We woke up yet again at some ungodly hour. My stomach wasn’t quite settled with whatever I had eaten the night before. It wasn’t the way I wanted to start a probable 10-12 hour ride. I laid in bed for as long as possible to let it settle. Chris and I don’t have a lot of days off together and I didn’t want to ruin this one.

Chris picked me up and we started our journey out to Mukilteo. We got there much faster than we had imagined we would. The time gained was later spent trying to figure out the parking situation.

There was a coffee shop in Mukilteo open and some caffeine sounded like a fine idea. There was one guy working the counter and a line of about 6 people including a father and his two kids in front of me. The man at the counter was in charge of cooking and taking coffee orders. He decided his time was best spent trying to tune the television. We stood in line for awhile and the father in front of me jokingly said “You have a line here.” with a playful tone. He followed it with, “I have a hungry line backer here.”

The employee retorted, “Well the hungry line backer is just going to have to wait.” Chris got his coffee and we both decided to leave. I could get my coffee somewhere else.

The ferry was quick, but seemed to leave later than I excepted because we didn’t make it to a store on Whidbey until 8:20am, a full 20 minutes after our scheduled start time. We picked up the pace a bit and enjoyed our roll down SR-20. It was a surprisingly scenic highway with a nice wide shoulder.

Election signs littered the road sides since the season is in full swing. Some of the more disturbing signs had the actual faces of the candidates with their fake smiles staring at us as we rode by.

Everything seemed to be taking a long time to get to. I don’t think I ever really settled in to the ride. It wasn’t that I was riding slowly, it is just that I wasn’t ever really “there”. Still, we made it to the first control in Coupeville with half an hour to spare even with the late start and an early back tire flat from Chris.

One of the easy highlights of the day was the trek up towards Deception Pass. The traffic was a little tight so everyone had to slow down quite a bit, but it was worth it for the amazing views. I’ve been over once before in a car, but this was quite different.

We really live in a very beautiful area of the country.

SIR always find some very scenic, low traffic roads and this day was no exception. Every turn we made (a lot of them to the right, oddly) held another water hugging road through neighborhoods. La Conner held the promise of some hot food so we stepped it up a bit to make it in to the half way point.

We skipped the brewery in La Conner for the sake of time. We went to a grocery store that looked an awful lot like an oversized convience store. Still, I bought a bit more than I probably should have and enjoyed it all.

It took a while for my stomach to settle back down once we hit the road again, but things went well enough. We rode some familiar looking roads from an old training ride done early this year (April?) through the farms in and around Conway, Washington. We kept expecting headwinds and were pleasently suprised to be spared. You never really know what you’ll get once you get away from the hills. Chris had a nice tempo going and I just did my best to hang on. My muscles were starting to feel the 80 miles or so they had in them.

There are 3 things in life that I’m sure of. Death, taxes, and my hitting a wall somewhere on a long ride. It usually isn’t an “I can’t go on” kind of wall, just something that will make me question my sanity. Somewhere before Arlington, Chris and I were treated with a nice short and steep climb and I cramped up behind my left thigh. It was a sharp and short pain but it stopped me in my tracks. I had to get off and stretch. That was really a first for me too. I’ve never had that happen anywhere, much less that location. I popped some extra Endurolytes and got back on the bike though.

Chris nursed me in to Arlington where we stopped at the Haggen grocery store. Chocolate milk did wonders. It is truly a miracle elixir of some sort.

Our cue sheet showed an alternative route along a bike path between Arlington and Snohomish. Getting off of the roads sounded nice enough, so we sought it out. In this case (as in most cases), “bike path” is short hand for “really wide sidewalk with a lot of cross traffic that wont notice you”. We got about 2 miles down it before it stopped and seemed to disappear. We didn’t want to play “find the trail” all day, so we rerouted back on to the original course. The reroute punished us with a pretty brutal climb. Still, our final control of the day was only getting closer.

The Snohomish control was about 115 miles in to the 130 total. We found a gas station to stock up on the last goods needed for the day (ie. Advil for me). It was starting to get dark and both of us realized that neither of us were smart enough to bring a helmet light. It wasn’t a huge deal since there were only a couple of turns left. My E3 lights street signs pretty well off of level ground too.

When the sun was down but still giving out its last bit of light, we hit a beautiful portion of road that hugged the Snohomish River Rd. It was a very surreal moment and helped me reconnect the dots as to why I love doing these rides (sometimes you can forget out there).

True to SIR tradition, the route provided one last super painful monster climb right at the end of the ride just to piss my legs off. The ride back towards Mukilteo gave us 4-5 blocks of what felt like 10-15% grade. My thigh started to flair up again but I managed to crest it before having to stop for a second. Oh boy did it hurt.

We had a few more rollers back to the ferry and finished with a respectable amount of time on the clock. I had a few more lows than I wanted, but the highs made it more than worth it. Thanks to Chris for the ride.

p.s. In the future, we’ll do better in getting the word out to other rando’s who might want to join. We were both so busy in the weeks running up to this ride. Thanks for reading!