Demonstratin' My Mad Skillz

January is the third month of my bid for an R-12 award. So, to keep the R-12 ball rolling I rode a 200k permanent by myself on January 24th. It was a good thing that I decided to ride this one alone, because it ended up being a comedy of errors that would have been pretty embarrassing if there had been any witnesses.

The route I chose starts in Leschi and heads around the north end of Lake Washington to Redmond on its way out to North Bend. The route then comes back to Lake Washington and continues around the south end of the lake with a short detour out to Maple Valley.



It was cold and mostly clear and the sunrise was glorious as I headed north along the lake. Even though I was shivering it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Good thing I forgot my rain coat because I hate hauling that thing around with me when I don't need it.

As I was leaving Redmond heading toward Novelty Hill, I rode through a wall of warm air. I watched the thermometer on my fancy-schmancy bike computer jump from 32 to 46 degrees in about 2 minutes. And then the wind started to blow and the sky almost instantly turned black and angry. Before long it was raining. I spent the next couple of hours mostly riding into a nasty headwind and driving rain as I worked my way out to North Bend. The rain continued to come down for the rest of the day but luckily the wind let up a bit.

So, my weather forecasting abilities aren't much, but how about navigation skills? On my way to North Bend, first I rode right by two of the controles, the second of which I didn't notice until I was about 5 miles farther on down the road. I also made more wrong turns than I could keep track of. I noticed most of the wrong turns pretty quickly so they didn't cost me too much time, but still extra miles in the driving rain sting a bit more than sunny day extra miles.

At least my bike handling skills are rock solid. I've been riding seriously for about two years now and in that time I've never crashed. Impressive, huh? About 14,000 miles without ever making contact with the pavement. So, if you're going to break a streak like that you might as well do it on the day you "decide" you don't need your rain coat and it starts pouring, and the day you can't seem to follow a route sheet to save your life, right? Sure enough, as I was rolling through suburban strip mall hell near Issaquah, I came around a turn a little too fast and hit the brakes a little too hard on pavement that was a little too wet, and before I knew what was up I was down. Luckily the part of me that hit the ground first is the part of my body with the most padding. It hurt but did no real damage to me or the bike, so after a couple of minutes of loud cursing I got on the bike a kept going.

Eventually I rolled into the finish at the Leschi Starbucks, cold, wet, bruised and annoyed by my lack of navigational skills. The wrong turns and missed controls added about 12 extra miles to the route. Not too bad considering. Still it made for one of my slowest 200k rides ever at just under 10 hours to cover 139 miles. But as I sat there at Starbucks drinking some expensive and delightfully hot coffee reflecting on the ride, the pain and suffering was already starting to evaporate from my memory. It's amazing how for me, even a miserable ride makes for a pretty good day.