Life after Seattle

First things first, I have a bunch of guys that I owe a huge Thank You! To all the guys at Old Town Bicycle in Tacoma, WA, I cannot thank you enough.  These guys are amazing!  I had limped my cross bike into Seattle… Alaska to the States can sure put a beating on a bike.  Especially when you have a guy my size sitting on it.  I won’t go into the specifics, but we will just say that these guys busted their asses breaking her down and reassembling her, oh yeah and they cleaned her too.

I also have to throw a huge Thank You out there to Vince (I don’t like putting other people’s last names up without their permission, so I will leave his out) for organizing the Tacoma group ride.  Let me explain, this guy is an Army Doctor with his wife also an Army Doctor (deployed at the time) and an infant at home.  To say that he has his plate full would be an understatement.  Yet he offered to single handedly try to organize a group ride for me as I was passing through.  He along with the guys at Old Town hosted the ride for me, Vince planned out an awesome route. It was an absolutely gorgeous ride.  I had originally planned to continue my ride from the group ride however; due to a media commitment in Missoula I had changed the route (forgot to tell Vince).

 

At home I ride with groups so often that I really enjoy my solo rides, but after AK to WA solo, I was really ready for some company. We didn’t have the turn out that Vince or I had hoped for, but it was great to ride with people.  I think that one of the reasons is also the purpose for the ride; many people are hesitant to want to get involved or be associated with anything in the mental health realm.  I think it is a large part reason we were unable to get any sponsorship; I think it plays into some of the resistance of media outlets to cover our story, and probably why not a ton of people showed up for our group ride. However, that resistance is all the more reason to be vocal.  It certainly wasn’t for lack of effort, so to Vince and all the guys at Old Town Bicycle Thank You!

If you are in Tacoma or anywhere in the vicinity these guys are the best. For a minute when I was watching them work on my bikes I thought I was watching a NASCAR pit crew.

On to the riding, I started back on the bike on Tuesday after a few extra days in Seattle.  What can I say, my Uncle is a great host and Seattle is an awesome town so we stayed longer than planned.  I set off into the Cascade Mountains headed up to Stevens pass.  The temperature was perfect –not something that has happened much on this ride- and the road was smooth.  The pass and the Cascades proved formidable.  After six days of lying around and stuffing my face, the mountains looked twice as big.  It was a spectacular ride, absolutely beautiful.  There was one funny moment, at what looked like a popular swimming hole, a few teenage kids were milling around.  One of them trying to be a smart ass said “hey Lance where you riding”

I replied “Florida”

“YEAH RIGHT, Florida’s that way dude!”

“Don’t they teach geography in school any more? You’re pointing towards Mexico kid.”

At this point I had stopped and one of them ran across the road to talk to me.

He saw the jersey I was wearing and Azure happened to drive by as we were talking so I pointed out the van.  Stunned he said, “wow that’s really awesome dude, something to be proud of” then as I road away I heard him saying to his friends “ He’s not @%&*#$ kidding he really is ridding to Florida!”

I polished off the rest of the ride, and hoped that the following day I would get more of the same weather.

(can you say Jersey Tan)

Yesterday, I started the day in the mountains and finished in the desert.  No, I’m not kidding. I guess I should have been paying attention in geography.  But yes, eastern Washington is a high desert and to get there you have to climb up from the Columbia river, it was a 7 mile 2,100 foot climb that took about 1:30 hours, and yes, it was scorching hot.  I put down five gallons of fluids.  And no, it isn’t flat when you get to the top, I thought it would be but it wasn’t, rolling hill after rolling hill. 

(who would guess that this was a picture of eastern Washington?)

So today I headed out with the intention of reaching Spokane.  However, about 70 miles into my ride I was stopped by a raging wild fire.  This is really arid terrain and it was incredibly windy today so they were having some serious trouble containing the fire.  The local police had the road closed and were turning everyone back.  So I headed back expecting to see Azure at any moment.  But mile after mile of back tracking and no Azure, I was starting to get worried but told myself that they must have closed the road further back as well as the road block I had hit.  Fire truck after fire truck and no civilians.  I was feeling pretty good about my analysis until several people drove past. At this point, I really started to worry.  Finally, I saw the van on the horizon; turns out Bertha didn’t want to start.  Lucky for Azure, she was stopped in a town when it happened and a local man was nice enough to help.  No, she didn’t get his name, so to the mystery man from Creston thank you for helping my wife.  The van seems to be starting and running fine (knock on wood!!!) so who knows what that was about.

As we were trying to decide what to do the police decided for us, and escorted everyone to the next town.  At which point we decided to continue to Spokane in case the van needed to be looked at.  Tomorrow we will head back to where I was stopped, that is if the fire has been put out.  I know this was a crazy long post but I had tons of stuff this time.

(The smoke is so bad here in Spokane you can barely see the sun)

8-24

79.4 miles

14mph average

41mph max speed

5:40:06 ride time

8-25

80.12 miles

14mph average

36.1mph max speed

5:42:12 ride time

8-26

69.61 miles

17.9 mph average

37 mph max

3:52:17 ride time

(ride cut short due to wild fire)