Hood Canal is a thin body of cobalt seawater shaped like a fishhook. Along its shore lie towns with both Indian and Western names: Quilcene, and Lilliwaup, Hoodsport and Belfair. Inside the Great Bend, near the place where a barb would curve away from the shaft of the hook lie the Tahuya hills.
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Shortly after we had left the ferry and milled around a bit Bill (the brevet organizer) said it was 7:00 and wished us well. Twenty-some randonneurs rode up the inevitable hill away from the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal. The weather was to be fair throughout the day -- highs in the mid 50s with no rain. We couldn't ask for much better from mid-April in the Pacific Northwest. As usual, Kent was off at his standard pace. We've joked in the past that he doesn't have a throttle, he has an "on" and "off" switch. I'd been riding enough with him lately to be used to the lack of a warmup period, so I fell into place a bike-length behind on the climb. Questions ran through my mind and the answers were only to be found later in the ride.
We rode a steady pass across the Island on the wide shoulder of the main highway. I talked briefly with a new fellow named Ozzie who was visiting from San Francisco. He had recently been at a PAC Tour camp in Arizona and was taking advantage of a Seattle visit to sample Northwest randonneuring. The rest of the group was made up of the usual suspects. Andy was riding his "don't hate it because it's beautiful" Trek Y-foil. Derek was doing his part to repel rain by carrying a tightly-packed blue rain shell as a fanny-pack. Ed (whose real name is Orville--a name with a fine bicycling heritage) was very visible in his orange Etxe-Ondo outer jersey. The only missing face in the usual front group was Ken Carter, who would catch up shortly.
We passed the camels on Big Valley Road and I debated my ride strategy. My two years of rando experience have been marked by rides in which early efforts have led to late collapses. This year I was determined to ride my own pace. Still, I found myself in the front group, thinking mixed thoughts: "It's easier to share the work in a group," and, "I want to be able to stop and eat when and where I feel like it," and, "This pace isn't really that hard," and, "What do I really want to get out of this ride?"
The Hood Canal floating bridge provided our first view of the water we would flank for much of the ride. Grebes and other waterfowl floated on the glassy surface next to the concrete pontoons that form the main body of the bridge. One sharply monochrome black and white bird dove and I could see its wings flap underwater, propelling it after some unseen prey. On the bridge sections where the deck is steel grate and the shoulder is textured steel plate I concentrated on the road rather than the water. The plates made a sound vaguely like the ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk of a freight train as I rode across their joints.
The turn onto Paradise Bay Road was familiar from past rides to Port Townsend, but familiarity doesn't make the grade any shallower. I shifted into my rarely-used 24 tooth chainring and watched as Andy and Derek went off the front. Andy has been bitten by the 24-hour MTB racing bug and feels like his biological racing clock is ticking. He has been training hard this year and it shows up clearly in his climbing strength. Last year I might have pumped out mass quantities of lactic acid trying to keep up, but this year I was thinking of the many miles ahead and I stayed in a small gear. At any rate, we all regrouped shortly thereafter and I was faced with a choice: was I a member of the paceline or was I going it alone? I remembered past conversations with Kent about the essence of randonneuring and deliberately drifted off the back of the group.
Cooler heads apparently prevailed in the lead group as I was able to maintain visual contact through the first control at Port Hadlock. After a quick stop I was tempted again by the paceline but chose to drift back a second time as we slogged through the loose chip-seal of Center Road.
Riding alone, my thoughts turned to the many miles ahead and my plans for eating along the way. My longer rides in the past (and some days on which I didn't ride at all) had been marred by problems associated with (how should I phrase this?) an overactive colon. After some experimentation I decided that fruit juice was probably a major contributor to the problem, so today I had two bottles of plain water and one bottle of Ensure in my cages. I hoped that the more balanced mix of sugars, protein, and fat in the Ensure would sit better, and could be supplemented by other food purchased along the way.
At Quilcene I could smell tide-flats and mentally geared up for our first rolling section along the Hood Canal shoreline, but the road turned away from the water and stretched away in a gentle upward grade as far as I could see. I passed the salmon hatchery where a rectangular concrete pool must have been empty of smolts or it would have surely required netting to keep away the kingfishers and herons. There was Derek up ahead. He looked like he might be paying for his earlier uphill romps with Andy, and he confirmed that when I caught up. I tried to cheer him up by telling him how the Tahuya hills must be really bad because no one I had talked to about this ride had even mentioned this five-mile grind out of Quilcene. I don't think it helped and he dropped back out of sight.
After a smooth descent and a few miles of the prematurely anticipated rolling road along the shore, the thought of salty solid food became irresistable. I pulled into the Brinnon 7-Eleven/Quickie Mart/whatever it was and nuked a "Smoky-Polish Bagel Dog". Liberally basted with ketchup squeezed from foil packets, it was delicious. Derek rolled in as I dined on the sidewalk and soon emerged from the store with an egg salad sandwich. I helped him pierce the plastic armor of the packaging with a properly wielded house-key and set off again.
I'm not always good about eating enough while riding, but for some reason I was hungry for most of West side of Hood Canal. The cue sheet mentioned that we were to turn at the Safeway Belfair and this bit of information had me daydreaming about snarfing down Szechwan Beef with rice at the Safeway Deli. The problem was that I didn't know if the Safeway would have Chinese food, or even if it would have a Deli. I ended up playing it safe and hit the Subway store for a chicken breast on wheat, with Dijon mustard. Funny how this stuff tastes so much better 120 miles into a ride than under normal circumstances. Maybe there's a marketing technique here. Then again, maybe not.
I missed the left turn arrow by a few seconds and soon after stopping I heard the familiar click of a clipless pedal. Derek had caught up again, and this time he was accompanied by a rider I didn't recognize, riding a very clean old Raleigh (I later found out this was Jon Muellner). The light had a very short cycle and I didn't have a chance to say much more than hello before rolling forward with Derek and Jon following along.
At this point the ride became a series of comparisons and contrasts between the current 300k and a 120k ride a few weeks earlier where Kent had introduced me to the infamous Tahuya Hills. It was nice to have some idea of what was to come but a few "minor" changes involving the route and the number of miles in my legs turned out to make the contrasts at least as common as the comparisons. After a pleasant ride up Northshore Drive during which neither Derek nor I was very talkative and Jon drifted back slightly, I found that the first contrast was the sharpest. Shortly after the "secret" control we rolled up to a Y in the road where Kent and I had gone to the right. Today's route sheet said left, a direction Kent had pointed and said, "You can go that way, but -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- you go up a HUGE hill." A hundred yards up the road I realized that Kent hadn't emphasized it enough. Derek kept up briefly before saying, "Do you have a triple?" and then, "See you later" after I answered yes. I ground my way up, and up, and thought about the brevet organizer, Bill and his choice of the left road at the Y. I thought -- bad things. Eventually I saw a lake on the right and the grade eased. Before long I was back on roads I had traveled with Kent and assumed, incorrectly, that I was on fully familiar ground.
My overriding memory of my 120k ride along the Dewatto-Seabeck Road was of hill after hill, where each crest must surely be the last, but never was. It lived up to that memory. What had changed was the road surface. What I remembered vaguely as a slightly rough blacktop had somehow become a maze of dips and broken-edged holes where the good sections of road were covered in extra-chunky chip-seal. I thought of the euro-pros on the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix and followed their advice to mash a big gear in order to stay light in the saddle. I daydreamed about somehow briefly calling up euro-pro speed in order to get this section of road behind me. I ground slowly onward. I did what randonneurs do.
At Seabeck Bill was manning the penultimate control. I stepped off my bike and said, "You couldn't let us go right? Up Tahuya River Road?"
"Was it really that steep?" I just slumped my shoulders with a sigh, then laughed.
Anderson Hill Road was the first turn after Seabeck. In describing our 120k ride, Kent had said we would be avoiding this "sadistic" road. There was no question that the granny would again be deployed. Perhaps the road was sadistic, but memory is merciful and I don't remember much of the first, largest, climb. I do remember the screaming descent that didn't provide enough speed to carry the second, smaller climb. Granny, again.
I saw no riders ahead or behind me for the last segment of the ride. I calculated whether a sub-13 hour time was feasible and decided that it was close but not worth a deep draining effort to achieve. I wondered how far the front group was ahead. They had a half-hour on me at Union (about halfway) but Bill said they hadn't gained a whole lot more at Seabeck. I stopped near Poulsbo to switch on my lights (to be seen rather than to see), and I felt the weariness of the long day.
The final descent to the ferry terminal was somehow shorter than the climb had been in the morning. Ron Lee had a clever SIR sign equipped with LED blinkies to mark the finish control. I turned in my card and Ron said the lead group had pulled in about 45 minutes before. It was 8:06 and the next ferry was at 8:30, enough time for me to get good and cold, but the ferries have nice long padded benches and after boarding I did my best impression of a cadaver -- hands across my chest and cycling cap pulled low over my eyes. I heard a little boy walk by and say, "That guy must have been out riding all day!" If he only knew.
Although I'd had no stomach troubles all day long, I somehow felt nauseous after the wait and ferry ride. I keep gathering more and more evidence that I've inherited a mutinous stomach. Both my father and I seem to have a type of hard-wired fatigue limitation. A combination of little sleep and lots of exercise leads our stomachs to eventually go on strike. Wasn't there a general who once said, "Armies march on their stomachs." Well, randonneurs roll on theirs, but I still rolled home from the ferry terminal. Luckily, I felt better while riding than I had on the ferry. It was a pleasant night for a ride, with little traffic and the concrete roads and walls of Seattle still holding some of the warmth of the day. I was happy to pull into my driveway, and looked forward to a hot shower. I was also happy with my ride. It had been a good ride; a randonneurs ride around the hook.