|
Group Health Seattle to Portland |
|
|
Team Bikeman -
Race Reports
|
|
Written by Joel Liefke
|
|
Sunday, 16 July 2006 |
Group Health Seattle to Portland (STP)
July 15-16, 2006
How do you describe the Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon bicycle classic, one word…long! I opted again this year to do 140 miles the first day, and cover the remaining 70 on day 2, staying in the lovely accommodations of Castle Rock High School, a town of roughly 1,500 people in the middle of nowhere.
First off, a little history on the ride. This was the 27th annual Group Health Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic; I’ve officially done 3 of the 27. This 212-mile bicycle ride is the largest multi-day bicycle event in the Northwest, with up to 9,000 participants riding from Seattle to Portland in one or two days. Now that we have that out of the way, off to the report.
Day 1 – 5:45am (PST) The ride takes off from the University of Washington stadium parking lot. This year I saw all kinds of odd bikes and even more odd individuals. While waiting for the start, I saw this roughly 20 year old on a big wheel sporting a 24” front bike tire. The bike was covered in leopard skin velvet and it still had the plastic wheels on the back. Did I mention he had a Viking hat? Odd to say the least, but typical.
The start is always interesting as there are people of various biking abilities all crammed into one small area trying to pedal through traffic, but we did make it out unscathed this year. The first 25 miles winds you through the residential outskirts of Seattle which is nice as there is no traffic and it is relatively flat so you get time to wake up. We hit the first feed zone at roughly 7:15, sponsored by REI. Note this is the best feed zone on the ride, minus the finish and it is only 25 miles into the ride, but oh so worth it. Odwalla, cream cheese tortillas, bananas, bagels w/ peanut butter, and 10,000 out houses! Most of the other stops have maybe 5 tops. For some odd reason, REI packs em in!
For the next hour or so we work our way through the valleys outside of Seattle towards Tacoma. Nothing spectacular, minus the guy who was on a carve skateboard, and the other guy who was on a Razor Scooter doing the ride. The skateboard guy was phenomenal…he wasn’t pushing w/his foot, but instead was carving the board to progress it. The guys calves were the size of kegs!
Not much else happened the first day, just a lot of miles out on the open road, except for the feed zone stop in Centralia. Now Centralia is a quaint little town out in the middle of nowhere, famously known as the place where the 1st case of Mad Cow disease was found. The bonus about this stop is that they offer free Starbucks coffee, yeah the east coasters wouldn’t understand, and creamsicle popsicles. Both hit the spot on a hot day. From there we continued down the road for another 20 miles until we hit the worst town, in my opinion, in the whole continental United States, Napavine.
In years past, we’ve stopped here to get beer for our first night festivities, and that is about the extent of our stay. However, we had to stop this year and enjoy the festivities of the spectacular Napavine Festival. They closed off a whole city block to drag race cars down the middle of town, to the applause of rough men, and even rougher women! Pretty funny when you have this crew of people dressed in leather, spikes, motorcycles, and muscle cars intermixed with a plethora of spandex clad bikers. Interesting to say the least and we did make it out w/only minor harassment from an 8 year old girl wanting us to buy her “sports drink” for $2 (also known as Kool-aid). However, we obliged and made the young entrepreneur happy.
The last 25 miles were again, pretty much just long miles in the increasing hot sun. We got to Castle Rock around 3:30, with roughly 7 hours in the saddle averaging just above 20 mph. This is when the fun begins! We get into Castle Rock High School, and as in years past, they have the gym floor covered in wrestling mats for all of us bikers (roughly 200 or so) to sleep on for the evening (note: people can choose where to stop on day 1, either 75, 100, 120, 140, or 160 miles into the ride, we opted for the 140). We get in, shower up, and spread out our sleeping bags. The guy next to us is a chatty chap and we get to know a little about his days events prior to him going to bed at roughly 6pm, yeah, he was quite tired. My friend Phil and I come back from dinner to see this guy sawing logs, and all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, I see a snake heading for the man’s bag which is also being used as his pillow. Well to cut to the chase, we wake up “chatty chap” and let him know that there is a snake under his head, which to his stunned, just awaken state, he didn’t go as postal as we had thought he may. I grab the snake, which in turn decides to use me as a Honey Bucket (for reference: http://honeybucket.com/) and then attempts multiple times to bite me. Granted this isn’t a cobra, nothing but a small garter snake, so it doesn’t cause any pain at all when it gums me. I start walking out of the gym w/it, and set it free before heading back to my sleeping bag for the night. I think I end up going to bed at roughly 9pm, just as the carve board guy gets in…140 miles on a skateboard? I gotta give the guy props for that. Ahh….a good night sleep!
Day 2 - 3:30am (PST) WRONG…..3:30am and snake charmer and some other guy are up and waking up everyone around them, not to mention the guy four over who sounds like he is trying to inhale a Cadillac, he’s snoring so loud. I try to go back to sleep, but at 3:50, they wake me up again, so I decide to turn on the iPod and just relax. 5am, BAM, the gym lights come on waking up everyone, talk about brutal. Phil and I decide to get up and go have some of Castle Rock’s finest Mountain Hash as they call it, combination of potatos, sausage, eggs, green onions, and ketchup…not too shabby. So we get on the road roughly around 7am, and start out on the final 70 miles which is all slightly uphill.
For the first 10 miles or so, we warm up our legs and get ready for the days adventure, thinking about nothing else but the McDonald’s McGriddle sandwich at the St. Helens McDonalds feed zone (pretty much the only reason we do the ride because we can justify the caloric intake with all the miles we are riding.) We hammer down through Castle Rock, Longview, and Rainier, averaging around 20-25 mph the whole way. My knee starts to bother me, but alas, we get to McDonalds, and all is better, minus the sketchy punk rock kids going to the Warp Tour in a nearby town, again out of place in spandex and these kids in skater clothes, but oh well. A couple of the skaters and a real nice older lady ask me about the ride and Bikeman, so I give them a quick schpeel with which they are appreciative and then I sit down to the McGriddle. Two words for this food of the gods, pure heaven! For those of you unfamiliar w/ this tasty nuptial, it is two small maple syrup infused pancakes surrounding eggs, sausage, and cheese. We hang out for about ½ hour and then we’re off again to the finish line.
At mile marker 190 or so, you start getting pretty grouchy, it happens here just about every year. Reason being is that for some odd reason, Oregon has difficulty figuring out how far it is from one place to another and posting that for the good community to see. So one road sign will say 10 miles to Portland, and then 2 miles down the road, you’ll get one that says 12! You definitely go through a mental battle at this time, as you just want to be done, as your back is getting sore, damn knee was starting to really hurt, and your just tired from biking for pretty much 2 days. Thank you to the Oregon Department of Transportation for dropping out of math class in your youth! Makes us STP folk very happy!
Well at about 11:30 we get to the finish line, and it’s off to the showers, which in this case is a giant tractor trailer w/showers built into the trailer. (imagine 8-10 nasty smelling bikers cramming into a trailer to shower next to each other, ain’t a pretty site in anyone’s mind I’m sure). We walk around the finish line events area, get our yakisoba and beer and head on home. Another year, another 212 miles, and fun times. Although it isn’t a race, it is still a fun event which I’ll probably due again next year! Dammit, I left my Bikeman shorts in the hybrid tractor trailer/showers!!!! Off to the lost and found or else, I’ll be placing an order soon Big Al!
Joel Liefke
 |
|
Show/Hide comment form
