Pacific Crest tour to begin

Saturday, August 1  Day 0     Everett, WA

Tomorrow morning we depart on the 12-day, 1215-mile Pacific Crest tour. I am in Clarkston, WA at the moment, but will depart in an hour to drive across Washington to Everett, which is north of Seattle. This tour is different from the other two this summer in that there will be 31 riders and another 12 staff. It will be huge!

That photo, by the way, is from my first Continental Divide tour, when I was climbing a long hill in New Mexico on my way to Los Alamos.

I am curious to see who my roommate will be for this tour. On the previous tours, I knew my roommates (when I had one). It's always fun to get to know a new friend, as long as he doesn't snore. haha  I do know that one of the riders is Bill Phillippi, who was in the group that rode across the country with me in 2007. I'm looking forward to riding with Bill again.

Here's a brief summary of this bike tour:
1) Take the ferry to Whidbey Island and ride north to the end and back to the mainland.
2) Cross the Cascades to the east side, and then ride south to the quaint "Bavarian" town of Leavenworth on Day 3. Janet and I spent a couple days there in 2011 while we were taking care of Tyson during his first five months, and we loved it.
3) Continue southward on the eastern side of the Cascades, but then head back into them and south through the mountains to the Columbia River.
4) Climb to the Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood, then south through the mountains to Bend, OR.
5) Ride back into the Cascades, around Mt Bachelor, and south past Crater Lake to end in Ashland, OR

Since the Blue Ridge Parkway tour ended three weeks ago, I have not ridden very many miles. I bruised a rib 9 days ago and for the first few painful days, I feared I might not be able to ride this tour. Fortunately, it has gotten better, but I have ridden only about 100 miles since that time.

I departed in my car last Sunday, and after a few hundred miles I realized that I FORGOT MY FRONT WHEEL. What??? How could I forget my wheel? I immediately phoned Janet's mom about calling a family friend, Mike, with whom I've ridden several times in Clarkston, to see if he might have a spare wheel I could borrow. Lucky for me, he did have one for me. Interestingly, it comes off his Scattante bike, which is the exact bike and model year of my Scattante I was riding when its fork snapped apart and I broke my neck in 2007. When I first went on a ride with Mike back in 2011, and he showed up riding that bike, I sorta freaked out. There was that "evil" Weyless fork that "betrayed" me, rolling along next to me.

I have enjoyed being here with Janet, who flew in with Tyson last Tuesday night, a few hours after I arrived from my three-day drive across the country. I will return here to Janet's parents' house on August 15 to pack the car back up with her things and Tyson's new toys, and arrive back in Ohio on about Aug 18.

As usual, I will try to post on this blog nightly, but it always depends on how strong the Internet connection is. Also, on this tour with 31 riders, I will have to see how the daily schedules go before I will know how conducive it will be to find time to write a blog each night.

Time for me get going on my 6-hour drive to Everett. This photo is from the Blue Ridge Parkway a few weeks ago.  I can't wait for tomorrow's tour, which was the first of this summer's tours that I signed up for (and thought would be my only one, until the other two came along).

Added note: I'm here in Everett and it's been wild meeting and seeing SO many cyclists! Most of them have ridden with PAC Tours before, but I'm one of the newbies. I've met only a portion of the 42 others, but so far, so good. My roommate is Bob Lewis from Phoenix, who is 69 and has an illustrious cycling history. It's early to bed because tomorrow it's early to rise - breakfast at 5:30, load the trailers at 6:00, depart before 6:15, and make sure we are all on the 7:00 ferry to Whidbey Island. They promised that after tomorrow, we will be able to rise at later times if we wish. Oh, this tour has a massage therapist! I've already signed up for six of them over the next 12 days.