Well, it's 3 in the morning at the Trail's End Motel in Winthrop. Tom Waits is telling be about "Big Joe and Phantom 309. I fell asleep so early that there's no problem being up now. Besides the drunks and/or tourists are quiet now.
Got up before 6 in camp at Newhalem and started shivering and making breakfast. Congealed powdered eggs with potato sponges. REI called it "Peasant Omelette". Thank God I'm not a peasant. I had no idea they had it that bad.
Finally got all repacked, dressed warm and headed out about 7:30. No more concerns about rush hour since civilization kissed my ass goodby on I-5 yesterday. The sun was already high and warm on the road, even though it was still behind the mountains and freezing in camp, and I already started stripping. I know I remember the wind folklore right from the Trek WA, but it was bullshit this time. There was a headwind when I got to camp at 6:30 last night, it blew all night, and it was still going strong. It was beautiful, nevertheless. Saw the 4 cross-country teens at the Newhalem store, so they survived the night. Passed the cool power plant in Newhalem, but I already have so many pictures of it that I didn't stop. Went to the trouble of putting my new head light on my helmet for the tunnels. Funny, I remembered them being much longer and darker. Oh well, the light works. A truck with a US Gov't plate passed, then stopped and the driver walked about 1/4 mile back to pick up a bottle from the side of the road, and said encouraging words as I passed. I realized that the road was spotless, more of a postcard than a highway. Climbed about 1000 feet before screaming back down into Colonial Park. My radiator was still mostly full (and I didn't want to put questionable campground water in it), so I finished the gatorade out of one bottle and filled it. I left the other bottle full of a gatorade-like substance. Bad mistake.
Climbed up my favorite hill. On the Trek WA there was a group of really fast riders who set out to double the planned mileage. I usually only saw them when they blew past in the morning and at camp that night. But, I passed them on this hill! Like they were standing still. When they stopped at the Diablo Lake overlook, they checked out my bike. "I knew it, you've got 3 chainrings." Well, duh. These guys were riding the North Cascade Highway with 2 chainrings? They weren't fast, they were stupid.
Ate my gorp (granola and m&m's) for the first time as I drank in the beauty of Diablo Lake. Tried not to share any with the little chipmunk beggars. To repay my lack of generosity, one kept climbing on top of my helmet, which was on top of the bob. As soon as I got my camera out he'd run off, until I put my camera away. Then he'd climb back up. Damn rodents. I got seriously chewed out for feeding them the last time I was there and they are becoming a problem. They were all around my feet and I practically stepped on them. They didn't even react if I stomped my feet and yelled at them.
Every inch of the highway is so familiar. I love this road. I even passed the spot where I'd stopped to listen to a waterfall splashing on one side, while the river cascaded on the other. I decided at the time that, for me, the sound of water running was the voice of God. The belief really helped today. Everytime I heard water, which was almost constantly, I felt like God was encouraging me, and usually blasting me with a cold breeze that felt so good on my sweaty body. There were big ravines going hundreds of feet up the mountains with snow on the top half and waterfalls on the bottom half, finally crashing down beside the road and sometimes giving me a little shower. I really loved the rock cliffs, blasted out to make room for the road, with water running over, or seeping through, making a curtain of hundreds of drippy little waterfalls sometimes going on for hundreds of feet. They seemed to be there just to make music for me.
The climb just kept getting steeper and I just kept pulling over every few miles. My knee was hurting a bit and my butt was pretty sore. The sun was directly overhead and poweful. I used my front tire for a sundial and was really glad when I stopped running over my own shadow. I'd pull over for any shade I could find. If I stopped for a minute or two, I felt pretty refreshed and ready to do a few more miles. If I stopped for much longer my muscles would start tightening up and it would take awhile to get warmed up again. I started getting passed by a lot of cyclists with fancy bikes and no loads. (Like they say on the San Juan Islands, they come through with one shirt and one five-dollar bill and don't change either one.) A couple of them acknowledged my existence and shouted something about a Redmond Cycling Club ride, but they were gone too soon to make much sense of it. When I finally limped my way to Rainy Pass, I talked to a sag wagon driver who told me that they were riding from Marblemount over the passes to Mazama today and going back tomorrow. Pretty serious, even without a load.
The sag driver told me that Washington Pass wasn't nearly as tough as Rainy Pass. That wasn't the way I remembered it, but he was right. I screamed down about 250 vertical feet from Rainy Pass. The snow was pretty deep on both sides of the road and I was freezing! It actually felt pretty good. Then came the final 900 foot, 4.5 mile assault on Washington Pass. Now I was stopping every mile or two, finally about every half mile, just long enough for my butt to stop screaming. Ran out of water a couple of miles before the pass. That sucked. Still had the bottle of gatorade, but it tasted rancid and made me feel sick. I hoped I wouldn't get thirsty enough to drink it. Made the pass at about 3:00 and put my jacket on for the payoff. I screamed down, wearing my hands out on the brakes around the switchback or when bob got too squirrely. (Yeah, Lisa, I know. You would have been trying to make 55. Well, I just wanted to make it.) Somehow managed to stop about 6 miles down at the campground to get some water. I would have been drooling when I saw the faucet, if I wasn't so parched. No water. Damn. It wouldn't have been so bad except that now I was on the dry side of the state. It felt like the desert. And I'd been eating dust in the headwind all day and my face, nose and tongue were covered a crust of dirt and dried sweat. The descent levelled out, but it was still mostly falling the next 12 miles to Mazama. I only whimpered a little when there was a rise in the road. I was so glad to see the Mazama Country Store (where Jim Rettig, President of the Renton Audobon Society, and I had watched hummingbirds feed during the Trek WA). I got a big bottle of cold water and a Frapaccino. Drank so fast I got a brain freeze. Hydration, caffiene and sugar did the trick (didn't even want to think about food) and I limped the last 15 miles to Winthrop. It was packed with tourists. Thank God, the first motel I tried had a vacancy. (The rustic Trails End, right on Main Street.) I jumped in the shower and scrubbed thoroughly, twice. Eventually got the strength to go eat. Went to the Duck Brand, also written up in Northwest Best Places. Got Carne Asada, which was really a very good steak with beans and rice (that were so dried up they looked like they'd been left by the side of the road on Washington Pass for a few days), instead of a potato, and an excellent strawberry lemonade. Came back and plugged in "Taxi Driver" (they have so few channels here, you just pick out some videos) and fell asleep long before I discovered a plot.
Well, my knees feel like I'm 80 and my butt feels like I've been spanked for 4 days, and not in a good way. I'm never leaving this bed.
Stats: 75.3 total miles, avg speed 9.2, max 39.1, butt-in-saddle time 8:14, altimeter read (since inception) 351.2 for 6800 feet today.