Tuesday, August 20

80 miles: Metaline Falls to Kettle Falls

Today the organizers had the good idea to put the hill before lunch, not after. So, following a 10 mile warm-up, we proceeded to do a 3 mile long hill. Then we had stiff headwinds all down the back side, causing us to have to pedal to make decent speed on the descent. Just before we dropped into Colville, there were two very short and very steep downs. We hit our top speed for the trip on one, 48 mph.

Cascade Bicycle Club made sure nobody was going to get dehydrated as the temps went into the upper 80s. They had water stops about every 10 miles and of course at lunch. That’s Carol & Ralph Nussbaum with Spencer filling water for the next leg of the journey.

After Colville, we climbed steadily for an hour or so into the wind. Then we cruised along Franklin Roosevelt Lake to our campground. As usual, it was hot and the hills seemed endless. This was supposed to be a pretty flat ride. It sure hasn’t felt that way.

Thunder was threatening us, but we did our 3 days’ of laundry anyway. Sheila spent an hour hunched over a plastic bucket to get all our gear clean for the next 3 days’ of riding.  We had far and away the biggest laundry line in the camp.