In case you’re wondering, the title is a direct quote from a coworker when I told her how long my bike ride was going to be. I’m still not sure what that means.

I’ve been sitting on this ride report for longer than I should have. My brain couldn’t even process all of the things that happened and the places that it had been in such a short period. Right when I got around to reaching a lucid state, we went on vacation to Portland.

Chris and Emily were nice enough to drive us out to the Monroe start just in time to get our bike gear checked. It was a different ride from the start with tons of people in from across the country and even a few international randonneurs. Not every club shares our love of fenders and mudflaps, so it was interesting to see what everyone planned on sitting their asses on for the next 3 to 4 days.

After morning announcements, we got off to a large bunch start with everyone sticking together for the most part. It was a chance for most to chat with old and new friends alike.

Chris, Joe Platzner and I stuck together all morning on the rollers out to Cumberland where the first round of volunteers were waiting to sign cards. We skipped the first convenience store and opted instead for a bathroom shortly after in Nolte State Park.

The weather was typical Pacific Northwest with overcast skies and temperatures creeping around the 60′s. Eventually, on the way out to Eatonville, the clouds parted and we got our first hint of warm weather. The Truly Scrumptious Bakery in town was a welcome respite from the sun. We made some time to get sandwiches and coffee to make up for the early lack of caffeine. Everyone at the bakery was really nice and on top of their game handling a group of dirty, time constrained cyclists.

Familiar roads, some quiet and some busy, brought us in to the last safe haven before the climb to White Pass, Packwood. I have some interesting memories of camping outside this Shell gas station with Matt Mikul on my first attempt at Jan’s 600K. I was nursing an Achilles tendon problem and a disappointment in myself for not finishing.

I felt fairly strong while climbing White Pass. It was our first major push of the weekend, so I was still fresh. We stuck it out as a group though. I was happy to have the company. If there is anything I’ve learned from this year, it’s that a ride with friends is always better than a slightly faster ride by yourself.

We got a little scare when Chris took a spill off the road on the climb up. It was a moment of inattentiveness (one I’ve made myself) that lead to a crash and tumble on to some rocks. His bike was fine and he seemed to be okay with a couple of Tylenol. We got back to business.

The sun was starting to set by the time that we reached the top of the summit. There was a large wedding party at the lodge and everyone seemed to be well lubricated. Joe crashed the party to use their bathroom and we all suited up for the descent. It was a nice feeling to be on the forgiving side of gravity once again.

There was one final control before the overnight manned at Clear Lake with some gratuitous (but easy) rollers thrown in after the fact. The sun was officially down for the count and we had a mostly downhill run to the finish line for the day. Still, it was 50+K of downhill and felt like an eternity when all I wanted to do was get some rest for the night.

We reached Naches Middle School, our overnight, at around midnight if I remember correctly. It was all a little hazy at that point. We hit the showers and I laid down to what was easily the least comfortable couple of hours of sleep that I’ve ever gotten on a gym wrestling mat.

I woke up with the grace of a zombie.

As is the theme of this ride, we woke up with a climb ahead of us. It was an out and back to a campground near Chinook Pass at about 3,600ft. It was a steady grade the entire way, but it seemed to go on forever. Round trip from Naches, the climb and descent lasted almost 150K.

Chris and I lost Joe along the way and latched on with Ian Shopland to ride Old Naches Highway and a few backroads out towards Fruitvale. I got a flat on a climb and quickly heated up while changing my tire. We were definitely on the east side of the Cascades now. I felt totally out of my element riding here.

As soon as we rolled in to Fruitvale, I got a bad vibe from a bunch of locals who were upset with the group. Some older, grumpy trucker used me as an example to bitch at the cash register lady in Fred Meyer. It was a low point in the ride for me. I knew that Day 2 would be the toughest to slog through since I still had so much ahead of me.

I made a phone call to Jane and let her know how I was doing. I was already missing home quite a bit. It is weird what a couple of days away from loved ones will do to you mentally.

Out of Fruitvale, we picked up the Yakima Greenway Trail and dodged some meth addicted fisherman before getting on to SR-24. This road carried us past acres and acres of the Washington’s finest hops. Between that fact and the heat, I was getting pretty thirsty. We had almost 70K of arid road between Yakima and what would be our next water stop, so we had to conserve our water pretty well. Even with 3 bottles on board, that wasn’t the easiest task.

The Vernita rest area was a little oasis for us. I kicked off my shoes and we all laid out in the grass for a while. Lots of the locals were quizzing us down about our route. I’m never sure whether I should give the long or the short version. “We are going about 780 miles” leads to all kinds of questions about our route but “We just came from XX” doesn’t usually explain why I look like I’m on the verge of death. Oh well.

We climbed a short but crazy steep road before a long farm road stretch in to Mattawa. It was at the top of this climb that we saw Irene, a rider from Colorado laid out on a SIR supplied mattress. Dan Turner was standing in front of the sun so his shadow would cover her face. She looked like she was out cold. I was kind of jealous that she was laying down and I wasn’t. Funny, the stupid shit that runs through your head at times like that.

Mattawa was a town seemingly built by and for Mexican farm workers. They all seemed pretty confused/amused that we were riding through their city in neon dayglo at just around sunset on a Sunday evening. Some of the local children were showing off their department store BMX bikes by doing burnouts in the dirt near SIR’s tent.

We got back on to the road just in time for an unholy amount of flying creatures to attack us near the river along SR-243. There was no orifice that you could breath out of that would have been safe from this plague. I’m still picking them out of my hair.

There were a few ups and downs left (mostly the former), but we got into the overnight at Quincy High School about the same time as we got into Naches the night before. It was more of the same – shower, eat, sleep, eat, ride.

Ian, Chris and I hooked up with Gary Prince for a quick start out of Quincy and on to Dry Falls Visitor Center. We even had a little time in the bank to stop at a pretty awesome coffee shop in Soap Lake for breakfast #2. I couldn’t possibly eat enough food that weekend…

Dry Falls was just stunning. I really hope to go back and visit it again soon.

We had 40K to go before our next control in “Farmer”. It was the longest 40K I’ve ever ridden in my life. I’m pretty sure it was all uphill, the entire way (okay, maybe not). The sun was beating on us like a hammer, the winds were whipping and there was no shade to speak of. The scenery was completely stunning, but I was hurting and felt just painfully slow. Gary was nice enough to hang back with us. Ian was feeling strong and took off after Dry Falls. I don’t blame him one bit.

The control was in an old barn or… school house or… I don’t even remember. The heat of the day pretty much destroyed that memory. It was cool and there was food and water. I remember that much. I ate the heck out of some sandwiches and Doritos that weekend, let me tell you.

Chris and I lost Gary and got on with a guy named Dan Barbasch out of Ithaca, NY. We seemed to climb a bit higher and higher along the route before finally dropping in a wonderful descent into Bridgeport. I was never quite so happy to be going downhill, fast.

The next control was in Malott, right after a freshly paved stretch of road with a bit of descent. It really felt like heaven to ride on. Sandwiches were dispensed at the control and I tried to catch a cat nap in the SIR chairs. Fatigue was really starting to catch up with me and I knew that I still had a mountain pass ahead of me before getting to the overnight control. Things were looking up, but I was just really damned tired. Every single one of my contact points (feet, butt, hands) were hurting in one way or another.

It was right before Loup Loup Pass that Chris noticed his Achilles tendon starting to really hurt. He did his best to spin as much as possible, but the pass starts off with a really steep pitch and only seems to let off occasionally. I hung back with Chris (tired myself, anyways) and we slowly made our way up the climb. We stopped a couple of times for a bit of rest. I’m pretty sure that he was basically spinning with one leg and was totally unable to stand up for more power (and to get off his butt). I felt really bad for him, because it only seemed to get worse as the day went on.

Gary Prince caught up with us a couple of miles before the top. He was riding the 1000K and had an extra 20K to do that day. Needless to say, we were poking along pretty slowly. He hung back with us for encouragement and to generally just bug us (sorry, Gary).

I bombed down the other side of the pass trying to keep an eye out for deer. There is a high rate of dead deer on this stretch and I noticed 4 or 5 out. Thankfully, nothing darted out in front of me. Gary, Chris and I hobbled in to the overnight slower than I thought possible. Gary was nice enough to keep quizzing us to keep everyone awake. It was all stuff that I wouldn’t know if I were “sober” though. “How many rotations of your wheel at X speed…” I’m pretty sure I wanted to punch him by the end of the night. I mean that in a very loving way of course…

Emily was helping man the overnight and I was pretty positive that Chris was in a lot of pain. We took a wait and see approach to the next morning as to whether or not Chris was going to keep going. It would have been really easy to call it a ride there. This was important to him, but there would be other Cascade 1200′s in the future.

We finally got to sleep on real beds with real pillows. It was a glorious overnight control filled with happy volunteers and riders content with the ability to see the end in sight.

The next morning we ate breakfast and got our gear on. I went out and started talking to Chris Ragsdale and some of the volunteers about the situation. They suggested that we could immobilize the ankle if he wanted to give it a try. Normally you would use bandages, but nobody had that on hand. What is the rando way to do it anyways? Duct tape, of course. To my shock, Chris was in to the idea.

They wrapped up his ankle and we set out from the Mazama control to conquer Washington Pass (5,477ft!) and Rainy Pass right after that (4,855ft). We started to ride better than we’ve ridden in a couple of days for some reason. The end was in sight. Other than the ankle, the vicious saddle sores, the blisters on both of my feet, and general fatigue, I think we both felt 100%.

I honestly cried on the last couple of miles to the top of Washington Pass. It was so insanely stunning and such a beautiful cap to an epic (yeah, I said it) weekend. I couldn’t even handle it. That pass (not the finish) was everything that I had worked toward. From the moment I read about randonneuring, I knew that this was the ride that I wanted to do. PBP next year will be awesome, but Cascade was in my backyard. What a backyard it is.

We stopped for photos at the top and made our way down to, then up and over Rainy Pass. The descent wasn’t nearly as fun as it should have been. There were heavy head and side winds whipping us around the road and generally killing speed. Despite getting enough sleep the night before, the general lack of it all weekend was starting to catch up to me. I felt like I was making stupid mistakes with bike handling.

Around Diablo Lake, I asked Chris if we could pull over for a nap. He didn’t need any convincing. We both passed right out in a field of grass for about 15 wonderful minutes. It made all of the difference at that point. We were able to hammer a bit harder to the bottom and in to Newhalem for some much needed food.

The next official stop came shortly thereafter in Marblemount. We ran in to Dan Jensen and Jeff Loomis and swapped stories about what all hurts. Everyone was in pretty good spirits. Half of the day’s ride was behind us.

Chris and I got out ahead of Dan and Jeff somewhere going towards Darrington. We stopped for a quick bite to eat and to let our loved ones know that we only had about 100K left. We got about a mile down the road when Chris coughed and froze up on his bike. I kind of freaked out because I couldn’t tell what was going on, I just knew that something was wrong. We came to a rolling stop and I helped him get off his bike. His cough pulled a muscle in his back that he had fell on Day 1 going up White Pass.

We had him lay out on the road and tried everything to get it to calm down, but nothing was helping. He told me that he was going to call it a ride. That was the hardest part of the weekend. He rode until completely broken. I wanted to just stay there with him. We were so close. It wasn’t really fair.

Dan and Jeff caught up with us and had a Irene from Colorado along with them. They waited with me while the sag wagon came and picked up Chris and his bike. It wasn’t fair.

We got back on the road at a pretty fast pace. I just wanted to finish the damn thing already.

The back roads took us almost to Arlington and in towards Granite Falls. After 70K of relatively flat roads, the climbing started back up. One could generously call them rollers, but there were some really stiff climbs. They felt that way with 4 days of riding in my legs anyways.

Somewhere along the way, it started raining a bit. Pretty soon, the skies opened up and it was a full on drenching. We were joking with Irene that she was now getting the full Seattle riding experience. Truthfully though, it was raining even harder than normal for a while. This ride wasn’t going to let us coast on in to the finish.

Irene mentioned that she was getting cold. It was wet, but it wasn’t especially chilly out. I asked her when the last time she had eaten was. It had been a while and she started to bonk a bit. We all stopped together and made sure that everyone was eating and had some warm clothes. We had a couple more bonk scares on the way in to Monroe, but we stuck together as a group and stayed safe. Thanks to everyone for helping me finish.

I came in to the final control with an hour and a half to spare. It was a bittersweet finish. Chris and Emily were there to give me congratulations and hugs.

You’ll see us out there again in 2012.

I can’t even to thank all of the volunteers who helped put this ride on. It is a wild undertaking and most of them got as little sleep as we all did.

I’m positive that my words didn’t do it justice.

You can check out some of my 100+ photos on my flickr account. As of this writing, I still haven’t labeled many of them. I’m getting around to it.