One Ride Down…33 Rides to Go

Well, Dear Reader, we rode our first ride, start to finish. Woot! Maybe the Jinx is gone and we’ll make it to the end. Yeah, the human is slow, but with first day fresh legs, not too bad. As the riders say…start slow and get in shape by the end of the first week. We shall see.

We did take it easy, always dropping into our wonderfully decadent 30/32 gear if the gradient popped up over 9%. But most of the day was less than that. Still we kept it steady with no strain on the legs if we could avoid it.

Oh, wait…where did we go? Oh, today was fun….well 80% of it was fun. We were up at the crack of dawn to catch the 7AM ferry to Whidbey Island. Once on the island, the fun began. Rolling hills. Ups and downs. Little towns. Fancy houses. Forests. As long as we were off the main highway, it really was quite nice. When we got stuck on the main highway? Uh…not so nice. Saturday on an island that tourists love? Yep. You can imagine it. So we savored the backroads when we could.

And…we shared those backroads with runners. Lots of distanced high fives and shouts of encouragement in both directions. Oh, and it wasn’t a little 5K, 10K or even a half or full marathon. Nope. Ragnar Relay. 220 mile relay race over 48 hours. The runners were nearing the end of the race. Too bad those runners couldn’t enjoy the downhills like we could — wheee…..makes the uphills almost worth it.

Tomorrow…we cross the mountain….wish us luck and strong legs!

Details: 95.3 miles, 5394 feet of climbing, 20.5 strain

Reading List:

The Alice Behind Wonderland Simon Winchester. He skirted away the issue of whether Dodgson was….uh…dodgy, but just for the history of photography, the short book was worth a listen.

The Third Chimpanzee Jared Diamond. We aren’t buying all of his conclusions, but still an interesting collection of selected scientific papers.

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