204 Miles To Go Before I Sleep

I just got home from the Mariners game not too long ago. As soon as I got home, I opened a Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi and set to work on my bicycle saddle. When I rode to work on Tuesday, I noticed a popping and creaking from the seat, so I decided to fix it tonight.

Tonight was the only night that I would have a chance.

The fix was simple enough – remove the saddle and seat post, remove the screws, clean off the road grit, apply grease to the screws, reattach the saddle to the post, put it all back on the bike. This also gave me the opportunity to better center my new saddle on the post. I’ll test it out by riding to therapy, work, and then home tomorrow. Everything should be alright. Everything needs to be alright.

On Saturday, I ride my bicycle to Portland.

My Cannondale Synapse Sport 5

I’ll be honest. I know that I can do the one-day ride, all 204 miles in 14 hours or less. However, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. I have never undertaken anything so physically demanding. Never. My longest ride has been 131 miles. On Saturday, I will eclipse that mark by 73 miles. I wonder when the gravity of this situation will sink in. Perhaps it won’t sink in until I’ve completed the ride and I find my friends Shiloh and Baz, who will be waiting for me in downtown Portland.

I stayed up a little extra last night packing my  rack bag. It’s a snazzy Topeak trunk that I’ve had for about four years now. The sides zip down into handy panniers. In the left pannier, I’m carrying my post-ride change of clothes – a t-shirt and pair of comfortable khakis. In the right pannier, I’m carrying a pair of flip flops, my sunscreen, and my friction gel. The main trunk compartment is large and in it I’m carrying a spare tube, tire levers, my bike tool, a patch kit, my map, my wallet, cellphone, my headlight, a tube of Nuun tablets, a ziplock bag of Advil, Tiger Balm muscle strain patches, and four Peanut Butter Crunch Clif Bars.

I packed all of these things three days before the ride. I used to do the same thing when I was a kid during the last week of summer vacation. I would organize all of my new pencils and pens, I would put my new folders in my Trapper Keeper, I would carefully situate everything in my backpack, and finally I would pick out the clothes I would wear for my first day of school.

I have laid out what I will be wearing on the ride this Saturday:

• My STP jersey
• My Castelli bib tights
• My Cascade “Give Cyclists Three Feet of Space” socks
• My Sidi shoes
• My Bell helmet
• My Pearl Izumi gloves
• My Serfas cycling glasses

I’m so ready for this ride that I’m regressing to the excitement that I felt in the days leading up to the fourth grade. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

For those of you who may worry about me on the road, you really shouldn’t be too worried. This is one of the largest rides in the United States with 10,000 participants. The ride is fully supported, so there will be people along the route making sure we don’t get lost and that we get whatever help we need, be it mechanical or medical. Plus, this is the 30th anniversary of the event and I’m riding in it just four months shy of my 3oth birthday. I will have fun. I will be safe.

And I will be sure to go to sleep super-early tomorrow night.

I hope to have some pictures to share later on.

This is going to be epic.