Here’s my description of the STP. It’s a 200 mile ride (322km on my bike computer) from Seattle to Portland. No, it doesn’t follow the I5! You can check out the route map and see that we were on beautiful country roads the whole time. We even spent over an hour on a bike path! It was 11.5hrs of riding, 14hrs from start to finish – a day longer then IronMan. It was my first time doing the STP, and I joined the crazy 1/4 of the ~10,000 riders that complete the ride in one day.

I rode the whole time with my Uncle Doug*. He showed up at my place on Thursday evening and we headed down to Seattle on Friday at around noon. After an agonizing 2hr wait in the border line-up, the short trip from Vancouver to Seattle turned into an epic 5hr road trip. I guess the epic wait fits into the theme of the weekend where everything is just a bit longer then you would like. We stayed at the residences at the University of Washington along with approximately six hundred 12 years old kids. Oh my, I almost throttled them. I’m sure that I used to be that excited to be at summer camp. But when you’re looking at a very early wake call – having kids running around outside your dorm, is not the ideal situation. So after a non-sleep on Friday night, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 3:30am Saturday morning.

From the dorms, we walked down to the start line in the UW parking lots and threw our bags onto the Portland truck. At 4am in the morning, the UW parking lots was alive! Close to 10,000 riders do this event – most Continue reading →