200+ mile Ride from Port Angeles to Portland
This ride felt very similar to the last day of my first cross country cycling trip 10 years ago.
That 40 day trip ended with an all night ride through the rain from some small city in Massachusetts to Bar Harbor about 280 miles away. I had my heart set on finishing in Bar Harbor but the journey was going to take too many days… unless I rode straight through which seemed like a genius idea at the time. I remember having the celebration dinner, a couple shots of quality liquor, jumping in the ocean, taking a quick shower and heading out on my bike for an overnight adventure in the rain.
I had planned to head out the door at 6:00pm Friday evening, but last minute preparations and making sure I had my supplies just how I wanted them pushed the start time to 7:30pm. The first two hours the rain was pretty steady with moments where it dumped heavily. I made my way past the nearest town Sequim in less than an hour and made my first longer stop at the Seven Cedars Casino store where I grabbed a quick resupply and readied my bike for nighttime riding. The pace was slow and steady in this first section and just soaking up the experience. I was well prepared, well rested, had a great dinner, tons of coffee and just looking forward to soaking up the moments of the ride ahead of me.
The time passed quickly and the roads were great. Most of the places along Hwy 101 have decent shoulders and the places that didn’t, thankfully, I timed my ride around the canal where there was hardly any traffic. About 7 hours into the ride I was coming up on 100 miles and that is where my fortunes started to shift.
At just after 3am I felt that all too familiar wobble of the back tire and instantly knew I had a flat tire. Not a big deal. I’m rather proficient at changing tires at this point and had all the necessary supplies. As I took the tire off and got out my headlamp, lever to take the tire off the rim, and the spare tube and pump I was set to go. I took off the old tube, found the small puncture, checked the tire for sharp objects and put the replacement tube in the tire. This is where what should have been a routine tire change went wrong.
As I pushed down on my pump there was absolutely no resistance back on me which meant no air was going into the tire. I messed around with the valve for about 20 minutes and then decided to check directions to the nearest store. Thankfully I was less than a mile from the next exit and about a mile and a half from a series of stores. Great fortune on a cold rainy night. I cut the tape on my sandals and slipped off my cycling shoes and loaded my bike back up and walked it to a Haggens grocery store which in normal life would be open 24 hours a day. However, because of the current global pandemic it didn’t open up until 6am. I spent the next 2 hours trying to troubleshoot an option to get back on the road to no avail. I was listening to a sermon as I walked around and Pastor Aaron Bacon had recounted a story of a missionary who was known to pray for provision before it happened and had the blessing of an unfathomable nature in terms of how things played out. I thought what could it hurt, so I thanked God for allowing me to find a solution to my tire issue and for the people or person that would help alleviate my current situation. Finally the idea came to mind to take my pump completely apart and put it back together and see if that might change my situation. I completed this activity once and tried my pump and sure enough I had a small amount of pressure. I took it apart again, completely scrubbed it out and completely to my amazement I realized that my pump was now in working order. I quickly pumped up my tire and was back on the road just before 6am. If you knew the lack of my mechanical ability you would recognize this as a miracle.
I was within 10 miles of the interchange where I would jump onto the Seattle to Portland (STP) bike route which I had the GPX file downloaded on my Garmin. From that point on I would be able to follow the turn by turn instructions which would take me directly to Portland along a tried and true route that thousands of cyclists have covered. I weaved my way through some side streets to a small town outside of Olympia to pick up the STP route and unfortunately when I loaded the .gpx file it started to take me back to the start instead of towards Portland. It took me about 7 miles heading in the wrong direction to confirm that I was in fact off course and I worked my way back to the route. I decided to use my phone and route to a city about 30 miles away and intersect the STP route that way. I ended up in Tenino and stopped at the Sandstone Cafe which had a great ambiance and that quality kind staff that you would anticipate from small town America. I said a quick prayer that my GPS would start working well and, when I found the route, would put me in the correct direction. As I exited down my Garmin picked up the route and as I continued to check it over the next few turns I confirmed that I was indeed headed in the correct heading and had the turn by turn directions to Portland!
The next section of the ride had a great deal of rolling hills which although the STP course is fairly flat it definitely has a little bit of climbing to throw in some variety. It usually wouldn’t be an issue but for some reason my derailer wasn’t working correctly and I only had a few gears to shift into which made some of the climbs much more of a struggle then they needed to be. As I got closer to the 150 mile mark I got my second flat tire and now that all my equipment was working well it wasn’t a big deal at all. The next section of the ride time seemed to slow down and I gradually made my way down the road. As I passed through Vadar, I decided to take a little grass nap on the side of the road for 15 minutes to see if I could get my time perception to go back to normal. Thankfully I had an emergency blanket so I was able to put that down on the wet grass and keep myself comfortable enough to enjoy a few minutes laying on the side of the road and have a short reprieve from peddling.
As I got back on my bike it’s amazing how taking a short break can change your mental attitude. I was excited about the trip ahead and cranking out the last 80 miles of the ride. As I started out again the rain picked back up and I rode with a renewed joyfulness, excited to make it through to my friend Greg’s place just on the other side of the St. John’s bridge in Portland. Unfortunately about 15 miles later I got my third flat just outside of Castle Rock and made my way to a gas station to get some supplies and see if I could fix my flat tire there. I had packed my two extra tubes and decided not to pack patch kits which was my fatal error on this day, combined with throwing out my old tires after I had my original flats. That left me one chance to fix the current flat. I was able to find a truck tire patch kit at the gas station and did my best attempt to put on the very thick patch on the tube. I pumped up the tire and it seemed to hold for the time being so I was back out on the road with about 60 miles to go. As I rode down towards Longview about 5 miles down the road my back tire went flat again. Not sure it if was a new flat tire or the patch didn’t hold up, but either way I was on the side of a small road called the Westside Hwy in between towns. I took out my emergency blanket and used it as an umbrella in the heavy rain so that I could use my phone to check to see where the nearest bike shop was. Unfortunately, it was almost 30 miles away in Longview which as the day continued to roll on was going to add at least another 2 hours to my journey once I figured out a way to get a ride to town and get back to my bike with the necessary items to fix my bike. After a few minutes of thinking over my situation and looking at the time of day I decided to call it a day. It had been a wonderful bike ride through the evening and I had just crossed over the 200 mile mark of the ride. Better to stop while you’re ahead on training rides or races for that matter than push a bad hand further than you should.
Thankfully I have absolutely amazing friends and I called my buddy Greg who was more than happy to drive the hour out of his way and I was able to strip my bike and fit it into his car easily. While I was waiting for Greg on the side of the road sheltered under my emergency blanket I started falling asleep sitting up. It’s incredible once you stop moving your body quickly starts telling your brain that it’s time to get some much needed rest. I kept myself awake with a couple of jolted head nods and before I knew it I was in a nice warm car heading to Portland for a long shower and a day with my old college roommate as I waited for my wife and kids to arrive after over two weeks apart.
This was not the way I had envisioned this ride to go. I had planned for approximately 18 hours to cover the 240 miles. It ended up being about 20 hours of cycling to cover 200 miles with about 7 hours of that 20 being spent dealing with unforeseen issues. Next week is a much more important cycling event as I will complete my first “Everesting” and climb over 29,029 feet starting Friday night. Because of the lessons of the day this week I will get a full tune up on my bike, replace my tubes and tires, make sure I have a mechanic on call for the ride, and have two pump options to mediate as many potential issues as possible. I may be 0/2 for my attempts to cover the distance from the Portland area to Port Angeles but I’ll take learning lessons like this weekend any day and call it all part of the adventure that goes into building up the mental fortitude and resilience necessary to take on some of the world’s most incredible adventures.