Jane and I started the labor day weekend with a free (thanks to my work) trip to a Seahawks game. We rode down to the 7pm start on Friday night and attempted to locate somewhere… anywhere… to lock up our bikes. After navigating our way around the entire stadium, we found one bike rack that fit maybe 12 bicycles.

The crowd arrived mostly pre-drunk. It was quite a show actually. We got into the suite level and had a good time with my coworkers.

I wondered aloud at what point the cheerleaders stop doing acrobatics, get breast implants, and join the “professional” leagues. They don’t seem to do much more than shake their T & A at that level. Not that I noticed or anything…

On Saturday we did our annual trip to Tacoma with Norman for his mom’s birthday. The first year his dad made an outstanding Hawaiian BBQ meal and we keep hoping for a repeat… but it doesn’t seem to happen. Regardless, we always have fun and get into trouble and embarrass Norman’s folks. This year we ended up at Billy McHales in Federal Way. Imagine Black Angus on a bad acid trip. Spiderman and some of the Monster’s Inc. cast accompanied our sit down meal. The waiter kept changing the pitch and tone of his voice like some method actor who didn’t know which of the 10 roles he was playing that day.

After getting back to the relative safety of home, we stayed up late watching exploitation movies from the 70′s and drinking… well.. a lot. It was a solid night of staying in. Drinking was sort of a theme for the week I suppose. I probably gained a few pounds in the process.

Sunday we had a few parties to attend (keeping with the theme and all) so we kept that ball rolling. Our friend Emily had another solid game (and cake) night and some of Norman’s friends had us over as well.

Monday I talked Jane in to driving a chunk of the SIR Fall 600k with me. Neither of us have been to Mt. St. Helens so it was a good excuse to enjoy the scenery without the searing leg pain. To tell the truth though, I was pretty jealous of the few bicyclists that we saw climbing the passes and bombing down the hills. It was definitely a pleasant enough day to be out on a bike.

It seemed to take quite a while to drive out to Eatonville. I think that was mostly because the highway leading out towards it has miles and miles of a strip mall hell catering to the Fort Lewis crowd. It should hold considerably less traffic early in the morning on the way to the actual ride.

Once we arrived, we didn’t spend long in town. It seemed to be a very cute little town though, with just a few intersecting roads and some friendly looking people.

I was working off of an assumed route based on what I could work up off of Google maps. I am not sure how many major roads we will actually be taking as a group. I know that Jan seems to be good at finding the off beaten paths… so we will see how the actual ride turns out. I am just commenting on what I saw on the roads that we were on.

The inclines started almost right away on some winding roads without a ton of shoulder. Traffic seemed pretty light though, and the scenery was pretty amazing from the start. What wasn’t heavily wooded was open to beautiful lake and river hugging roads. I kept bugging Jane to take pictures, but the cell phone camera was all that we had. If you want, you can pretend that I made contrast rich moody pictures in Photoshop on purpose. It heightens the sense of dread I have about this ride.

We paid to get into the Mount Rainier national park (it will cost 5 dollars to bring your bike in, unless they plan on routing it some other way?). The climb was pretty gentle looking, but very very long on the way up to the Paradise visitor center. This climb should top out at an impressive 5400 feet.

The traffic at the top was fairly intense at this time (maybe 2pm?). I am not sure if it is always like this, but keep and eye out for car doors as they can park almost anywhere on the loop up to the center as well as back down. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room to squeeze by, and definitely isn’t any room to enjoy the downhill like you should!

Once you get going towards Backbone Ridge, there is a pretty epic downhill  along a cliff side with views of the sweeping valley and trees as far as the eye can see. Everything was breathtaking.

After you get out of the mountains, there is some relatively flat farmland roads leading out towards the tiny town of Randle. It was a pretty boring section in the car, and I imagine it to be even more so on my bike, especially after the eyegasm experienced off of Mount Rainier.

From Randle, we picked up some roads that lead in to the northern end of Mt. St. Helens. Looking at Geoff’s pre-ride report, I think we took the wrong way up the mountain (although I think it was the only accessible by car). We took Highway 131 (NF-25) all the way to NF-99 and drove the impressive switchback filled climb up to the Windy Ridge lookout point (4035 feet). From Randle, the climb was about 30 miles and should be quite a leg breaker, even if I didn’t get to see the exact route to be ridin.

The view from the top was impressive, but not quite the pay off that I would have hoped for after such a climb. Still, it should be a challenge worth facing and the switchbacks will test your downhill skills. Some of the roads are very bumpy and broken though, especially on the downhill side. Use extreme caution.

The drive through most of the mountains seemed to take much longer than I expected so we decided to skip the second half of the ride and get back home. I’ve been over White Pass (4,500 feet) before, and it was a long drive to Chinook Pass. I still had to get up early for my “Monday” after all.

I’m expecting to be taking White Pass in the dark (or close to it), so it should be a whole new experience in that area. Hopefully the winds wont be howling quite as hard as they were around Naches the last time I was through there.

Chinook Pass (5,438 feet) remains an unknown element at this point, but I’ve never heard too much raving or hatred for it one way or another. I’ll see it once I get there, right?

Looking at Geoff and Jan’s ride times (both around 37 hours or so), I can’t help but feel the butterflies rumbling in my stomach on this one. I’m guessing I wont be getting even close to as much sleep as I did on my last 600k overnight.

This is going to be quite a test.