Tour de Blast, Blinkies, and Butts

I started off today with a drive up to Toutle Washington for the Tour de Blast. As seems the usual, the weather was ....well the weather was crappy. low 40's on top, low 50's at the bottom, fog, and non stop rain. When I got to Coldwater Lake I decided that this just wasn't fun anymore. I was cold and wet and had a long descent ahead where I'd undoubtedly get colder. I turned around with 6 miles to go. 6 miles of more open and exposed country, higher elevation and colder. I turned around and rode back up to Elk Rock then began the long descent to Tootle. I can't remember the last time I was that cold on a bike. Climbing was warm enough, sort of. But when the descending came, even though I had extra clothes on, I had to stop from time to time to warm up. I was shivering so hard that the bike was jumping. The rain on my glasses was making vision virtually non useful. During one of my warming stops I took the glasses off and stowed them in my pack. I eventually made it back down to Toutle and the sumptuous spaghetti dinner that was included with our registration.

I drove the 90 minutes back home, did a quick bike swap, rain bike for mtn bike, and then joined a friend for..........


I finished up the day by joining the masses to raise awareness of the vulnerability of cyclists.... though I think most just came to the event to be able to ride naked.
I attended the World Naked Bike Ride in Portland.

I picked up a bit of courage to attend by accepting the invitation of a female member of my social bike club. No worries folks, neither of us got naked. We just went to experience the vibe of the evening. What an evening it was! Sort of like falling down the rabbit hole in Alice's world. There were an estimated 12,000 riders. The police had the route closed to cars, just like a parade, and a parade it was. As my friend and I pedaled over a rise in the road all I could see for about 12 blocks was a sea of bikes, blinkies, and butts curb to curb on out as far as we could see.


From the curb back several layers deep were cheering crowds. Only in Portland!


My friend and I stopped for a brief time at one of the famous after parties. We both had big days planned for tomorrow, and the hour was very late, so we didn't stay long.

.........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total
Today........78..............0............10..........0..........88
Jan.........474..............0............21..........7.........502
Feb.........530..............0.............0..........0.........530
March.......502..............0.............0..........0.........502
April.......524..............0.............0..........0.........524
May........1003..............0.............0..........0........1003
June........567..............0.............0..........0.........567
YTD........3604..............0............37..........7.........3658