RCC Hood Canal 200K

Great ride! - Left me seriously tired in fact.

The RCC group headed off for a 200k ride around Hood Canal. Wonderful ride, starts by catching the first ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island where we ride off and across the Island, Up to Port Gamble, Hood Canal Bridge then Quilcene arriving after 80miles and a climb over Mt. Walker at Hoodsport for lunch. Then on around to Union, Belfair and finally the Bremerton Ferry back home. Route Here

The ride was organized by the unstoppable RCC social Director "Buck-a-mile Sneed" and his wife "Lovey" They always do a great job putting the ride together and keeping everyone heading more or less in the right direction. The phrase herding cats often comes in to mind.... This year Greg has a line of rides on his the RCC calendar leading up to hopefully a successful RAMROD for some of us... (I do have a ticket to ride RAMROD this year but I am still keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to get enough training time in!)

Now I have not gotten any serious bike time in this year so I was not up for the whole 200k - I called up my tandem buddy Max and she signed on for a 100k of the ride. Since the plan was for some of us to share driving duties this worked out very well. I signed up to drive the ascent and unfortunately also the descent of Walker Pass (fairs fair - if you climb it you should get to descend it also....) plus I figured at Hoodsport we could take over driving duties for the rest of the trip that would give us right around 100K - In fact the odometer was just over 100K at 68 miles when we put the bike on the car in Hoodsport.

The trip was a great success - We felt great and thanks in part to Max's never ending cheerfulness and her willingness to push an undertrained captain around the course I had a wonderful ride! I was ready to get off the bike at Hoodsport as I was feeling the lack of time on the bike. She of course would probably have been ready for some more. I had no major mechanicals to worry over although the bike is overdue for some shop time. We did hit a raised plate hard at the Hood Canal bridge which I believe caused a few spokes to loosen on the rear wheel - Max heard a strange noise from the rear wheel after we got off 104 and where headed for Quilcene. She insisted that we look at the wheel before going down any more screaming descents.... I had a spoke wrench and tightened up the loose spokes. The wheel was fine otherwise.

At Hoodsport we had a fine lunch and then as we were now in charge of the SAG vehicle we made a stop at the Hoodsport Winery where we bought 7 bottles of wine! Then on to Union where Max bought a great T-shirt for her brother and a latte for me. We then headed up to catch the group who where making great time. We normally catch the 5:30 ferry at Bremerton but they managed to get in in time to catch the 4:15!