Day 1
Seattle to Easton, Washington
86 miles
Bill and his Dakota model recumbent bicycle, ready to hit the trail.
Today was the day I had feared since last fall, when I first looked at the maps of our 3,300 trip from Seattle to wash, dc. We were riding 86 miles and climbing 3,000 feet over Snoqualmie Pass. My fears drove my training, and my training made the day one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever spent on a bicycle.
Majestic Snoqualmie Falls.
The weather, to begin with, was simply spectacular. First thing in the morning, we could see massive Mt. Rainier, standing tall against a deep blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. Temps were in the 70s down to 60s in the mountains, and we were favored with the biker’s best friend, a 12 mph tailwind.
Two other riders are aboard recumbents. I buddied up with David Ramsey, a 57-year-old family doctor from Mineral Wells, Texas. He’s riding a recumbent tricycle. It has two wheels forward that steer like automobile wheels, and one drive wheel in the back. The seat is barely a foot off the ground. We like the same pace, we are both interested in not divvying along the way, and, it turns out, we have bladders with similar durations. He’s also extremely helpful, as I found out when I blew a rear tire barely five minutes from the end of the day’s ride. He held up the bike while I removed the wheel, offered excellent suggestions, and he pumped up the tire.
I was not the only rider touched by the evil puncture fairy. A poll immediately after a delicious dinner of grilled salmon showed the day’s total of 18 flats. A malicious jerk who seeded a section of the highway shoulder with tacks was responsible for several of them.
The hardest part of the day was finding our way through rush hour Seattle traffic. Once out of town, we ran the gamut from lovely little roads running between towering Douglas firs to the I-90 interstate. Federal rules prohibit bikes on interstate highways -- unless there is no other way to go over a certain route. I-90 is the only way up a portion of the climb over the pass through the Cascades. We rode on the wide shoulder with 18-wheelers whizzing past our left shoulders. The noise was simply deafening.
The final climb up to the pass was on a little forest service road. In steep places we climbed slowly, barely 3.5 mph, in our bottom gear, not thinking about anything except keeping the pedals turning, 75 times a minute, watching the heart monitor ticking my heartbeat climb to 135 beats per minute, then stabilize. My goal was to use the least amount of energy; that meant climbing slowly, keeping my heart rate down, and relentlessly cranking, cranking.
Then we were over the top and back onto the interstate. We raced down the backside of the mountains, hitting nearly 40 mph on steeper stretches. We reached our camp in the woods just 10 hours after we started. My average rolling speed was 10.5 mph. We are happy with our pace. We made camp ahead of half of hte 40 riders on this exciting trip.
Bill and Ron Anderson, friends since high school.
