Day2

(This is cool if you like lots of data! It may take a few seconds to load but you can hit play and time compress our ride)

DAILY REPORT: David, John and Skip. Today we will meet and pick up James in Lake Chelan. Nice sunny day. Start temp was 42 deg and ended with the low 90's.

At 0530 this morning our alarm clock was the train who announced its passing. It actually was great timing since we wanted to depart at 0600. As they say the best laid plans.......we didn't get on the road until 0700. It was cool and sunny; perfect for our 15 mile, 3000 ft climb up to Steven's Pass. It actually was a great warm-up for us. I had a little "twinge" in my left knee and this allowed me to work it out so to speak.

The down hill run from Steven's to Leavenworth was a blast. We were averaging over 30 mph for nearly 45 minutes. For the first 15 minutes we were pretty cold. So much so that I was shivering so hard that I had to slow down because my front wheel was beginning to shimmy from my shaking. It warmed up the closer we got into town and by 3,000 feet we were able to shed some layers of clothing. Skip was meeting us in town for lunch. Actually it was right at the 50 mile point so it was ideal for our lunch/break rest stop.

While I was going over the pass I received phone call from our bank stating that they had placed a fraud alert on our credit card. Reception was bad so I waited until we got into Leavenworth so I could get the whole story. Turns out there over a dozen of fraudulent charges and the bank had canceled our card and they were going to send us a new one. So how do I get my card as we are moving daily. We got the bank to agree to send my replacement card to a hotel several days out. More to this story I am sure. All you can do is smile and work through it. Besides I guess Skip will be picking up the bills for the next several days :)

Also during lunch we had to make a few more hotel reservations, confirm our speaking engagement at Fairchild AF base, etc. Needles to say John fell asleep waiting for all this "admin" stuff to be taken care. The result was the next 55 miles to Chelan through Wenatchee was going to get pretty warm - in fact I would call it hot! We stopped several times for water and Gatorade to stay hydrated.

We were very fortunate that we had a tail wind the entire day today. Much better than expected but you take every opportunity to pick up several additional mph thanks to the wind.

John did great riding today. Very strong and this was his first century (100 mile ride) this year! Well done; I was very proud of him.

For dinner we were invited over to the Burton's family retreat. They are good friends from Scouts and they were spending their annual family retreat at Lake Chelan. They were also nice enough to allow James to stay with them after James finished his week at Boy State which took place in Ellensburg. That was why he didn't start with us Sunday morning. So his first ride will be tomorrow morning.

Well tomorrow we are off to Wilbur WA. We are planning on stopping by the Grand Coulee Dam. Should be fun. A nice easy 80 mile ride.

Thanks for following. And the Kitsap Sun posted a nice send off article/photos from yesterday. Thank much!!

YOU DON'T SAY:

The last pull into Lake Chelan on hwy 97 A is a slow grind. We were hot & tired and still had 10 miles to go. About that time John received a call from his brother James. Now I didn't quite get the whole story but it had to do with girls and a boat ride and if he wanted to participate in the fun he needed to get into Chelan pronto or they were going to leave to w/out him. Needless to say it was like the preverbal horse to water at the end of the day....he was on a mission. His sprits picked up and he was off like a shot. Needless to say he "dropped me" and I didn't se him again until we were in town. Actually it was pretty humorous. It is all about finding that right carrot in life!!

DID I REALLY DO THAT?:

John was looking in his saddle bag after we had reached Steven's Pass and stated matter of factly "How come I have all this extra stuff in my rack bag? You haven't been given me all the tools to carry have you?" Now would I do something like that?!

PHOTOS OF THE DAY
So like the TV commercial where all the photo's are trapped inside some camera.; my pictures are trapped in my camera. Last night I forgot to reinsert the memory card so all of today's pictures went to the camera's internal memory. Unfortunately I didn't bring the camera's cable so there won't be any pictures for this page until I find a replacement cable. Sorry.

Day 02 (Mon 6/29/09)

Over the Cascades

Yesterday Tomorrow