Seattle-to-Portland!

Catching up a bit here. 


July 17th & 18th I rode the STP on my Saluki. The STP covers a bit over 200 miles on mostly beautiful back roads, a few sections of annoyingly high traffic highways, and one Rail-to-Trail path, from Seattle to Portland. It's one of the largest rides in the US, with a limit of 10,000 registered participants. About 20% of the riders do it in one day, the rest in two days. (Two days for me!) Here's a link to the ride page on the Cascade Bicycle Club website. 

A little back-story.

I rode the STP once before, in 1996 on my Bridgestone RB-T. Although it was a fun ride and a complete success romantically (the start of a wonderful relationship!) it turned out to be a bit of a disaster physically. The ride aggravated an ankle condition that made it difficult to walk for a few days, and ultimately, impossible for me to ride a bicycle without pain for a long time afterwards. After a couple years of failed remedies I ended up giving up and buying a motorcycle, a path I very much enjoyed for the next ten or twelve years. Except, that is, for losing my favorite form of exercise and gaining about 40 lbs over those dozen years, and nagging doubts about a hobby that burned fossil fuels.... 

A couple years ago though I had a heart attack, and decided I needed to get back on my bicycle come hell or high water. Part of the trouble had been the fit of the 59cm RB-T, which was probably a full size too small for me, and, ahem, a complete lack of stretching. An MRI of the ankle revealed the physiological issue--a fused bone, and with new knowledge I fired up the RB-T again, this time with a Technomic stem, Albatross bars and a tall mountain bike seatpost--and a stretching regime I learned from the awesome heart attack rehab folks at Swedish--and began commuting to work several days a week. 

A few of my motorcycling buddies ride bicycles as well, and this spring we decided to tackle the STP. Things conspired, as they sometimes do, to make it time for me to get out of motorcycles (More on that: <http://bigbirdcage.blogspot.com/2010/05/selling-my-motorcycle.html>) and I used some cash from the sale of my F800GS to buy the Saluki, with riding the new bike on the STP in mind. 

The Ride

Over all the ride was fantastic. Chilly with a heavy marine layer for much of both days, with sun burning off the clouds by late afternoon, so not too hot. I rode with a new friend, Sarah Bergmann (an artist who is creating Pollinator Pathways), and our paces were perfectly matched. The ride logistics were impressive, with rest stops for food and water about where you'd want them, and well-stocked with decent food and barrels of Nuun and water. 

The first day's ride included what was purported to be the big climb of the ride--"The Hill"--a ~6% climb for a mile and a half outside of Puyallup onto the plateau. It went way easier than I'd expected based on the big deal it was made out to be. On the other hand, the section through the strip-malls of Spanaway was the worst of the whole ride, in terms of comfortable riding. Lots of monster pickups bugged about having to wait for bicyclists to pass so they could pull out of McDonald's. Ugh. Followed though, with a long section of leafy recently repaved Rail-to-Trail (which was fine and safe as long as you obeyed stop signs at the crossings) into Tenino. We camped in Centralia, the half way point, with I'd guess 6,000 other riders. A fun festival atmosphere. 

The second day's ride was even nicer than the first. Until we got to 30 in Portland, there were fewer sections of narrow-shouldered single-file riding along highways. Beautiful country roads. A couple nice 35 mph descents made the second day's climbing worthwhile. 

I got an unbelievable number of compliments on my bike (as people passed me!) including lots of "How old is that bike?" I tried the "I'm pretty sure it's an aught-one..." reply a few times. :) 

Riding into Portland was phenomenal. The finish line felt like the end of a stage of the Tour, with throngs of people cheering and high-fiving us as we rode into Holladay Park. I rode about 95 miles the first day in 11 hours, and a bit over 105 the next in 11.5 hours. I tell you, it feels like a real accomplishment. I am BACK as a bicycle rider! :)

What Worked...

• The Saluki was great. The fit and ride make such a difference. 

• I love the Campagnolo ErgoPower brifters. 

• 26-36-46 chainrings and 12-28 cassette were just fine for this ride. 

• The Berthoud saddle was very comfortable, considering I had about 250 miles on it before I started the ride. 

• The Gran Bois Hetres rolled well, and I had no flats. (Saw a LOT of narrow-tired folk by the wayside. I'm sure I made up the time they raced ahead on their skinny tires by not having flats....) I had another issue with the tire, see below.

• Hammer Nutrition Perpetuum in addition to real food at the rest stops worked really well for me. 

• The Nigel Smythe Lil' Loafer I got from Gino on the Rivendell list served well, along with the Berthoud 786 saddle bag. I'll need something bigger for fall rides where inclement weather is more of an issue.

... and Didn't.

• The Exustar shoes, toe clips and straps caused a fair amount of pain over the 200 miles. Though I spaced the left toe clip out by 3/16" or so to account for foot length difference, the toe clip seriously mashed my big toe. It may be that the shoes are just one size too small. I have a pair of Speedplay Frogs I will try at some point. 

• After I finished, a fellow came up to me and said "Hey, your rear tire is about to blow out!" Check it out: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/robharrison/4817049422/in/set-72157624011191725/> Bummer.

• I took the nice-looking Lezeyne pump off before the ride and switched back to my Zefal HP-X. The hose of the Lezeyne inline gauge developed a leak the first time I used it to pump up a flat. Fail. 

• Despite a pre-ride adjustment/tune-up by Bob Freeman at Elliot Bay Bicycles (because I thought it was my lack of experience in tuning that was causing the problems), the Dura Ace front derailleur did not shift the TA rings well at all. It's just the wrong shape. Required a lot of trimming. Getting the chain up into the big ring was nigh impossible. So either the ErgoPower brifters, the DA derailleur or the crankset (or the FD _and_ the crankset) has to go. Bob says a Super Record FD will shift the TA rings a lot better. I'll try that first. I'm not averse to going Sugino XD2 with ramps n' pins though. Not a purist, that's for sure. 

Here are some photos: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/robharrison/sets/72157624553775586/> (Clearly there is vast room for improvement in my ride documentation!)

An Even More Perfect Vehicle?

Storm Ride, originally uploaded by protorio.

I might as well jump right in on what looks to be the next direction here. I suspect I'm about to start chronicling my shift over the last few months from the obsession with motorcycles that held sway over the last twelve years to a focus on bicycles.

Here we have a Rivendell Bicycle Works Custom Protovelo that comes pretty darn close to being exactly what I have in mind for my next bicycle. It's a 650b randonneur. White 42mm Grand Bois Hetre tires, fenders, drop bars, cantilever brakes, front rack, leather saddle and classy Acorn bags. The finish is clear coat over raw steel.

For more info on the full build, please see Estaban D's flickr set on the bike, with lots of luscious photos.

The Perfect Vehicle

Melissa Holbrook Pierson's book The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles contains the absolute best passage I've read about the start of a ride. I've passed this book around to lovers, friends and relatives who thought I was crazy, at 43, to start riding a motorcycle. That was twelve years ago. I'm still riding, still loving it almost all of the time, and I still get a thrill every time I swing my leg over my bike, thumb the starter, and the bike comes to life. Riding a motorcycle is approximately 1,000% more fun than driving a car. And I dearly love my motorcycle friends.

I'm starting to vaguely though, in the back of my mind, somewhere, question just a little if the motorcycle is in fact, after all, the perfect vehicle.

I started riding motorcycles in a roundabout way. When I first moved to Seattle I didn't own a car and hadn't yet discovered motorcycles. I rode my bicycle everywhere. A good bit of my early time in Seattle I was unemployed, and I worked out some of my frustration with that on long bicycle rides up the Burke-Gilman to Kenmore and back, almost every day. Later, my office was on a houseboat in the U-District, and I lived in Wallingford. It was a lovely commute. Riding to meetings with clients was perfectly in line with the environmental ethos of my practice. In 1996 at the urging of a very cute woman on whom I happen to have a huge crush, I decided to ride the Cascade Bicycle Club's Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic, popularly known as the STP. Training for and riding the STP turned out to be great fun (and it worked out quite well romantically, I might add) but at the end of the ride I realized that my left ankle was in a fair amount of pain. I tried getting a bike fitting, tried custom carbon-fiber orthotics—nothing seemed to work. Eventually I went to Eric Sundine, and got myself an electric motor for my bicycle. It was an early model which functioned through friction—a rubber wheel spinning on the tire of the bicycle. I was living on Capitol Hill by then, and still commuting by bicycle to my office on Portage Bay. The electric assist however, was not strong enough to assist me up Interlaken. Just not enough boost to relieve the ankle pain brought on by the slightest mashing of the pedals. It also turned what had been an elegant, lightweight, beautiful machine—the most efficient means of transportation—into a heavy contraption that did not work particularly well. My sense of design was offended, and yet still the problem was not solved. In the end, I gave up riding my bicycle altogether.

In 1991 my old old friend Tom O'Brien, bandmate, housemate and classmate from architecture school in Toronto, had visited Seattle on his BMW R65, and had given me a ride around the block. My first time on the back of a motorcycle since I was a ten-year-old, flying down Route 322 in western Pennsylvania on the back of Ben Hawn's '63 ElectraGlide. That planted a seed. Then, five years later, on the wall of Scott Mantz's office on the houseboat, was a photo of his Ducati Paso in Eastern Washington, on the side of the road, in the Palouse maybe. Looking fast and gorgeous. The idea of riding a motorcycle started to take shape. Still two wheels...but a completely new world. In 1998 I bought my first motorcycle.

And what a trip it's been.