I was pretty determined to stick with Dylan, Joshua (up from Portland) and Chris all day. If only to use “That’s what she said” jokes and talk about relaxing on Abraham’s Bosom (man tits). 400K was bound to fly by if I was blinded by cheap laughter.

Saturday promised to be sunny and 75 degrees according to the weather people. I’m not sure we ever got quite there, but it was pleasant enough. The air was cool enough for me to leave my arm and knee warmers on throughout the 250 mile ride. The result is the weirdest tan lines yet. I have a stripe round my wrist and and oval over the top of my hand. There is a pink band around the middle of my calf. I wore shorts on Sunday just to show them off.

Joshua arrived at the train station on Friday afternoon after I got off of work. I rode down and picked him up. He was going to get to sleep on our luxurious couch for the evening. I made up some pasta and we drank too much beer while watching No Reservations on Netflix. I was pretty determined to get to bed at a decent hour. We had a boat to catch at 6am.

For some reason, I didn’t sleep especially well. I knocked right out at first, but eventually woke up around 2:30am and couldn’t really settle back down. The alarm finally went off around 4:15 and I got up to get some coffee brewing. It was going to be a long day.

Chris showed up at 5 and we rode out to catch the ferry out to Bremerton. I enjoy the ferry generally, but it was disappointing to have to work it into a ride schedule. The final ferry out of Bremerton (also the finish) was at 11:40pm. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to finish that quickly with stops. I decided to be content with a more relaxed pace with some good friends.

A choir started to practice their routine on the ferry to the start. They were quite good actually. One of the songs was “Rock-A-My Soul In The Bosom Of Abraham”. Because we are all eternally 12 years old, we laughed and made jokes all day about Abraham’s bosom.

Early sections of the ride were fairly scenic, but pretty heavy on traffic. The Hood Canal and beaches are definitely more popular once the sun comes out. We had some name calling and can throwing locals pretty much from the start. I wasn’t feeling really happy for most of the first half of the day. I never once questioned finishing the ride, I just wasn’t having a great time for a while. I was really looking forward to nightfall and the promise of lower traffic and possibly an even more relaxed pace.

By the time we got out to Westport, my spirits were rising. SIR had an awesome beach-side control setup with all the fixings (sandwiches and salty chips all around). The beach was packed with surfers. I think there may have been some kind of competition going out. It was parking lots were loaded up.

There was a couple of burner, poncho wearing hippies (white with dreadlocks, naturally) that were hanging out off the back of their car playing guitar. They were insanely baked and kept cat calling us in between jamming. They wanted to know where they could get our awesome blue shirts (“50 dollars? Aw man…”) and whether memberships comes with the “baskets” (handlebar bags). They shouted “randonneurs!” multiple times before we finally left that control. My only regret in life so far is not snapping a picture of them.

We rode down the highway towards Raymond and finally had a nice tailwind push for a change. The waves were breaking and life was good at that point. Even the fact that we were riding towards Raymond couldn’t get me down at that point.

We topped up on snacks and water and moved on to the Subway in Montesano. A tuna sandwich was on my mind for a while. Most of our stops were pretty luxurious. I didn’t feel any real need to push it that day. I think it worked out for the best. I felt comfortable at our brisk riding pace, then got some rest in between. We weren’t catching that last ferry, no matter how you looked at it.

Somewhere on our second trip through Elma, we saw one of the weirder things that I’ve ever seen on a ride. There was a young’ish girl, maybe 14, sitting on the sidewalk. She had her pants down to mid-thigh level and was eating a popsicle. When we rode by her, she turned toward us and got spooked. She dropped the popsicle in fear. It was a real (probably illegal) Kodak moment.

Potlatch State Park was our final control before the finish. We were treated with some hot Cup O Noodle soup and sandwiches. You can’t knock on instant ramen until you try it 200 miles into a ride. It is life changing at that point. Thanks to Joe Llona, his family, and the rest of the volunteers for putting up the time and energy on the controls.

We rode another 30K down SR-106 before turning off onto SR-3. We made a group decision to buy some beer at a convenience store here, with about 20K left to go. The bottles were split amongst handlebar bags. Most of them were stuck on the out of towner, Joshua. I somehow ended up with none of them.

We smelled the finish line and picked up the pace pretty considerably. There were (potentially) beds in our future and beer that needed drinking. Bainbridge didn’t see us coming.

We finished our 400K in 18 hours and 27 minutes.

Using our tired logic, we opted to miss the first ferry out of town (6:20) in favor of the much, much later (7:20) so we could “sleep in”. It was 3:00am by the time we settled down and stopped laughing enough to get to sleep. I’m pretty sure I got maybe 6 hours of sleep over the whole of Friday and Saturday.

Last night I fell asleep around 7 and slept in until I woke up for work this morning at 5:30. I could use a bit more sleep soon, maybe some beer too.