Archive-URL: http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=sir.10309.0034.eml
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 23:21:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kent Peterson <peterson(AT)halcyon.com>
Subject: [SIR] The SIR 1000K

The SIR 1000K
September 26-28, 2003

Random Notes by Kent Peterson

----------------

Jack Kerouac once said "first thought, best thought" when asked about how
one should write, while Truman Capote described Kerouac's work by saying
"that's not writing, that's just typing." Well, I'm too busy and too tired
to write, so what you are reading now isn't writing, it's just typing.

--------------

A set of Conti Sport 1000 tires will work great on a 1210 kilometer ride
from San Francisco to Portland, the 300K ride from Portland to Issaquah
and three weeks of 50K/day commuting from Issaquah to Redmond. If a man
keeps using those exact same tires for the SIR 1000K, he is asking for
trouble.

When you ask for trouble, you usually get it.

I had 4 flat tires in three days. If you have a flat in Enumclaw and think
you have found the glass and don't need to change to your spare tire, you
are wrong.

You will find this out on Orville Road when you get your second flat and
then you will be smart enough to change to your spare tire.

You will flat your spare tire leaving the exit ramp near George a day and
a half later when you run over some junk on the freeway shoulder.

Your last flat will be in Startup on the third night and it will be dark
and you'll be down to your last decent spare tube and you'll limp in with
a persistent slow leak that you just know is caused by some tiny Michelin
wire that is best found in the bright light of some restful day. At night,
you can ride for 10 kilometers, stop, pump, repeat until you get in.

Smokey has loads of clearance for big tires. After this ride, at least for
the winter, he'll be sporting big, fat, tough tires.

-------------------

There's a good coffee shop in Elbe. It is impossible to loose time by
stopping for coffee. This fact has been verified many times.

It's really, really, really a good idea to load up on liquids in Randle.
Normally I ride with two water bottles, but I bought two of those Sobe
drinks that come in cyclist style water bottles. These spare bottles came
in super handy on this ride.

On the climb up St. Helens I found a combination 8/10 mm open end wrench,
which is a handy thing for cyclist to have. It may have been inadvertently
dropped or perhaps purposely discarded in a desperate and misguided
attempt to save weight on the climb.

When you have ridden up to Wakepish and the route does not turn right to
go up to Windy Ridge, you might get the idea that while you know the road
to the right goes up, the road going straight probably levels out. This is
not even close to being true. There is something called Elk Pass and it's
way the heck up there.

A Litespeed Blueridge can descend off Elk Pass much faster than a truck
towing a trailer can. Wayne and I both verified this fact.

The control at Northwoods was super cozy. Phil and David a great job
making sure that everyone was fed, consoled and informed of what lay ahead
(more damn climbs and descents).

When climbing up to Oldman Pass in the dark, you can get within about half
a meter of a deer. The deer will act very casual as it strolls across the
road.

Wayne Methner, Peter Beeson and I all descended together. Yes, I can see
in the dark and descend at 50 kph with just LED lights. Peter has one of
those expensive rear hubs that buzzes like a miniature chainsaw when it
freewheels. I've a super cheap Shimano RSX rear hub on Smokey and it's
blissfully quiet.

Peter is a little too frisky sometimes. He missed the turn before the
control at Northwoods and had to backtrack. He did something similar on
the second to last turn before Carson Hot Springs. Wayne and I were more
cautious and were double checking the cue sheet when Peter rocketed off.

Somehow I'd pictured Carson Hot Springs as being some kind of luxury
resort. I was very wrong. It's got kind of a creepy vibe to it, like you'd
expect that it's run by some guy named Norman who has his mother stuffed
up in the house on the hill. Actually, I have no idea what the owners are
like but at 10:30 PM on a Friday night when you realize that the only
guests there are the folks from SIR, you do get the feeling like you're in
reel one of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Terry and David did their best to
make things cozy, but it still wasn't the kind of place I'd pick to take a
shower.

I slept for a few hours in Carson and left shortly before 2:00 AM.
Twenty-five kilometers later, I had breakfast at the Bridge Mart but it
didn't really wake me up. I tend to get sleepy right before dawn, so I
pulled over into a rest area and slept for another forty-five minutes. A
seven ounce Thermolite emergency blanket is so much nicer than a crinkly
space blanket.

Early on route 142 just a bit before dawn, I pass within about half a
meter of a really big skunk. He's just standing on the road shoulder as if
to say "yeah, I'm a skunk, don't mess with me." I don't mess with him and
ride on.

When the cue sheet says that the Chevron/Foodmart in Klickitat opens at
6:30 AM, this is pure fiction.

If the course designer has only driven the route in a car, he may tend to
have and overly optimistic view of reality. For example, he may describe
the terrain beween Klickitat and Goldendale as being "rolling with
excellent views of the mountains." In my experience "rolling" terrain does
not include switchbacks. "Rolling" terrain does not have one of those
yellow signs at the top of it with a truck zipping down a triangle.
"Rolling" terrain does not climb 1000 feet in 3 miles.

When there is a State park with bathrooms and water a few miles before the
summit of Satus Pass, it might be a handy thing to have it noted on the
cue sheet.

Eastern Washington is actually part of Mexico. All the people doing the
work in the dry lands were Mexican, the signs were in Spanish and all the
country looks just like Mexico. I mentally rehearsed the phrase "agua por
favor" in the event I'd run out of water. I was very glad I still had the
spare bottles strapped to my rear rack.

Parts of Eastern Washington/Mexico smell like grape jelly. This is kind of
neat for the first thirty seconds and kind of annoying after an hour or
so. I guess this is the smell you get when grapes are cooking on the vine
in the 90+ degree heat.

There is a tavern at the intersection of 241 and 24 which is a place
called Horse-thief Point. Later when I'm back at home and look at my map,
I'll see that the tavern was exaggerating on the sign that proclaimed it
to be in "the middle of nowhere". In fact it's in the Rattlesnake Hills
where something called Dry Creek dumps into the Black Rock Valley. Another
feature of interest is the Arid Land Ecology Reserve. And the place is not
to far from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. If Hanford ever blows up and
spews radiation across this landscape, I doubt that most of the locals
would notice and it doesn't look like it would change the ecology too
much.

I was totally out of water when I got to the Vernita rest area. BTW, I'd
been munching Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies and bite-size Payday bars
all day. A Powerbar costs about $1.39 and really isn't that tasty. $1.39
will get you a box of 12 Oatmeal Creme Pies and they are darn tasty. They
are easier to open than a Powerbar as well.

I hadn't seen any other SIR riders all day but I suspected Ken Bonner and
maybe some of the others may have passed me when I napped before dawn. At
Desert Aire the friendly gas station clerk tells me that Bonner came
through about an hour earlier. He hadn't seen any other riders, so the
rest of the folks must be behind me.

The Wanepum Dam looks really cool at night.

It's a long haul into Ephrata and it's pretty windy there. I get in at
12:18 AM. Peg is running this control. Ken Bonner has already been in for
a while and will be leaving around 2:00 AM. I eat and then sleep for a
while in the same room as Ken. Ken sleeps like a machine that's been shut
off. No sound whatsoever and it's like he's dead. Later when he wakes up,
I wake up as well and we chat for a bit. Ken is aiming to finish in the
early evening, I'm just hoping to finish sometime Sunday night instead of
Monday morning. Ken takes off and I go back to sleep. When I get up around
4:00 AM, I see a lot more bikes parked at the motel. I have some breakfast
and leave at 4:20 AM.

There is quite a headwind as I head out of Ephrata and onto Sagebrush
Flat. Sagebrush Flat gets the "sagebrush" part of its name because about
the only thing growing there is a lot of sagebrush. It gets the "flat"
part its name for the same reason that three-hundred pound tattooed Harley
riders are sometimes named "Tiny".

Shortly after dawn I'm riding through the Moses Coulee. This is an
interesting, spectacularly desolate part of the world. Somebody is selling
one acre plots in an area called Rim Rock for nineteen-hundred-ninety-five
dollars and the houses/shacks/trailers that I see out there are
interesting. It's kind of like Burning Man without the art. I don't see
many humans but I do stop to examine a tiny creature resting on the road
shoulder. It's about the size of a quarter and looks like a cross between
a spider and a crab. It's not moving so I poke it with my gloved hand in
my best impersonation of the Croc Hunter. Crikey! It's a grumpy one! It
waves long front legs at me and I decide to leave it alone. It has that
look of something that might be really toxic. Later at home I do a web
search and find out that this little critter is in fact called a crab
spider. You can see a picture of it here (scroll down aways)

http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/eb1548/eb1548.html

There are a lot of lumpy bits between Ephrata and Waterville.

It's really fun to have a coasting bike for going down the Orondo Grade (6
miles at 6 percent).

It's really fun to have a tail wind when you are rolling South along the
Columbia.

In Leavenworth I have a big iced latte and as I'm checking out I find out
they make caffeinated mints. This is a handy thing to have.

It is a warm climb up the Tumwater Canyon and I sleep for 15 minutes at
the Nason Creek Rest area.

A few miles before the Steven's Pass Summit, I leave my two full Sobe
water bottles on guardrail posts. I figure I don't need the water now and
some other cyclist might be running dry.

On this climb I find a ratcheting 1/4 and 5/16 combo closed end wrench.
Tools just have a way of finding me.

I crest the pass at 5:15 PM. About six weeks earlier I'd seen Dan Henry
route markers going off from the main highway at a thing called the Iron
Goat Trail and then rejoining the highway several miles further down. I
figured this must mark the old Cascade Highway route, so I take it down
instead of the main road. It's really a cool little road, all paved with
no cars at all on it. If anything, it's maybe a tiny bit longer than the
main route, so I don't feel guilty about deviating from Highway 2.

Shortly after I rejoin Highway 2, Todd rolls up behind me. We ride
together into Skykomish. I leave Skykomish before Todd but he later
catches me and pulls out ahead. When I flat in Startup, I know I won't be
catching up with Todd anytime today.

I pull into Mark's garage at 10:54 PM. Chris has wonderful food all ready
to go and she and Todd and I chat about the ride. Ken Bonner is long gone.
I call Christine and tell her I'm done with the ride but I'll be staying
at Mark's tonight. I'll wait until light and in the morning I'll borrow a
new tire and tube for my ride home.

I wake up when the some of the others come in. Everyone agrees it was an
epic ride. And we had great weather. With this course, we could have hit
snow in the passes. Just a few weeks before there had been a snowstorm at
Stevens. Todd's computer listed about 11,000 feet of climbing for the
first day and 9,000 feet of climbing on each of the following days.

That's it for now. I've got to get some more sleep.

Kent


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