As it turns out, beer and an oversized pastrami sandwich are the perfect thing to start a ride out with, even when you have to climb several hundred feet to get out of Portland. Nothing keeps you more awake than a couple of relaxing downers. It looks like we might have to pick up some trucker speed on the road, boys.

I started off the week really sick. Jane had gotten it a few days prior, and I picked it up strong around Tuesday night. I went home from work on Wednesday and called in the next day. I never really questioned whether or not I was going to ride though. I had too much money on the line and a couple of friends that needed me out there. It was just a question of exactly how sick I was going to be when it came time to pedal.

Thankfully, I woke up feeling quite a bit better on Friday morning. I had my stuff laid out and got prepped to ride to the King Street train station with Chris. We got on a 7:30am train headed south to Portland to meet up with Joshua Bryant. We were annoyed from the start with a gaggle of older women who were obviously on a fun weekend trip to do some tax free shopping in “Washington’s Mexico” (I stole that phrase from Dylan, I love it so much). They told us that it was nice that we had “knees” in order to do riding like this. They claimed to not actually have any, despite their obvious leg bending abilities. Apparently, you lose them when you reach their age (their words, not mine). Unlucky for us, they managed to snag seats directly in front of us and started shrieking loudly at each other. Lucky for us, they all hit the bar up front for mimosas through the entire ride after we got rolling.

The rest of the train ride was pretty awesome. I will definitely be traveling it again in the near future with Jane. It was great to have your bike ready right in the heart of Portland without any parking obligations. Pretty much everything worth looking at is on the West side of the train; make sure you ask for a seat on that side.

Joshua met us at the station and we rolled over to Kenny and Zukes to get some pre-ride foods. There was a bit of a wait, but it was perfect since we were waiting on Josh’s wife to join us anyways. The sandwiches were unholy good. There is nothing a little (or lot, in this case) pastrami can’t help out. We had a couple of hours to kill before the start at Whole Foods in the Pearl district. Mike from ORR came down and met up with us and snapped a few photos. He was considering doing the ride with us but couldn’t thanks to work obligations. He decided to ride the first few miles with us on his Hilsen bike before turning off to do some off road riding. I really like riding with Mike. He has an infectious positive personality. I hope he makes it out with us next year.

I didn’t enjoy the run out to Tillamook nearly as much as I did the week prior. It felt much more like a slog thanks to my weak muscles and general negative mindset. It really sucks when you start to question a ride 1/10 of the way into it. “Hey, I could probably call my mom to come get us from here, no problem. She lives pretty close to here.” The great part about the 3 man team this year was our interdependence. If any of us didn’t complete the ride, all of us DNF’d. That kept my head in the game for most of the ride.

We stopped along the route for a scenic break along a hiking trail that overlooked a small waterfall and river. It was beautiful but my head wasn’t really there. I was kind of frustrated and wanted to keep rolling.

We reached Tillamook (130K) right as the sun started to go down, slightly ahead of schedule. Joshua said that we probably needed to slow it down at night so we didn’t get ahead of ourselves and I half-joked that I would slow us down without too much trouble. The local teenagers were out in numbers hanging outside of Safeway near the tables around us. Apparently it was a really popular place to do… something. I have no idea what or why.

We noticed my taillight wasn’t working right when we rolled out. Joshua helped me get it back up and running. I was freaked out because I didn’t have a spare on me. I had planned to go to REI to get some supplies (taillight included) up until I got sick and wasn’t able to find the time. He saved my butt right there.

I hesitantly packed along a Starbucks Doubleshot for the next stretch of road. They are pretty much the perfect rando fuel, but I’ve been trying to avoid dairy on my rides thanks to the issues with the chocolate milk on the 200K. We pushed along highway 101 for a bit before turning out off of Miami Foley Rd. It was an excellent stretch of road with pretty much no traffic to be seen. I was finally starting to enjoy the ride quite a bit, but was getting very tired. I decided to take a chance on the Doubleshot and was not disappointed. It was really an instant turn around for me and the ride in general (mentally). I made a note to myself to get a couple more at the next control in Astoria.

We eventually got back on to the heavy rolling hills on Highway 101 headed north bound. There were some serious climbs along the way but I was happy to have them in a weird way. They kept my legs spinning and my blood pumping so I was alert enough to keep awake through the night. Eventually we found a little lookout point somewhere near Canon Beach (I think) and stopped to admire the silhouette of what was still visible of the beach in the night sky. The waves were crashing along side of the road for miles and you could smell the salt in the air. Some of the city lights were visible, but we really couldn’t see much. If it weren’t so chilly, I could have easily laid down and took a nap right there. Actually, I probably could have anyways. Alas, we kept rolling. We were getting quite close to Astoria.

We turned off in Seaside on to the beautiful Lewis and Clark Roads. I’m pretty sure they paved the roads themselves. Very impressive, boys. We had to keep an eye out all night for frogs attempting to play chicken. One of them lost out to my back wheel.

We finally made it in to Astoria (236K) around 1:15am(?) and reconsidered the original plan to grab a beer before the brewery closed. I really wanted to fit that in, but I was really damn tired and would have probably just passed out on the spot with another beer in my system.

On the road in, there was a drunk couple parked in the middle of the road pointing at some roadkill. The woman was whining about how it needed to “get moving” or something like that. I’m not sure that it was going to go anywhere. Hopefully they weren’t going very far either.

We stopped instead at a convenience store that had hot coffee and Doritos: two of my favorite things. There was an older gentleman quizzing us down about our ride. He was playing Keno for what seemed like a very long time. I can’t really think of a much more depressing situation for a person, but you know… we all live different lives, I guess.

The three of us found a second wind with the rest and caffeine.  That was helpful because the Astoria bridge was a monster climb up over the water. I couldn’t believe just how big it was. Thanks to the time, there was only a single car that passed us as we rode over it into Washington. I couldn’t see most of the views, but it seemed like we were riding low across the water up until we hit the other side where we were treated to an empty, waterside road with smooth pavement. I was worried about this stretch to Raymond because it seemed to have very few turns and was on highways. I’m happy to say that I was wrong. The entire stretch was very pleasant. Joshua designed an amazing course for us.

Highway 4 took us along Chetlo Harbor before getting back on to Highway 101 north towards Nemah and Bruceport. Somewhere along the way, it started to rain on us. It wasn’t very serious at first, but it eventually turned into a full fledged drenching. I seriously regretted not bringing my shoe covers, but I figured that I was happy to have made it through at least half of the ride without needing them.

I was getting really hungry for a hot meal as we got close to Raymond (318K). I would have killed for some eggs and coffee at that point. It was just turning 6am when we finally got into town. Nothing was open. If we were willing to wait an hour, that might be different. We stopped at McDonalds. My heart sunk a little bit. It had been like 6 years since I’ve eaten anything at one. Those kinds of rules don’t really apply on a brevet though. Hot food is hot food.

We were greeted by the most glorious bigot that I’ve ever met. He was there with a friend and they were drinking coffee and chatting. He honed in on us right from the start. “Are you guys bicyclists? You guys are MANIACS!” He went on and on with the compliments. “Where are y’all from?” “Seattle” “I knew you were from Seattle. People from Seattle have a certain look. They look sophisticated. Not like us trashy folk.” I nearly peed myself on that one.

When I came out of the bathroom the two where having a debate on whether minorities or the Jewish ran the country. I think the Jews won that one. Then he let everyone in McDonalds know what he thought about Mexicans (the bad ones are trouble) and Chinese (you had better learn to speak the language, they are taking over). I had way more fun at McDonalds than I had any right to.

We sadly left to finish up the final 100+K of our fleche. I knew that we had some climbing ahead of us, and I knew that there were some gravel sections… but I had no idea. There was all in all about 12 miles of off road section and some climbs that put the rest of the rides hills to shame (on loose gravel, no less). Holy smokes was it fun though. The steep downhills scared the snot out of me, but they woke me up for sure. The rain was nice enough to not be too much of a problem while we were off road either. We had to dodge a few rain filled potholes, but there wasn’t any mud washing anything out. I probably had the most fun on those sections for sure. My Pasela tires really held up to the loose stuff well. Up until now, I hadn’t actually tested that much with the Boxer bike.

Our 22 hour control was at a Shell station / Casino on US-12. It wasn’t much to look at. They had “Tacos” printed all over the place and we got in to find no tacos actually there. I could have ate some damn tacos, let me tell you.

We had 2 hours to make it 40K. No problem, right? The flat gods had finally struck with a vengeance. Chris had one flat on his rear tire about an hour in to the last section. We had a little time buffer, so it wasn’t a big deal. We had to hustle to get back up to pace. I was crawling up the hills compared to them, so I told them to move on and I could catch them on the descents. That actually worked pretty well for the moment. Chris’ front tire went flat with 3K and 15 minutes left on the clock. We all pitched in to make the change as fast as possible (while still finding the offending glass) and pushed the speed hard to the finish line. We rolled in with 3 minutes to spare. Joshua grabbed a receipt from the ATM since nobody was around that showed us at 1 minute to spare.

We all had celebratory beer. Then naps.

Then more beer. Then more naps.