The best worst day ever?

 4 friends joined me on a 58 mile ride to celebrate another birthday.  

Ken got stuck waiting for a train to clear an intersection and was just a bit late.  We filled time by snapping a photo of our smiling faces.

We rolled out about 12:15PM, fifteen minutes later than we had planned.  

We pedaled west and rode about 13 blocks to reach the East Bank Esplanade.  It was a gorgeous February day.

    Today also happened to be The Worst Day of the Year Ride, a day according to weather records that historically has the worse weather.  Today that was not the case.  Our route traveled part of their route, but in the reverse direction.  Since we had a noon start, the Worst Day riders we nearing the end of their ride.  We felt a bit like salmon swimming up stream at times.

  We rode out near Kelly Point Park then turned east and followed the Columbia River back upstream.

  We crossed over the Interstate Bridge and worked our way northwestward toward the western terminus of the Burnt Bridge Creek Trial.  One of the riders had torn an ACL skiing last weekend, and I haven't been riding much.  Between the two of us, we traded Lanterne Rouge duties today, though I was probably in that position most of the time.  I was having bloating issues again :-( and found pedaling a bit difficult. I especially noticed it when I had to pedal hard when trying to keep up going up hills.  

  I did my best to invoke Rule #5.

  We followed the Burnt Bridge Trail to the Discovery Trail then across the Sam Jackson Bridge and back into Oregon.  From there we followed the I-205 Path to the Springwater Trail, then we took city streets to add mile or two so we'd finish up with 58 miles.  Mark had dropped us like bad habits as we made our way along the I-205 Path, but the rest of us pedaled into Madison's Bar and Grill together.

  We sat down at a table and ordered food and drink and took a well deserved rest.

   We made two brief stops today, both to take advantage of a restroom.  That's one nice thing about riding paths rather than roads for much of this route, there were actual flush toilets! With just two brief stops we managed to keep a pretty good average speed.  Given that we were on paths we didn't expect a fast ride, but we did manage to keep a pretty good pace, if you consider a 12 1/2 mph average good.  Today we did. 

We ended up with 58.15 miles and 2088 ft of climbing.

Having birthdays is hard work!

 ...........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total Today.............58..............0.............0..........0..............58 Jan..................93..............0..............0.........0.............93 Feb................237..............0..............0.........0............237 Total..............320.............0..............0.........0.............320