Flying Wheels on an Alternate Day

Sunday morning we got up early to meet up with our friends Steve and Denise and their friend Keven to ride Flying Wheels on the day after the official event. Well the good news was the porta potties were still en route the bad news was yesterdays nice weather was gone and we got to do another century in the rain. We stopped for lunch at the Hitching Post Cafe in Monroe breakfast served all day and Denise let us in on the the secret nice bathroom by the Hawaiian restaurant in Duvall. Yes Duvall has a Hawaiian restaurant and I'll be eating some yumi poi there on another day. Steve called for a stop at Sandy's espresso in Carnation Washington - a late day shot of espresso got us finished with the last 25 miles.

Cascade Bicycle Club set up the route with options which go like this.

50-mile loop - Redmond to Carnation to Fall City to Issaquah to Redmond - three climbs between 1/2 to 1 mile in length. Perfect preparation route for the two-day Group Health STP rider.

65 - mile loop - take the 50-mile loop and add in Duvall and one more 1-mile climb.

100 - mile loop - take the 65-mile loop and add Snohomish and Monroe and another 1 mile climb for a total of 5 good climbs. Finish this route and you will be ready to ride Group Health STP in one day!

Okay but does this make me ready for PBP? Well not yet but we ended up doing this a bit slower then I would have liked but had a really nice day riding around scenic Snohomish and King County. And it was Keven's first century ever so he is now more then ready for a 2 day STP with an overnight in Winlock home of the giant egg. I need to decide if I'm going to ride STP - either that or do a 200k permanent that weekend.

Oregon 600 km Brevet - Hot Springs and Dunes

Waiting for the start - chatting with Joel from Blackbirds.org - Joel was riding a stunning classic Jack Taylor. He has a lot about Jack Taylors on his website.



Susan France gives us the preride briefing and send off - most important part of her brief do you all have rain gear? It's going to be a wet one.



Hot Air Balloons at the start - I want to do this next year when we are in this area for the NWTR in McMinnville Oregon.



More Hot Air Balloons - Vista Balloon Adventures is the Company.



Detroit Lake



Trash at a control - lets see Ensure, Chocolate Milk and Water - yes a herd of rando's have been here.



Us at the finish - yes I'm now a SUPER Randonneur and qualified for Paris-Brest-Paris.

Photo's courtesy of Clyde, Lesli, Cecilanne, Lynn my fellow adventures of the weekend

Here is the ride report my husband wrote up - I would add to it - thanks to Nate for pointing out the Deli in Amity Oregon they had awesome breakfast burritos for $1 each I think I could have kept eating those all day but alas just one there and one 20 miles later from my front bag. It was a wet weekend so glad I was prepared but should have had my Outdoor research overmits with me and even my Burley jacket didn't cause me to overheat as it usually does.

The Amy and Bob report:

The Hot Springs & Dunes 600K was discussed by some as being a less difficult 600K. On the first day one should have just had a gentle climb up to Breitenbush and a shorter one up to Elkhorn, then on the second day, over the Coastal's to the ocean and then back over the Coastal's to the finish.

With a 25% percent DNF rate, I guess it wasn't an easy one.

On day one we started off into a nice stiff head wind, Mr Head Wind made us work extra hard all the the way to Breitenbush and mixed in with the wind there was some wet and cold rain, and the Breitenbush climb was rather gentle, heading back it started to get very wet, and then we started up Elkhorn, but heading up to Elkhorn was a bit more work, and there had been some road wash out and one section of the road, so we had deep gravel for a mile. Adding to the fun, a white SUV went racing up the small road doing about 90, he went by me three times on the way up, he turned around once to try driving down a dirt road, but he couldn't, so he drove by again, 20 minute later the sheriff drove by, but the sheriff failed to find him, on our return down from Elkhorn, when we were returning on the gravel section, the crazed SUV passed us on the gravel doing about 60, it was a shame that he didn't slide off the road. As we headed back to Newburg we discovered that Mr. head Wind had gone to bed, so didn't get any help from a tail wind, but it was still wet out. To prevent a sleepy attach I had Amy do a Caffeine Hammergell at 1:00ish, this helped her stay perky for the rest of the way into the overnight control.

We managed to get 2 hours of sleep at Newburg, but slow packing up meant we left the control about 25 minutes down on the clock, but the first control of the day was 70 miles out on the coast. We found some good breakfast buritos at a deli in Amity which helped get us through the first 70 miles, since we were heading west, Mr head Wind was coming from the west this time, and with the wind there were dark clouds and made us wet, so it was a slow wet push to coast and over the top of the Coastal's, the last ten miles to the ocean was nice as we dropped 700 feet of elevation, of course going down large descents that you know you need to go back up, are the best for moral, some one said that they were going to need a helicopter to get out of there. But we made the control with enough time to spare to sit down and have some good breakfast food to stoke the turbines. We stopped at a very funny place in Pacific City that proclaimed its self the home of the Giant Chicken Fried Steak we did not eat such a beast. Then we have to good 4 miles out to the information control then it was back up the climb. We made steady progress up the climb, then once we crested the top, we had a tail wind, with a little help from the tail wind, we were able to put over a hour on the clock as we headed back and even have nice bite on the way in. We ended up finishing in just under 39 hours.