Saturday 6/20 rides!!

[Biciclista]

today was the tour de blast, a ride up to the top (or halfway to the top) of Mount St Helens! It has 3 rides, the hard core, which includes 8000 feet of climb in about 80 miles, the medium ride, which i did, with almost 4000 feet of climb and 55.5 miles and an even shorter ride.
Thanks to modern technology, what we were mostly climbing after the first 12 miles of rolling hills were ramps at 5-6% for MILES. Halfway through the hardest climb, we came upon a smiling face on a recumbent bike. She was wearing a brand new jersey! It was Evangundy!


She was the first one to get the flourishes jersey. It was really beautiful!

The plan was that Raleighdon henceforth known as DH, was going to do the long ride, and leave me behind at 3000 feet of altitude, which was about 2 or 3 miles from the place I was going to stop and turn around. He had a notion that he'd be able to get back about as fast as I was, even though I was riding only 55 miles and he was riding over 80.
I rode up to Elk Rock Lookout, which wasn't much of a lookout, since it was in the clouds. In this picture you can see what I saw from the lookout, which is at the top there.
When you stop, you turn around and go back down. That means putting on extra layers of clothing. I was wearing a wool jersey, wool longsleeved undershirt, wool knickers, wool kneesocks, two pairs of wool gloves, a little wool hat, my showers pass raincoat and rain pants!
i was dressed properly for the descent, believe me. it was COLD. of course when you get down closer to sea level, you have to take all that stuff off.
Fortunately DH was able to see the mountain when he got back to the look out about 2 hours later.



I finished the ride with an avg speed of 12.3 mph, pretty amazing.
I can't tell you how much fun it was sailing down that mountain at speeds above 20mph! Tour De Blast is about the most fun organized ride i've ever been on.
And the food was good too. All the stops had bananas, oranges, potatoes, sandwiches and 3 kinds of VERY GOOD BROWNIES.
And smurf juice.
Here are DH & I newly reunited with our smurf juice.