FAIR DAYS OF AUGUST

Northwest Washington Fair last week. Lotsa heat, lotsa sun, lotsa Bake spinning 'round and 'round on the Sizzler. Kid next to him looks like she's holding on for dear life. Or trying to get comfortable so she can take a nap; one of the two.

Rode from Glacier to Artist Point Saturday during what passes for a heat wave here--temps in the 80s! Didn't hear from John or Scott so I headed up on my own. First time riding a big mountain since the Cayuse crack at RAMROD a few weeks ago. Felt good to get this one under my belt. Met a guy named Bob from Edmonds. (That's him below.) He was on his annual birthday ride wherein he rides twice as many miles as his age. He was doing 110 that day. From Maple Falls (I gather) to Artist Point, back to Bellingham and then Lummi Island. Kind of a cool idea. I didn't talk to him that long but he said he'd ridden the Alps, the Pyrenees, Alpe D'Huez, etc. Said he didn't do RAMROD this year b/c he was riding in Colorado and he's not doing the Mount Baker Hill Climb because he'll be in Japan. So I think he's some sort of captian of industry who spends his disposable income in the same way I would were I to have some.

RAMROD 2008

Team Unattacked attacked the big one, Mount Rainier, on Thursday as Johnny "America's Little Buttercup" Clark, Scott "Pink Boy" Young, and Mike "Cayuse Pass's Whipping Boy" McQuaide, took part in the 25th annual RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day).
At 151 miles with 9,750-feet of elevation gain, it was killer strenuous but truly spectacular. The best ride Scott and John had ever been on, they said. Above, we're about to start our journey at 5:15 a.m. under cover of semi-darkness. Below, check out the cool lenticular cloud hovering like a halo about the summit of 14,410-foot Mount Rainier. The thing grew and expanded throughout the day and at one point looked almost like the rings around Saturn.

Put on by the Redmond Cycling Club (http://www.redmondcyclingclub.org/), RAMROD is certainly one of the best events I've ever participated in. The food is good, the organization and volunteers are tops, and the course can't be beat. There're two big climbs--10 miles up to Inspiration Point and 11 miles to Cayuse Pass, both which top out at roughly 4,700 feet. In between, there's a smaller one to Backbone Ridge, which is fairly harmless.

Below, please note musicians who were up and playing for the pre-ride breakfast at 4:30 a.m. That's a tough gig. (I said to Scott, "Can you imagine having to play music at 4:30 in the morning?" To which some guy who overheard me, said: "Can you imagine having to listen to music at 4:30 in the morning?")

The first climb doesn't start 'til about 60 miles in so there's lots of time to eat, drink, try to warm up (it must've been in the high 40s at the start), as well as find lots of other wheels to tuck in behind. I did RAMROD four years ago and then we road all the way to Paradise, this time they had us top out Inspiration Point, about 600 feet lower. Which I was kind of glad about; for whatever reason, I wasn't feeling super stellar. (More on that in a moment.) The following descent was ridiculously fun, fast, and most important, felt relatively safe, wrote this author who's usually a pretty conservative (not politically, er anything) descender. Smooth roads, not a whole lot of turns, zero to very few cars, and long, long straightaways where you could see far ahead of you.

"There's no amusement park ride that's as fun as that," Scott said. (All the descents were like that in fact: screamin' meamie fun.)
After Backbone Ridge came the 11-mile, 2,500-foot climb to Cayuse Pass where I partook in an involuntary reenactment of Floyd Landis's famous crack on La Toussuire during Stage 16 of the 2006 Tour de France. (That's the one that spurred his epic beer-, testosterone-, whatever the hell else-fueled comeback the following day.) At the bottom of the hill, which starts at about mile 100, I didn't feel good. A mile into it, I felt less good and a mile later, blurted out an inadvertent "Oh fudge!" (or something that sounded like "Oh fudge!") and told the guys, Sorry, but I'm cooked, cracked, knackered, and no good to nobody nowhere. I was like a balloon with the air let out; I had no power at all.

John and Scott were great, super patient and just hung with me as we conquered the hill at a blistering 7 miles per hour! Oh well, as Tony Soprano would say, What'ya'gonna do? Below, see photo of a completely spent McQ after having finally made it to the top.

After the descent, we were treated to sandwiches of our choice and the best tasting icy cold can of Coke I've had in my entire life. From there, it was about 30 miles of downhill and flat during which the indefatigable John and Scott pulled about eight of us into the finish at Enumclaw. Below, that's us at the finish. Our stats: 151 miles with 9,750 feet elevation gain. Eight hours 57 minutes of riding time, about 10 hours and 15 minutes total time. (We finished at about 3:30 p.m.)
Coming up in the next few days: the harrowing story of lost motel reservations, our new digs next door to a casino and airport, and Mike wrestles with a roll-out bed. Here's a photo to whet your appetite:

MOUNT ERIE RIDE

Ah yes, Mount Erie ...
... let me just say that this is probably the hardest frickin' hill I've ever ridden. (Perhaps contributing to that impression is that Scott Young, this other person, and I had already ridden 40 miles to get there, much of it into those Skagit headwinds.) Mount Erie Road climbs 900 feet in 1.7 miles, 600 of that in the last mile. And the leadup from the south climbs about 400 in probably 1-1/2 miles. Above, see Pinkboy Young doubled over the handlebars in exhaustion and me wearing an expression of a mouth-breathing goober whilst I try to catch my breath.
Afterward, Scott, the other person, and I stopped at the charming Lake Erie Grocery for refreshment. The retired gas pumps were stuck $1.45 per gallon. Below is Mount Erie, also renowned as rock climbing hotspot.


On the way back, we added a loop around Lake Samish and a mini-Donut ride out Marine Drive to total 100 miles. With 4,600 feet climbing. RAMROD, here we come!

BACK FROM NEW JERSEY

The Bake boy and I traveled east to the Garden State for a week to visit family, in particular me ailing pa who does not do well right now. But, as fellow Jersey-ite Tony Soprano would say, What'ya'gonna do?

Perhaps to distract myself from the serious nature of our visit, I borrowed a bike from Chris Kunkel, with whom I graduated Hoval some twenty-nine years ago. He's a Cat 3 racer who recently scored an Orbea Orca. (Lucky Bastard.) He leant me his steel Independant Fabrication ride, which was great fun. That's me above posing rather uncomfortably in front of the Musconetcong River. Despite what you may have heard about New Jersey, there are some really beautiful parts as hopefully these photos show. We stayed at my lovely sister Kath's house (that's how she makes us adress her, Lovely Sister Kath) in Port Murray, a bustling hub of about 6 in Warren County. It's New Jersey's Skylands, as they call it, and while maybe that's a bit hyperbolic it is hilly and mucho pretty.
The hills be not big nor is they long but they're relentless if, like me, you look for narrow, off-the-beaten-path roads. Of which there are hundreds. Many with interesting names like Foul Rift Road. (Near Belivdere on the Delaware River). Above is Guinea Hollow Road, near Cokesbury and Califon. These are tiny towns settled in the late 1600s, early 1700s and the roads I rode were probably traveled by Hessians and Revolutionary War types back in the day.
Chris's bike didn't have an odometer but I had my altimeter and as I said (did I?) I looked for hills. I climbed some 11,000 feet in the three rides I took which probably totalled 120 miles. So that's about the same as RAMROD. (Which I found out the day before I left that I got into--Woohoo!) Unlike RAMROD (http://www.redmondcyclingclub.org/), these are short and steep, not at all long and sustained. I'd be cruising along the Musconetcong at an elevation of 400, then take a right up some winding road and in not much more than a mile, I'd be at 1,000. So it was alot of that--steep ups, steep downs. (Perfect training for Western's North Shore race, which was cancelled last month because of snow.) The photo just above is Turkey Top Road near Beattystown. Did I mention that Chris's rear casette was a 12-23?

Lots of these roads are on the Hillier Than Thou Ride, a killer, hilly painfest put on each September by the Central Jersey Bicycle Club (www.cjbc.org/). One of these years I plan on coming back and riding it though I think it's usually the same day as the Mount Baker Hill Climb (http://www.norkarecreation.com/). On our last full day, Baker and I got in an awesome hike to the top of Point Mountain, which overlooks much of the Musconetcong Valley. It required a little bit of rock scrambling but boy, was it fun. To cap it off, later that night I found a deer tick on my back. Fingers be crossed that I don't succumb to the dread Lyme Disease. And of course let's redirect our hailing from Stijn Devolder to Tom Boonen who, last Sunday, took his second Paris-Roubaix! Can't wait to watch it on Sunday on Versus (www.versus.com/cyclysm).