Seattle to Easton Washington - 80 Miles
By: Erwin
It's a little after 8pm and I am sitting in my tent after the first day of the Big Ride 2004. I am pretty much exhausted, but want to write a few words anyway about today's ride.
This morning at 6:30 all riders met at the start of the Big Ride on the banks of Lake Washington, on the east side of Seattle. Local media, a state congressman and the head of the American Lung Association stopped by to wish us best of luck and thank us for our donations. Altogether, 32 riders raised $260,000; one person (a Canadian, no less) raised as much as $28,000. Although all the attention lifted our spirits, I could not wait to actually get going.
Overall, the first day was hard, but doable. From about 7:30 to 4pm, Lucija and I rode 80 miles across the the Cascades mountain range. The day started out with a gorgeous ~10 miles around Lake Washington, which is beautifully set in between forests and gives a great view of Mount Rainier (a 14k ft, stand-alone peak that has a shape similar to Everest). We continued with three or four 1-2 mile climbs in Seattle's suburbs and surrounding farmland. At about 11am, we reached mile 30, where we had a great view of Snoqualmie Falls; 100 meters high waterfalls, set between great pine forests - fantastic!
After a 5 miles straight, we reached mile 40 by around noon. Here we went onto Interstate 90, a four lane highway! Apparently this is legal in the Western US and, given that there is no other road east, we were forced to take it. We basically biked on the shoulder (the break-down lane) of the highway. Big trucks passed by noisily, we went uphill and there was lots of debris on the road. In short, the whole thing was pretty unpleasant.
But at mile 53, we went off the highway and started the main climb of the day: a 6 mile climb averaging a 8% incline up to the Snoqualmie Pass at 3100ft. The climb was gorgeous, through forests with ancient redwood trees (among the tallest trees in the world), across lively creeks and finally up through peaks with some snow patches still on them. For comparison, the climb was roughly of the 2nd/3rd category, so not quite Alpe d'huez, but still pretty challenging.
After resting some at the pass, we continued again on I-90 for 17 miles. In a way this was more challenging, as the noise really wore us down. Luckily the going was mainly downhill, and the scenery was fantastic. Still, I am glad that after the next two days, we will generally stay off these busy roads for the rest of the trip. These last 17 miles were really tough on the motivation to keep riding; luckily the last 5 miles or so to our final exit were downhill; a really nice surprise after a long day.
Our Seattle hosts who did the ride last year told us that day one was the hardest: 5500 vertical feet of climbing and 30 miles total on the interstate was hard, particularly now, when our bodies are not yet in the phenomenal shape they will be in a week or two. A telling moment: at one big ride check-point, Lucija asked how many people were behind us. The answer... err... only 2 (out of 32)... to our credit, many people force themselves too much the first couple of days and pay the price later, through muscle aches, saddle sores and general fatigue... So far, we're both feeling great and we're looking forward to tomorrows ride...
By Lucija:
Well, since Erwin did such a good job describing our day, I'll just add a couple of "flavors":
1. There is A LOT of junk on the shoulder of I-90 that I never noticed from a car... lots of metal strips from truck tires, random crap that people toss out the window. Then there are the "things that fell from some truck load" - for a stretch there I was counting the different colors of wool yarn bundles (the kind used for knitting). I counted at least 5 color schemes.
2. Trucks on I-90 are LOUD. very loud. made me feel sorry for all the deer that have to listen to them day and night.
3. Erwin and I had to read the tent instructions in order to put up our tent
Photos
Erwin and Lucija the start of the Big Ride
Lucija (bottom right!) going up the Cascades on Interstate 90
View from I-90 - beautiful (but noisy)!