Nina and I volunteer at an Alzheimer Center twice a month.  We sing, or more correctly, Nina sings and I play ukulele.  We do a lot of old hymns and show tunes since they lend themselves to the ukulele and many of the residents know the songs.  One of the songs we sing is, “A Bicycle Built for Two.”

    “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true . . . but you’ll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle built for two.”

    Imagine, then, my complete joy when on the Seattle to Portland bicycle ride last Saturday, I slowly passed a gray haired couple riding a tandem with a small bouquet of daisies on the rear rack!

    “Hey!” I said.  “You have daisies on your bicycle built for two.”

    On I went, with a smile on my face and a song on my lips.  Some of the other riders must have wondered about the guy quietly singing “A Bicycle Built for Two” as he rode along on a bicycle built for one.  Well, what the heck, a lot of people think we are all a little cooked to ride 200 miles in a day and today there were something more than 2500 of us doing that very thing.

    I’ve resisted STP because I didn’t think I’d like riding with 9000 plus other people on the same ride at the same time, but since we are getting ready to leave the Northwest and head to North Carolina, I thought I’d better do it this year.  As it turns out, the big crowd wasn’t much fun, but we all spread out soon enough and then I had fun.  

    Nina drove with me to the start in Seattle so she could take the car and meet me in Portland in the evening.  We left Tumwater at about 3:15 in the morning so I could be at the start by 4:45.  The closer we got to Seattle, the more cars, trucks, and SUVs we saw with bicycles.  I started to get excited.  Once we pulled off the freeway, the traffic got pretty thick so I pulled over, unloaded the bike, kissed Nina goodbye, and rode the last mile or so to the start.  It was definitely the right thing to do.  I passed hundreds of cars and saved Nina the hassle of getting back out after dropping me off.

    A little before 5:00, I heard someone say something on a loudspeaker and I could tell that bicycles were moving up ahead.  It wasn’t long before the bikes just ahead of me started to go and they dragged me right along with them.  As we headed out, bicycles joined us from parking lots and side streets for the first mile or so.  They avoided the mass start, but joined the mass.  It was kind of fun and almost everyone was riding pretty well, but man o man there were sure a lot of people on bicycles.  We came around a corner and crossed a bridge.  There were a couple of bikes on the ground and people were ministering to a guy laying face down on the street.  Someone near me said, “Man, what’s the deal.  It isn’t a race.”  Of course there were probably many races going on in the crowd.  I just hoped that most of them wouldn’t start in earnest until much later and much further down the road.   As it turned out, we started to spread out in less than half an hour and it wasn’t long before there were just a whole lot of bunches of riders scattered along the road.

    One of the coolest things that happened during the first 100 miles, besides seeing the daisies on the tandem, is that there were cops out stopping the cars and letting hundreds of bicycles at a time cruise past stop signs and under red lights.  Yeah, this is the way it should always be.  The cops were digging it too.  Everyone thanked them as we went by and they wore big grins plastered across their faces.  There were also lots and lots of people out with coffee in one hand and waving with the other all day long.  I waved back to a lot of people on Saturday.

    There were so many groups of people that it was pretty easy to join one, or have one join me, but they seemed to fragment after a while so it was a new bunch of riders every few miles.  There were some teams out riding fast pacelines.  I think some of them were stopping to let one rider at a time water the weeds so that they could get back on the road and pass us again.  One guy got passed by everyone.  He was on a skateboard and I read in the paper that he finished with the two day riders.  The rest of us were on bikes of one variety or another.  Most were road bikes, but there were plenty recumbents, mountain bikes, and a sprinkling of very beat old cruisers; one with a very out of true rear wheel.

    One thing confused me for a long time.  I would come up pretty quickly on a rider or small group of riders and pass.  It they were that much slower than me, then how is it that they were that far ahead of me?  I finally figured out that they hadn’t started at the start.  They’d joined us on the way.

    There were also a lot of private support vehicles.  They didn’t seem to clog up the roads, but I saw them on the side waiting for, or servicing, their riders.  I didn’t get the point of it because this was the most heavily supported ride I have ever been on.  I saw guys and gals on the side of the road standing next to their bikes waiting.  They’d flip the bike over so it was on the handlebars and saddle and then just wait for one of the Goldwing riders to pull up and change their flats!  Bike shops had repair stations set up all along the road and they were all doing a brisk business, but it was volunteer work on Saturday  - - no charge.

    I rode past the first official rest stop figuring I’d stop at 50 miles and 100 miles and then try to make two more stops on the second leg.  As we drew along side the first rest stop, the fellows from Bountiful Utah I was riding with decided to stop.  The barkers on the street were tempting us with cries of, “You guys are out front.  The Porta Potties are still fresh!”

    There wasn’t much navigating.  We all had cue sheets in our jersey pockets, but I never did need mine.  The turns were all marked on the road and on the long stretches where we didn’t turn, there were go straight marks to reassure us that we were going where we were supposed to go.

    Spanoway is one ugly place, at least the part that we rode through, but that’s where the food stop was that I intended to stop at.  I did start to ride past because I was still feeling good, but I stopped and I’m glad I did.  They had burrito wraps filled with rice, beans, corn, and salsa.  Oh yeah.  I also grabbed some fruit, some kind of pretty good vitamin drink, and filled my empty water bottle.  Then I was gone, but people were kind of sluggish after the stop and it took a while to get back up to speed.  Passing one group just put me behind another until everyone started going again.  Soon we were passing through Roy and that is a much nicer town.

    There were a lot of serious bikes everywhere.  I ride with carbon bikes and carbon wheels on club rides, but I never rode with so many as I did on Saturday.  Frankly I can’t see how people can stand to ride those bikes.  The carbon wheels are very noisy and some of the monocoque carbon frames are big resonating chambers that amplify road noise.  

They say there are two kinds of people: the kind who define noise as the sound of jet plane taking off overhead and those who define it as a scratchy pen nib in a monastery.  I am the second kind of person.  I definitely prefer my steel bikes and spoked wheels where nothing rattles, amplifies, or irritates.  I also heard lot of complaints about the chip seal on the roads.  This is a big grip for riders, but with 25 or 28 mm wide tires, it isn’t really an issue.  And squeaks, all I can say is, lubricant.  If something is squeaking it is wearing out and it is consuming energy.  Lubricate it.  Lube chains, grease pedal spindles, bottom brackets, and hubs.  And if your wheels creak, tighten the spokes.

    When I pulled up to the rest stop in Centralia, 102 miles into the ride, it was 10:30.  That’s five and a half hours and that’s fast for me.  This was the end of the line for Saturday for a lot of riders and there was a lot going on with plenty of groups serving big, hot, sit down dinners.  I was looking for the free, cold, fast food for the one day riders and it took me a bit to find it.  Earlier, Jason and Todd passed me on another tandem and Todd said, “Cool Coho.  Hey Jason, did you see the Coho.”  I ran into Jason and Todd at this stop and Todd told me he reads my blogs sometimes.  That’s cool.  They admired my bike and that’s cool too.

    As I took off, I saw a medical attention stand and I stopped to put some sunscreen on my arms.  There were also massage tables set up and lots of people were getting massages, but since my bikes are more comfortable than lounge chairs, I didn’t need a massage so I got my legs spinning again.  Now things really spread out and the rest of the ride was no more crowded than a popular brevet.  

    Forty-five miles later, I stopped again.  It was warm, upper 80’s, and I had slowed down so I got some food, drink, and sat down in the shade for thirteen minutes.  I didn’t feel much like food or drink, but I managed half a PB&J sandwich and half a bagel.  I also ate a plum.  I stopped at the Porta Poti to have some privacy while I greased my behindy with Bag Balm.  I was going much slower now, but everyone else was too so I was seeing and riding with the same riders.  

    The wind was variable all day, but I noticed that every time one of the Flex Car support cars passed me, its flags were blowing straight back so I must have been going into a headwind.  Anyway, sometimes I would pump and pump to catch up with a group I could see ahead and sometimes when I caught them, I found that a pace line had formed behind me.  I head, “Thanks for the pull,” as riders would stream by sometimes, but I did my share of following too.

    The bridge over the Columbia was supposed to be a horror, but I must have hit it at the right time because I went over when there was very little traffic.  The expansion joints on the other side were pretty serious and the bridge went down fairly steeply so there were a lot of water bottles in the gutter.  Lost water bottles were a common sight as were spent CO2 cartridges.  I couldn’t figure that out for a long time until I realized they had been used to inflate tires after fixing a flat and then left on the road by the rider.  This is unsatisfactory; as is leaving your old tube.  We don’t want the reputation that truckers have for leaving tire junk all along the side of the road.  On the other side of the bridge was the welcome to Oregon sign and and a fair pull along the Columbia, against a headwind, into Portland.

    I stopped for a V-8 and a Sobe Green Tea along this stretch and later for some salty French fries and regular iced tea.  This last stop worked well and I went the rest of the ride feeling good.  I picked up another rider and we joined three others for the last ten miles to the finish.  I started to hope I could finish by 6:00 PM but decided it wasn’t going to happen.  Then I heard a woman saying, “You’re done.  You made it.  Turn in here for the finish.”  

    As I turned up the sidewalk, between rows of clapping spectators, and rode under the Finish banner, I looked at my watch and it was 6:00:38.  Thirteen hours for 200 miles.  That was a lot faster than my best hope.  There was an area where water pulses up through nozzles in the concrete, sort of a fountain, and it was packed with kids.  I watched them for a minute then stripped off my jersey and waded into it.  I washed the grit, sweat, and sunscreen off, cooled down, and broke the kids up with fits of laughter all at once.  

    I told Nina I wouldn’t be in before 7:30 so I sat down in the grass and watched other riders finish until she showed up.  Then we ate some pizza and walked to the motel room we’d booked before the ride.  The next day we went downtown to church and then to the Weeken Market where we saw lots of other riders, including fellow SIR rider, Greg Cox, who rode STP on his tandem with his father.  There were lots of people afoot and abike in Portland.  I think they are doing a better job than most cities in that regard.

    The Yellow Roadie is a wonderful bicycle.  Not so much as a hiccough all day.  Comfortable, fast, and agile.  Every serious rider should have a bike as nice.