozen others, would surely have gone down in a spectacular crash.  That was the first and last close call of the day.

    There were sixty-nine cues on the route sheet for this brevet and only four of them involved staying on the same road for five miles or more.  Most cues involved making a turn onto another road within a mile of turning onto the road I’d just turned onto.  That’s a lot of “onto” for one sentence and a lot of turns for one brevet.  To make matters more confusing, many of us soon noticed that the names of the roads on the route sheet did not always match the names of the road on the road signs.  

    The route was interesting and much of it through areas I would never think of riding in.  I was very surprised at how close we came to the ship terminals in Tacoma while still riding through fairly quiet residential areas.  And, as always, I was impressed by how close small farms are to our urban centers.

    The Black Diamond Bakery was Control #3.  I’d heard so much about how great this bakery is that I was quite excited to finely arrive.  It was a disappointment.  It appears that there are two restaurants in one building with a bakery counter between them.  The bakery counter was where the riders were getting their brevet cards signed so I got in line too.  As I passed by the display case, I noticed that the treats were all sweet and much larger than my appetite could handle.  I bought a cake donut and had my card signed.  When I came out, another rider was looking at the Red Randonneuse.  He told me he thought it was a very good looking bike.  I heard a lot of those comments on the ride and they thrilled me.

    After riding about ten miles on Cumberland Kanaskat Road, I began to pass some houses.  I haven’t used a cycle computer on the past three brevets so I rely on a watch to estimate distance traveled -- four minutes per mile.  I thought I should be nearing the turn onto Highway 410, but I saw a sign that said I was on 248th Street; or some such number.  I stopped, turned around, and soon saw a farmer’s wife who had just collected the mail and was headed back to the house.  I “helloed” her and asked about the road.  She told me that 410 was just up ahead and that quite a few bicycles had been by today.  

    So off I went again, with renewed confidence.  I should say here that I am not the best navigator and I sometimes add miles to my brevets with wrong turns.  I didn’t want to do that today because I wondered if I could even finish the course as planned.  Soon, I saw a stop light and cross traffic.  I assumed that it would be Highway 410, but as I got close enough to read the sign, I saw that it said Auburn Highway.  What a disappointment that was.  I pulled up to the light, and got centered in the lane hoping to trip the light’s sensor.  Then I waited without giving the sign above me another glance.  When the light turned, I would continue straight.  As I waited, I glanced up the road to the left where there was a restaurant called, “Charlie’s.”  I noticed a highway sign in front of the restaurant that said “410.”  I looked up at the sign above my head and saw the small “Hwy 410” to the right of the big “Auburn Highway.”  That was a close call.  When the light changed, I made my left turn and headed for Greenwater, 17 miles away.

    The road up to Greenwater was my favorite part of the ride.  I’d been down the other side of the road a couple of years ago, when I’d ridden from my home in Tumwater to make a two day trip around Mount Rainier.  My only complaint about the road is that there are rumble strips in the center so that when a car or truck moved left to pass wide around me, it made a terrible racket that startled me until I finally got used to it.  After that, I grew to like the sound because I knew that I wasn’t going to be passed too closely.  Along the way, I stopped to fill one of my water bottles from a small stream that tumbled out of the forest above me.  It was very good water; sort of living water from the mountains.

    On the way up this road, riders who had been to Greenwater and were now coming back down the valley on the home stretch began to pass me.  When the first one passed me and waved, I realized he was depressingly far ahead of me since I had to go on up to Greenwater, turn around, and come back down to be where he already was.  I hoped that at least he was the first rider of the day and not just the first to pass me.  Others might have been down the road and turned off before I ever even got to where I was.      

    As I approached Greenwater, I thought that soon I would be going down hill and passing riders coming up, but first I had to stop at the Control.  I really hoped to find a bean burrito there since I was very hungry.  I think there is a friendly cafe in Greenwater where I had a nice breakfast on my ride around the Mountain, but I didn’t go far enough into town to look for it nor did I have the time to stop in again.

    At the Control, I got my card signed, bought my burrito and a bottle of green tea with honey.  I also made a pit stop at the gas station next door.  I poured the tea into my other water bottle and ate the burrito.  As I chewed the last bit of the burrito, I began to pack up.  Where’s my brevet card?  There it is, next to my front tire and almost in a puddle.  OK now, where’s the top to my water bottle?  I asked some other riders if they saw it since it had to be right in front of me.  No one saw it.  I wonder if I threw it away with the burrito wrapper?  Yep, I fished it out of the trash, screwed it onto the water bottle and decided I better not think about how clean or unclean it might now be.  

    Just before I left, Eric Vigoren said, “At least it’s dry.”  I hate it when people say that.  It always reminds me of the line in Young Frankenstein, “It could be worse.  It could be raining.”  Then: thunder and deluge.  Sure enough, the threatened rain started within moments and would continue till I finished in just more than three hours.  

    Eric, Maggie Williams, and another rider passed me, but I didn’t recognize them because of the rain.  In a moment, it clicked who they were and I gave a few kicks to my pedals to catch them.  Soon I decided their pace was faster than I wanted to keep, so I let them go.  

    I made the turn onto Mud Mountain Road, which was not Mud Mountain Dam Road as the route sheet said, and after a while I came to where I thought I should turn right, but there was no road sign so I waited for another rider.  Soon one came along who knew the way, and off I went with him.  The road twisted downhill and it was wet so the other rider maintained a sane pace.  I wanted to put the Red Randonneuse through her paces so I went around him and went off down the hill faster than I probably should have.  The bike took the twists and bumps with aplomb.  

    Pretty soon, I was at the last control and soaking wet.  I got my card signed, bought and ate a banana, drank an Ensure, and got back on the road.  After a while, I realized I would have to stop and and pull the last of my route sheet out to finish the ride.  I thought I’d done that at the Control, but I missed the scrap of paper with the last three or four cues.  Fortunately, a couple of miles from the finish, Eric and Maggie passed me again,  I jumped in behind them and we finished together.

    I felt pretty good and realized I could have probably gone harder, but I’d enjoyed myself and the Red Randonneuse out-paced all my hopes for her.  About a hundred riders finished before me and the first rider to finish, finished more than three hours ahead of me!  I wonder what it would be like to go that fast for so long, but, to tell the truth, I’m not interested in trying to find out.  I have fun poking along, seeing the sights, and looking at all the neat bicycles randonneurs ride.