RAMROD 2006

Yesterdays Adventure was RAMROD - Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day. The ride is put on by Redmond Cycling Club of which I am a member. It starts and finishes in Enumclaw Washington. Many riders who participate in this ride are racer types and treat it like it is a stage of the Tour de France. They fly though the course so quickly I wonder how much of the incredible scenery they are able to take in while sucking up packets of gu. From Enumclaw you head to Eatonville, on to Elbe where you find a very cute town with a train ride you can do on another trip, between Elbe and Ashford a sculptur Dan Klennert lives with giant T-Rex made out of car parts in his front yard. Also many chain saw carved bears are in the woods in that area. Ashford is the home of one of my favorite inns - Alexanders Country Inn. Alexander's has a trout pond and for dinner fresh caught trout and some of the finest blackberry cobler is on the menu. Also Ashford is home to many of the places that you would stay if you were planning to climb Mt. Rainier including Whitakers Bunkhouse. Just past Ashford you enter the park. Longmire in the Park is home of the Longmire National Park Inn which also looks like a cool place to stay. The climb to Paradise is amazing (actually I like climbing it better from the other direction). The National Park Inn at Paradise is closed for renovation right now so the ride didn't go there this year. A descent down to Box Canyon brought us to the famed Chocolate Croissants then a climb up Back Bone Ridge. Cahuyse Pass Sucks not much to say about that the climb comes during the heat of the day and the pass never seems to end - luckily after descending the club hosts a sandwich & Soda stop to fuel you up to fight the headwinds. I spotted my friend Denise on the Climb up Cahuyse and we met up with her husband Steve and finished the ride together with big Steve pulling us through the headwinds.

Olympia Broiler 200K Brevet

We left home at 5:00 am for a 6:00 am start over 60 miles away. We should have left earlier - we showed up for the ride after the mass start. After loading the bikes with the requisite stuff and signing in we departed the parking lot of the Fish Tale Brewery at around 6:20 am. As we were loading up the bikes, one rider returned she had gone the wrong way at the start and another rider had a quicker deployment then us and started the ride just before we did.
This is a beautiful ride and we made the first control just at the closing time - so a late start wasn't costing us much time - but the hills and the mugginess were starting to get to us. One hill was 10% grade going up and 10% going down the other side and then we reached Cramer Hill Road which the nice farmer at the roadside pointed out that he thought it was a 20% hill - probably more like 14%.
After we reached Vader in the afternoon - we spent a bit too much time there cooling down and I probably had needed a real meal at that point but just didn't feel like eating much. I also filled my sport bra with ice - ice is supposed to feel cold against your skin but it didn't. That should have been a good warning sign.
We headed out of Vader with the recumbent rider who was about to pull the plug but decided to carry on. I about quit the ride at Tennessee Hill when I started puking and couldn't get my heart rate below 160 bpm. Sitting under a tree in some wood chips for about a half hour and getting some more calories down my gullet soon put me to rights and I was able to continue. We stopped in Chehalis where we encountered another cooked rider who had been at the air conditioned convenience store for over an hour. We hung out here for about a half hour and cooled down and departed when the temperature outside had dropped to a breezy 97 degree Fahrenheit. From there the day improved and we finished the ride at 8:45 pm - which was out of the 13.5 hours which are allotted for a 200 kilometer ride. The ride was actually 236 km and the temperature average for the day was probably 90.
Out of 53 starters - there were 40 finishers so we were not alone in our inability to deal with the heat.
Highlights of the day included a beautiful ride through the Capitol Forest - I'll take the D Line its a really nice road. Hearing about Martha jumping in a kiddy pool to cool off and Allison being afraid the redneck with the rotweiller was going to come out and yell at them for being on their property.
My first DNF :-( - but it was TOO DAMN HOT!!!!

My Free Bike

After dinner on July 4th we cut behind the neighboring hotel and I found a
bike in the garbage. It's a green Trek city bike with no 26"wheels and a broken rear derailur. The fork best of all is not suspension - the saddle will
have to go go go. We brought it home with us to Seattle - don't know if
we will try to track down if it was stolen or not. Husband has free
wheels that had been left behind in another apartment so with a new
derailur and the wheels installed it will be rideable again. At that
point I'll decide to keep it or pass it on to a bikeless friend.

Northwest Tandem Rally 2006 / Day 1 / NWTR 2006

One of the best parts about participating in Tandem Rallies are the mass starts. Yes we are in this picture - I'm wearing the camelback with the STP logo.


Our friends Greg and Ruth Sneed - aren't they just the cutest in their RAMROD jerseys.



Our friends Thyce and Amy Colyn - we were surprized to see them without their panniers and the 10 pound chain they carry everywhere.



Lunch with friends at the Rally -
After lunch we picked up the long route (we had started on the short route) which gave us a 55 mile ride. This was our longest ride on the new Tandem