On the 4th of July my mother is going to have a barbecue with some family and friends. Jane and I used it as a good excuse to make a weekend out of it.

We didn’t get to go camping last weekend, so I wanted to take another long weekend. Hopefully this one will go better than the last. The plan is to trek down with the bikes in tow and stay in downtown Portland at the Ace Hotel.

Note: Images taken (with love) from the Ace Hotel website

We have been wanting to stay there for a while. In fact, we check the status of reservations every time we are down in Portland. They have always been booked up. We are going to stay Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and bike in and around the city for fun. Aside from the amazing rooms, Ace sports a Stumptown Coffee inside the building. Amazing.

Since this is the weekend before Seattle to Portland, there will be the obligatory “tough training ride” for Jane and I. We are going to tackle a route from a cue sheet I got a while back from a Rapha event.

When the Handmade Bicycle Show was in town, Rapha put on a series of events including a roller race and an organized ride. We didn’t make it to the ride, but I grabbed some cue sheets and I’ve been itching to do the ride. It packs quite a bit of climbing in to less than 40 miles, and should prove to have some great views of the city. Jane is going to be more than ready for STP this year.

I’m still deciding which bike to take… choices choices….

Speaking of Rapha, Jane ordered me some new gear the other day off their website. I haven’t regretted a single purchase from them yet. Everything is expensive, but honestly worth it. Call it retail therapy.

It has been a weird week. I’m just glad things are starting to get back to normal.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 7:07 am and is filed under bicycling, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.