I rode my first century on Saturday with a few friends, from Capitol Hill in Seattle to Bellingham, Washington. Though we were expecting the weather to be wet and miserable, the day turned out to be really pleasant and advantageous.
I slept like ass the night before, fearing that I forgot to set my alarm, that I was forgetting something, etc. I got about two hours of actual sleep, but about six hours of rest. I woke up at 3:30AM, ate some breakfast and got ready. My friend L. picked me up at 4:30, and we were at M.’s place and on the road by 5. We had a nice bomb down 23rd towards the U District, a road that one wouldn’t typically bike down because of the traffic. No traffic at 5AM on a Saturday, though! We rode the Burke-Gilman trail until we met up with our friend A., and continued down the Burke in the dark. Just before we reached the Sammamish River trail, it was getting light.
We rode through the suburbs until we hit our first hill, and one of the only significant climbs on the ride. We stopped at the top for a short break. At every little break, we ate something. After another nice little downhill, and another, we started getting into more rural territory, and some really nice country roads. The wind was coming out of the south, and we were heading north. Perfect. It stayed that way for almost the entire ride.
Lots of riding through winding country roads, with farmland and livestock. Very scenic. And it always seemed like we were descending. Strange. Eventually we made our way to the Centennial Trail, which we rode on for about 20 miles. It’s a rails-to-trails path, like the Burke-Gilman, so it’s flat, though I got the impression that it was slightly downhill most of the way. Unfortunately, at major intersections, there were these really annoying bollards that we were forced to ride through very slowly between. Probably meant to keep folks from running the stop signs into oncoming traffic, they were overkill. There was great visibility at intersections and some normal bollards would have been enough to slow bikes down there. I actually think that the barriers they had set up were more dangerous than just letting cyclists blow through the intersections. At any rate, we stopped once for a break along the path, and before long we were at the end.
It started to drizzle, but what we feared would be an all-day thing turned out to be just a few minutes of wet. We rolled into Arlington, only to find our chosen lunch spot, the Mirkwood Shire cafe, wasn’t open yet. We were bummed. Instead we had a snack at a little cafe (I had a chocolate croissant and a Mexican Coke), and headed out again, a little more than halfway through the day.
My knees began to hurt around this time for some reason. Maybe I mashed too hard at a stop sign in Arlington or something. It wasn’t anything that a little off-bike stretching couldn’t cure, and some on-bike stretches and muscle massage worked pretty well actually. The sun started to come out, which we didn’t expect at all. More great country roads, and a few quick rest stops.
Once we got to Mt. Vernon, we discovered that our route over I-5 was taken over by a soapbox derby race. I had never seen an actual soapbox derby race in my life, so it was kind of entertaining to watch a couple of cars go down as we made our way through. We had to walk the bikes over this part, but it was only a couple of blocks. After that, we were in Mall Hell. There was three miles or so that were just about as bad as it could get. Strip malls, an outlet mall, and a real mall, all in a row, and impatient shoppers clogging the four lane divided highway. We got honked at by a car with a bike rack on the back of it, and by a semi that was about 50 feet away from exiting onto the freeway. If he could have been patient for about 7 seconds, there wouldn’t have been a problem.
Once we got off of the worst stretch of road of the ride, we stopped for another snack break. We had just over 20 miles left. The weather was great, and the wind had been at our backs the entire day. You see where I’m going with this…
As soon as we set off down Chuckanut Drive, literally feet from where our break had been, we discovered that the wind had changed direction, and was now more or less in our faces. We had 4-5 very different miles from the 85-90 that we had just done. It was a challenge. Ok, it was a slog. We were tired. My knees hurt, and my spirits sunk a little. After another short rest, however, I got a second wind, and decided I would pull at the front. And I did. I hope my buddies got to draft off of me a little. Anyway, it was a blessing when we got to the rollers along Chuckanut, because they shielded us from the wind pretty well. This was the most challenging section of the entire ridge, hill-wise, and it was at the end. Nice.
Beautiful road, though, and we had some great views. We had to stop once, just to take it all in. We could see the San Juans and Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island, which L. and I had ridden earlier in the summer. The mountains and the Puget Sound were breathtaking.
A few more hills later (with some really nice descents) we had made it. A. snapped a photo of the “Welcome to Bellingham” sign, and we finished the final stretch through town. There was a bike lane, which was nice. Three miles or so later, and we were at Boundary Bay Brewing Company, our destination. It felt awesome to complete that ride. 110 miles by A.’s computer, more by mine (although we figured out that my computer was calibrated slightly incorrectly… probably was about 3 miles off by the end of the ride).
The Bellingham Traverse, a multisport event, also had their finish line at the Brewery. This was both simultaneously hilarious and disheartening. Hilarious, because we had just completed a much more difficult feat of endurance and strength than these poor folks. Disheartening, because it was a little difficult to find a place to lock up, and the bar was busy.
We got a table right away, by the front window, however, and set about celebrating. Boundary Bay Imperial IPAs all around the first round. A really spectacular beer, and a good kick off to the party. Nachos, sandwiches (reuben for me), IPAs, barleywine for M., and great company. Our waitress bought us a free round due to the busyness of the bar, and we left her an enormous tip as a result.
A woman approached us as we left the bar, asking us if we did the Traverse. When we told her we rode our bikes from Seattle, she was flabbergasted, and said that that was much more impressive than the Traverse. We agreed.
Back on the bikes for 3 more miles of riding along a really nice gravel trail that runs through Bham. There were even two boardwalk stretches! This trail brought us all the way to the Amtrak station. We got our tickets (that we had purchased weeks previous), and waited a short while for the train. I had never brought my bike aboard the Amtrak Cascades before, and was surprised at how easy it was. All we had to do was but tickets on our bikes and then hand them to the personnel at the baggage car.
Got another beer on the train and talked metal. L.’s girlfriend picked us up at the train station and before I knew it, I was home, taking a shower, telling my partner about how awesome my day was (she was very patient with my still-buzzed excited and disjointed recollections!) and getting ready for bed.
I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
