25th Anniversary Ride: A Cycling Memoir

.Reader Warning: The paragraphs below set a new high in self indulgence in a blog that is chock-a-block full of boasting and ill edited blather.  I hope you will read them, but I'm sure you have better things to do.  This post is mostly for my great grandchildren should there be any.

Twenty five years ago I marked my 50th birthday by joining some 2,000 others in a bike ride from Seattle to Portland OR.  At the time I thought 50 was an advanced age for riding such a distance, although there were, even then, some who had done the ride at ages into their 70's.  I  think it is now more or less routine to have 70 year olds.  Anyway, I thought I was kind of old.  What I didn't know was that I was just getting started as a somewhat serious bike rider.  In the years since, I have done the ride 5 more times,  so this year will by my 7th, if I complete it.  I have also done a couple of multi-week rides in the U.S., ridden in Europe, Hawaii, New York City, and California, led thematic rides around Seattle, ridden around Mt. Rainier (The Ramrod) and used a bike as my most common means of travel around Seattle. The rudest thing I've done on a bike is ride naked in the Fremont neighborhood Solstice Day Parade.   This weekend about 10,000 people will do the STP (Seattle to Portland).  About 20% of them will do the 200 miles in one day.  I suspect I will be the only one  carrying a snail in a jar dangling in front of me as a pace setter.  While most STP riders take the event rather seriously, riding as fast as they can on the best machines they can afford, I've always chosen to be a bit silly.

This time I'll be riding the same 5 speed, mid seventies, Schwinn, girls bike that I rode that first year.  It was given to me when it failed to sell at a garage sale.  There is attached to the sides the same cardboard cutout of a dinosaur.  Dino has been resting for the last 2 and 1/2 decades in my attic, awaiting his comeback appearance.  This is it.  My second STP was begun on a three wheeled rowing machine, though that proved to be too slow so the second day I resorted to the Schwinn again.  I did get my picture on the front page of the Seattle Times sports section that year.  The next two outings, a few years later, were done on a 1963 collapsible bike (an early Alex Moulton, for any cognoscenti, who may be reading) that I bought in a mountain town in Guatemala.  It was equipped with a three speed hub.  The second of those years I dressed as a sailor and carried signage advertising  a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore.  In 1997 I did the ride wearing a tuxedo and pulling a mannequin dressed in a formal gown on a trailer bike. I called that "Styling To Portland." My last time, in 2001, I wore cowboy boots, and a neckerchief.  A horse skull was mounted on  the handle bars and a tail swung behind the seat, which incidentally, earnest bike enthusiasts always call a saddle.  That year I did the ride in one day. 

If all goes well, in two days I will roll into Portland in time for dinner.  If I'm lucky my sister-in-law and riding companion will sing to me for the last ten miles.