SIR
300K
March
25, 2006
by
Kent Peterson
As we wait in the minutes before 7:00 AM
on Bainbridge Island Washington, Jan Heine and I chat about space and
time and bicycles. We are here today with various other members of the
Seattle International Randonneurs to ride 300 kilometers around the
Hood Canal region of western Washington state. Each randonneur has his
or hers own reason for being here today. For some the goal is to be
fast, for some the goal is to finish within the time limits. For some
of the riders this is a brand new experience and the distance is the
farthest they have ever gone. For others, it is something else.
This route is one of my favorites. It has hills and mountain views and
the scents of salt water. I've been here many times but each time is
unique. Even on a perfect day this route is tinged with dread for the
final section of the ride traverses a region populated more by hills
than humans. The Tahuya Hills are to the Seattle Randonneurs what the
Necromicon is to H.P. Lovecraft, they are the horror that defines us.
But we don't talk of that this morning, we talk of the road ahead, the
sunlight and our goals. We are creatures shaped by hope. Kilometers of
riding have brought us here, 300 more kilometers will take us home.
Jan is here for speed. He maintains the challenge by pushing against
the clock. I am not here to be speedy but to be enough. I am here with
a single gear ratio: 42 teeth on my front sprocket, 16 teeth on the
rear. My bike is steel and strong and it does not coast. I am not
interested in learning if this is the optimal solution today, I believe
my bike will suffice and sufficiency is my field of fascination.
The early morning ride from Issaquah is cool and quick and entirely
routine. There is some delay at the ticket booth but eventually we all
queue up for the ferry and ride across Puget Sound to Bainbridge
Island. At 7:00 AM under a very blue sky we roll north on SR-305,
over Bainbridge Island, across the Agate Pass Bridge and into a
beautiful day.
Although we all ride the same route, we each have our own rhythms.
After the gentle run up Big Valley road, we turn onto the rolling hills
of SR-3. With my fixed gear and lighter weight, I climb faster than
some of my companions, although the fleet of pedal are already many
kilometers further on. When the roads go down, higher gears and higher
weight have the advantage and I watch other riders tuck and coast as I
explore the upper limits of my cadence.
The fixed gear has a precise and unchanging mathematical certainty. I
don't need a cadence sensor, speed and cadence are literally chained
together and I know the math not just by heart but also by lung and
leg. Speed in miles per hour times four point seven equals cadence. 32
miles per hour equals 150 RPM. The upper bound is somewhere just beyond.
Port Hadlock is a quick pint of milk, a bottle of Gatorade saved for
later, a card signed and quick snack from a pocket. On the chipseal
that is Center Road, Galvin and Jon and Dan and I chat while we roll
and we marvel as we return to smooth pavement. At Quilcene we join 101
but Walker Pass speeds and slows us, each according to his nature.
The nature of this ride, with it's early beauty and ominous promise of
dark and hilly doom, plays tricks with memory. Almost every year I ride
this, almost every year I forget the rolling hills of 101. It's terrain
I enjoy and often take for granted. It's perhaps too easy to take all
of this for granted: a sunlit day with white mountains in the distance,
the sounds of calling birds above the water, the scents of salt and
shellfish, a club of woolen riders who make these distances their own.
Nearing Hoodsport I'm riding again with friends. The efficient control
would be the mini-mart gas station but we are not mere machines fueled
by raw calories alone. Kevin and Wayne have already parked their bikes
in front of the Hoodsport Coffee Company and Mark Thomas shows the
wisdom that made him president of RUSA and follows their intelligent
lead. Juice and bagels and coffee drinks follow with all the speed a
slightly overwhelmed coffee shop can muster. Gandhi knew that there was
more to life than increasing it's speed. Today we know this as well.
But we also know that night will come and the hills are calling and we
must go.
Now is the time for most of the others to be quicker and a few to be
slower and the ride across SR-106 turns out to be a path that is for my
steps alone. On the shallow waters of the southern edge of the canal I
watch the ripples in still water, where there is no pebble tossed, nor
wind to blow...
I grab a quick pint of milk and chocolate bar in Belfair and roll
toward Kay's Corner along Northshore Road. It's more rolling terrain,
more houses on the water, more mountain views. Some clouds are
threatening to organize but there is still more clear than cloud, more
hope than fear.
Kay's Corner is wonderfully equipped. As the club has grown, the
infrastructure of volunteers has more than kept pace. In past years
this checkpoint had been as simple as a plastic bag with stickers for a
control card but today SIR has a tent and people with things like hot
chili, hot beverages, water, Gatorade, chips, cookies, and
encouragement. Since it's my nature to not quite be comfortable with
comfort, I don't linger too long but I do appreciate this bit of
civilization on the edge of the Tahuya Hills.
Mark, Peter, Wayne, myself and some others all wind up leaving the
control within a few minutes of each other but the Tahuya Hills measure
each of us as individuals. It's a darkening landscape of burned out
cars, abandoned appliances and good old boys shooting up a
gravel gully. A chip-sealed road winding its way up and down and down
and up and over a fractal landscape resembling nothing but itself or
perhaps a crumpled map once tossed away in disgust and then retrieved
without any attempt to straighten the wrinkles. We ride this land with
vague notions that the journey is some kind of reward, perhaps a reward
not savored in the moment but endured and appreciated in retrospect.
But retrospect is down the road, past Seabeck, past Anderson Hill Road,
a future that is only hope and now is the time of turning the pedals, a
simple application of mathematics and muscle, gear ratios and gumption.
Now is the time when the stubborn carry on. The rational have reasoned
their way elsewhere. Randonneur logic is not the common logic of the
masses, it is a rarer application of obsession applied to goals that
few understand.
These are the things that go through my head as I climb and descend,
descend and climb. Sometimes I wonder at the few people who live in
this sparse and lumpy landscape. Some live in shacks while a few live
in
gentrified country estates. A line from Bob Dylan comes effortlessly to
mind, "some are mathematicians, some are carpenters wives. I don't know
how it all got started, I don't know what they've done with their
lives..."
The climbs are varied: some steep, some long, some steep and long, some
just stupid. Some have stuck in my memory, some have been repressed or
respaced in time.
I turn onto the Seabeck Holly Road to meet one hill that I remember
clearly, the steep hill with the clear view of its full climb and the
dog that lives at its base. Wayne is pulled over, pulling on his night
reflective gear and I charge on, ready to meet the hill.
Some years the dog has been free, other years he's been tied to the
porch. Some years the hill has slowed me to walking speed and below and
some years I've walked. Today I am here to ride. I am not sure I can do
this. I think that I am here to find out if I can.
The dog is tied this year and I charge into the hill that looms up like
a great grey wall. I cannot gear down, I can only increase the effort.
My technique is too simple to even be called a technique. I count to
two. One-Two, One-Two. Over and over. With each pedal stroke. My only
thought is counting and each digit calls up the next. Like a Zen
student counting breaths, I count my pedal strokes. I have no tally, no
total. I have a mantra that is one and then two, two followed by one.
Repeat as necessary.
I don't know how low my speed goes. It goes one-two and then one-two
and then one-two. Somehow it doesn't stop. Somehow the hill crests. My
tendons did not snap, my chain did not snap, my bike did not stall and
fall over. I am over Holly Hill.
"Me I'm still on the road, headed for another joint..."
The next joint is the store in Seabeck. Seabeck is a control of
dangerous comfort: hot coffee, cold chocolate
milk and a fire burning in the wood stove. It's dark and cold outside
now that the sun is down and it's tempting
to linger but
time and ferries wait for no man.
A buck and half equals a pint of chocolate milk and all the coffee
refills I can handle. Balancing the coffee to milk ratio in the cup is
a precise chemical and thermal relationship with which I'm intimately
familiar. I brew my mocha, eat more from my stash of munchie bars and
get ready to head out.
I know there are three hills on Anderson Hill road, three bad hills. I
debate putting on my Marmot windshirt. It's quite cold now but I'll
generate a lot of heat on the climbs. Another problem in thermodynamics
that I don't waste too much time in studying. It's really cold and I
bundle on the shirt. I'll pull the zipper loose for the climbs.
A year from now I might be reading this and I'll want to know, so here
are some subjective numbers about the hills on Anderson Hill road. The
first hill is a nine on a ten point scale. It's bad. It's big. But it's
not impossible. And then I drop into a creek valley. That drop is a 14%
grade and going up the other side is the second hill.
Call that one an eight on the ten point scale. Maybe it's the momentum
of the valley, maybe it's really not as steep as the first, whatever.
It's still bad, it's still long but eventually one-two, one-two,
one-two, it's over.
The third hill is an eleven on the ten point scale. If my brain were
capable of doing anything more than counting to two it would scream at
me to stop. Except all I can do is count to two, one-two, one-two,
one-two and maybe spare one final thought, the thought that this is the
last big hill of the night. I walked no hills today, I won't walk this
one. One-two, one-two, one-two.
One
Two
One
and I'm at the crest.
Now the final problem is just navigation. My old memories don't match
with the newly revised route sheet but this is where companions come in
ever so handy. My twitchy mind misses turns and a fellow randonneur
calls out a correction.
Half Mile Road isn't really a half mile past Trigger Avenue, it's just
past Trigger Avenue and it's called
Half Mile Road. OK, I get it now!
The new route is much nicer than the old route on Hwy 3. I can't call
these quiet country roads since a painfully loud chorus of frogs
is desperately trying to continue
the species but it's good to be away from traffic.
At Poulsbo, the trip back home returns to the familiar route of memory.
I finish at 10:01 PM with riders just minutes ahead and behind me.
There is a good crowd of us for the 10:25 ferry and of course there
were boatloads of riders earlier and later as well.
A good day on the bike, a good day even on bad hills.
Waiting for the ferry
On
the ferry to Bainbridge Island.
Coming
into Bainbridge.
The
Bainbridge Island ferry dock with
the Olympic Mountains in the distance.
Riders
waiting to dock.
Rolling
off the ferry.
Gathering
at Winslow. The pre-ride
briefing and waiting for 7:00 AM.
Jason
rode up from Tacoma.
Rolling
over Bainbridge.
Heading
north on SR3.
Big
Valley Road.
Coming
off the Hood Canal Bridge.
Vic
Ringqvist on Paradise Bay Road.
Don and Ron.
What goes up...
Biker Gang.
Urs Koenig.
Tom Brett.
Peter Rankin and Greg Cox.
Paul Whitney.
Patrick Gray.
Mitchell and Ray smile and wave.
Pat Roden and Mark Roberts.
Kevin in his Edinburgh jersey.
Kent on his Kogswell.
David Huelsbeck wearing his SIR wool
jersey and SIR reflective ankle bands.
Brian Ohlemeier with his Cycle Tuesdays wind vest over a good base of
rando wool.
Brian List gives the thumbs up.
Galvin Chow getting ready to leave
Port Hadlock.
Two rando bikes. The one on the left
is Dan Boxer's Bridgestone which he's converted to 650B wheels. The
rolled up tire behind the saddlebag is Dan's answer to the 650B
skeptics who ask "what it you completely destroy a tire in the middle
of nowhere?"
Jan Heine speeding southward.
Jan rides the line which is a bit smoother than the chipseal.
Jon on his Heron touring bike set up as a single speed.
Mark Thomas. Note the stylish Ibex wool knee warmers, available at fine
bike shops like Sammamish Valley Cycle.
Peter McKay: Waterford, Wool and a
Wind Vest.
Galvin Chow and Dan Boxer in the
Olympic National Forest.
South along Hwy 101.
Peter McKay rolling into Hoodsport.
Wayne Methner.
The Hoodsport Coffee Company.
An over the shoulder shot from the $9
camera. This shot actually turned out better than a lot of the pictures
where I supposedly knew what I was doing!
Looking back at the mountains.
The lower Hood Canal.
The control at Kay's Corner.
Mark and Peter on Dewatto Road.
Checking in at the final control. File
the final paperwork, munch down on some food and catch the ferry back
to Seattle.
At the end of 300 hilly kilometers the
mind can get a little hazy. Here we see Kevin putting the moves on his
Camelbak.
The map is not the terrain.