Chapter 12

The first real rest stop of the day is at about mile twenty-four, in Kent. It is hosted by the nice folks at REI, and they always put a lot of effort into their stop. They always have a theme, and it is usually pretty entertaining. This year was no different. The ‘Cirque de Soleil’ had been in town recently, and REI had decided to call their stop the ‘Cirque de Cycle’ this year. They had clowns and balloons and music and lots of fun. One year they had done a Caribbean theme and had actually had a steel drum band, what a kick!

We grouped up after we found a spot on the grass for our bikes and I said, “Okay, fifteen minutes, and then we roll. Melody, Jane and I will get a place in line for the food and water, the rest of you get in the port-a-potty line, and we’ll switch as needed. Everybody needs to pee and get topped off, even if you don’t feel like it. The next stop isn’t until after the Puyallup hill, and you want to avoid riding that on a full bladder.” If you are going to ride the STP, you need to have a plan and get used to standing in lines at rest stops. Again, with 8,000 riders, there will be lines. If you plan ahead, though, you split the team in half and hold spots for each other. Some of the folks in line grumble a bit, but, hey! Get your own team! Everybody used the ‘pause for the cause’ to good effect, and we rolled out in good order after exactly fifteen minutes. Were we good or what?

The rest stops accomplish two seemingly mutually exclusive tasks: One, they allow groups that have come apart to regroup, which then packs them together again on the road. Two, it breaks the herd up because some folks seem to get into a rest stop and somehow can’t seem to get out again. You sort of wonder how some of these folks even finish the ride if they spend a half hour at each stop!

Anyway, after the first real stop of the day things seem to settle into a rhythm and riders are a lot less jittery. It probably helps that from Kent onward, the entire first day of the STP is pretty much a scenic rural ride. The quality of the road starts to deteriorate a bit, but overall, it is a pretty nice ride from there on out. We rolled along at a nice even pace. Since we represented one of the few organized groups in our part of the herd, we tended to pick up a high number of fleas, as I had warned, we would. Part of me really couldn’t blame the fleas. First, we looked like we knew what the hell we were doing and second, who would want to ride with five beautiful young women? I mean really?

Once we started down the Green River valley toward Puyallup, and our rendezvous with ‘The Hill’, we also picked up the main reason we had been working on riding in a pace line. As usual, the wind was in our faces and the early morning version of it was pretty brisk. As I rolled up the line toward the front to take my pull, I reminded everyone that they were to only take a two-minute pull on the front, and then roll back to rest and recover. “We have a long ways to go yet, and adrenalin will only take us so far. Take your pull and then fall back to the end of our line. Remind any fleas that we are not taking any help. If they want to hang off the end, there’s nothing we can do about it, but we are not looking for any help.”

The Puyallup hill was just ahead, so I warned everyone, and we took a little off the pace to get ourselves sorted out. Melody, Jane and I rode at the front with Meredith, Anne, and Lizzie in our shadows. We hit the foot of the climb and had to pull left almost at once, as the slower climbers had already created a bottleneck at the foot of the climb. It’s always the same; some people just never get their heads around the fact that climbing is about eighty percent mental! So, they hit the foot of the climb, look uphill, gulp and then give up.

Melody and Jane seemed to be feeling good, so I gave them their heads and let them climb as they saw fit. I hung back a bit with Meredith, Anne, and Lizzie and made sure that they saw the openings in the herd on the hillside and followed me into them. We worked patiently up the hill and at the crest they actually surged ahead of me to finish before me. Melody and Jane stood just beyond the crest and high-fived everyone as they pulled up.

“Okay, ladies, you have now conquered the worst STP has to throw at you! And since you all finished ahead of me and my lard ass,” at which everybody giggled or laughed out loud, “I guess I owe you all a rub down now don’t I?”