I’m sitting here filing paper work again. Not for my actual job, mind you. This is for a ride that Chris and I organized over the weekend. We put on SIR’s Fall 600K (Saturday and Sunday) with an accompanying 200K (Sunday). They both started and finished in the same motel in Arlington. We couldn’t have done it without an enormous amount of help from some wonderful people.
This isn’t the most moving/emotional ride report I’ve ever done, but I hope that it shows a little bit of what all goes in to making sure that you get out there and enjoy an organized ride.
Sometime last winter, the list of proposed rides was scheduled for SIR. They needed volunteers to take on the routing and planning for the year. Last year, Chris and I put on the summer 100K, so this year we wanted to step it up with a 200K. That would be fun, right? Mark Thomas (SIR president) somehow convinced me that the 600 and 200 were a package deal. “You’ll get a lot of help, of course”, he mentioned.
I starting scouting out past 600K’s on SIR’s route archive and found a couple of promising routes. One of the mountain passes that I really wanted to tackle personally at the time was in the north Cascades. I knew that I would be on Highway 20 for the Cascade 1200, but I thought it would be a great opportunity for anyone that wasn’t signed up for that to take it on as well.
The surprisingly tough part was trying to build a 200K out of the 600K’s start and end point. I probably redrew a hundred routes in bikeroutetoaster trying to find something manageable that would still be fun for everyone involved. If we could end up finishing on the same roads, that would be even better.
I put together a variation of the Mountain Loop Permanent with the help of Geoff Swarts. A counter clockwise loop would put the 200K and 600K riders on the same roads for the last 30 miles or so. That was eventually nixed for a clockwise loop because the Mountain Loop Highway has 14 miles of gravel. Counter-clock = gravel on the downhill. Clockwise = gravel on the uphill. Downhill sounded more fun on paper… but not everyone is so comfortable with that.
Chris started calling around to hotels in Winthrop (pretty much exactly the 400K point) and looking for somewhere that could give us 8 rooms. Things were booking up fast, thanks to a car show in town that same weekend. After some minor and major headaches, we found the number of Mt. Gardener Inn who had the entire place available (8 rooms).
Flash forward to the week before the ride. Chris and his wife Emily make a massive pot of vegan chili (shh, don’t tell the riders) and Jane and I put together 2 pounds of cold pressed coffee and 4 batches of buttermilk pancake batter (to go with some blueberries we picked up at the market). Add to that 5 dozen eggs, 2 cases of Pale Ale, and loads of snacks, and we had a pretty killer setup going.
We secured a large outdoor BBQ grill from some friends and set out on the road to Arlington where we had a hotel room rented out for 3 nights. Some of the early folks where there checking in their bikes and making sure to sign up before the rush hit in the morning. Vincent Muoneke was in early to help us drink some pre-ride beers.
Vinny soloed the ride to help make sure the cue sheet was accurate. He is a stud.
We didn’t get to bed until 11pm on Friday and were up bright at early at 4am on Saturday. It was going to be a long weekend…
First thing on Saturday was to scrounge together some watery coffee from the mini-mart across the street. We then split the tasks of parking lot coordination, sign in, registration, and bike check. It was fairly cold that morning so I did my best to keep moving around, regardless of where I was.
We had 30 riders at the start, ready to take on the 600K. I gave them some overall tips and encouragement, and sent them off at 6am. That lead to the second order of business: breakfast.
We drove out to Monroe for a bite to eat before driving out to the secret control at the second section of the Old Cascade Highway. It took about a half an hour before the first riders showed up to get their cards signed. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits so far. We spent a lot longer than I thought we might there, however. The gap between the first and last riders was probably 3 or more hours.
After a pit stop in Leavenworth for more coffee and food, we slowly made our way to the overnight stop. Mitchel’s wife Linda was already there talking to the staff. We started in right away setting up camp in the grass of the courtyard. My goal was to setup, get some sleep early, then stay up for the rest of the night so I could make breakfast with Jane in the morning.
Despite being tired, I couldn’t get any sleep. I had all of the preparation plans rushing around in my head. Then I started to think about the lack of lighting outside where we were setup. I finally just got back up after 20 minutes or so of laying down and went back out to help Chris, Emily and Linda setup.
We found the outdoor lighting switches and moved everything over in front of a storage barn where the most light hit. Jane managed to sleep a few hours before Jan Heine (the lead rider) pulled in to Winthrop around 8pm. He was riding through the night and only spent about 20-25 minutes scarfing down some chili and refueling for the long road ahead (with no real supply stops at night).
Jason Dul drove all the way out to help us with the overnight and Joe Platzner set up shop in Pateros to support any riders that wouldn’t make the town’s mini-mart midnight shut off time. I can’t thank the volunteers (our wives included) enough for sacrificing a weekend and tons of sleep to help us all out.
Somewhere around midnight, some kids drove up and stole my flashing taillight off of the sign that shows where the riders to pull into the motel. I watched them do it too, the little fuckers. Jason and I ran out to catch them, but they drove off too quickly. Apparently, they did the same thing to Joe that night.
Chris and Emily drove back to Arlington to catch some sleep before waking up to send off the 200K riders first thing on Sunday morning.
Jane mapped out the hotel rooms so we had a clear visual on who was sleeping where. We dispersed the incoming riders to rooms based on when they came in and what time they wanted to wake up. The wake up times ranged from 2:30 to 7am. The riders rolled in anywhere between 8pm and 6:30am. Dinner was served until 2:30 and breakfast was started at 3am. We had our work cut out for us.
I’m not even sure how it all went down, but it happened. A pot of chili, all the coffee, 5 dozen eggs and over a gallon of homemade pancake mix was decimated by the time 7:30 rolled around.
Somewhere around 8am, we finally got some sleep… until about 11am when we had to get up and give the hotel keys back. Everyone seemed to catch a couple of hours of sleep except me, which is probably why I really lost my shit just before going to sleep in the morning. I starting being snappy and getting aggressive with people. Apologies for anyone who I was rude to on the tail end of the night.
I think I must have answered the “What is the weather forecast on the pass?” question exactly 30 times throughout the night. My final couple of answers were just “I DON’T KNOW”. Again, sorry about that. It was actually 30% chance, which apparently means 100% chance for the entire day.
We woke up in a stupor, packed, turned in the keys and bee-lined towards Mazama for some much needed coffee. It was pretty glorious, actually. Jane and I were both pretty happy to have made it through the hell night (a fun hell, but still).
Driving back to Arlington, we got to see all of the riders that we had sent out that morning except the couple that rode through the night. We honked and waved to them all. Everyone seemed pretty happy despite the terrible weather. After Washington Pass, it is mostly downhill or flat to the finish.
We got back to meet Chris and Emily at the hotel. I fully expected to catch a bit of sleep, but again, that didn’t happen. I had a couple of beers and helped greet everyone who was finishing each ride. Chris and Emily were taking care of all of the finish line duties, so Jane and I were free to lay around like a couple of potato sacks.
The only real drama on the day was when a couple of the riders down from British Columbia were shot at by some local rednecks with BB guns. Welcome to America, I guess.
We eventually left the two of them to take care of the final couple of riders. We both had to work early on Monday. That was a whole separate headache though…
Special thanks to all of the volunteers and everyone that helped me with the paperwork:
Emily Keegans, Jane Hudson, Linda Schoenfeld, Vincent Muoneke, Jason Dul, Joe Platzner (and his friend and lovely daughter), Geoff Swarts, Mark Thomas, and Eric Vigoren.
I probably missed someone, but thank you too.
Thanks also to the riders for letting me put their safety into our hands for what turned out to be a fun ride.