...And they're off

On Saturday all the cyclists arrived in Seattle and we had a bunch of opportunities to meet the people that we will spend the next nine weeks with. It is an overwhelming task to learn 150 new people all at once. I find myself seeing someone and thinking of three different possibilities of what their name could be. It has gotten better now that we have all started riding and I have more ways to remember people by. For instance: the guy who rides the red bike is ... or the one who passed me going up that long mountain pass is...

I won't bore you all with the details about the training, if you are interested you can read someone else's blog by connecting to www.seatosea.org. The riding started Monday morning with an eight mile preliminary ride to Golden Gardens Park. There were some mishaps even getting to the park, but it made the tour seem real and made me are that while this tour is praising God, he isn't giving us a free pass from errors in judgment. The dipping ceremony was massive, i have no idea how they managed to get everyone in the picture. We were then released in two minute intervals by groups we used for safety training. The first day of riding was one of those I wish I could do over and over again because it was fairly easy, but had a little bit of everything. There was a bit of a climb, but only enough to give us the opportunity to fly down the hill on the other side. My group managed to go the whole day without a flat tire, missed turn, or fall of any kind and because of it we were the first to roll into camp. Only theT
gear truck beat us and that was by about five minutes.

The first night at camp was a little touch and go since few of us had ever done anything like this before, but we had our first meal, peloton meeting, and small group time successfully. The ride was fifty miles so to cool off a few cyclists went down to the river for a dip. The water proved to be quite cold considering it was fresh snow melt so no one stayed in too long. Everyone seemed to get to bed fairly early because the next day was looming large.

Today we rode a total of eighty miles. It was a tale of two halves. The first half was almost totally uphill. The first twenty five weren't too bad, but the ten after that were a consistent struggle up a very steep grade. The total uphill for the day was just under a mile. I was humbled by this ride quite a bit since there was no way to train in my neck of the woods for this. I took tons of breaks that I don't normally take and sometimes went just a mile in between breaks. this half culminated with the peak at Stevens Pass, nearly 4100 feet up. The next half was a glimpse of heaven. All that climbing we did we got to erase as we went consistently downhill for about 40 miles. There were some stretches of flat road, but it was great not to have to work too hard after working harder than I ever had. The last 10 miles into Leavenworth were all along the Wenatchee river and made us forget that the first half had ever happened so we can do the same thing tomorrow. After our camp activities were done we explored the town. The entire place looks just like a Bavarian village.

More Later