STP IN ONE DAY - VIP STYLE
Seattle to Portland
Bicycle Classic - a venerable 200 mile bike ride from, you guessed
it, Seattle WA to Portland OR. It's been around since the late 70s, and
every year attracts thousands of two wheel afficiandos. It's viewed as
a rite of passage for Northwest cyclists; whenever two or three are
gathered together, they will always want to know, "Well, have you done
the STP?" Once your bona fides are established, then you're asked,
"One day or two?"
Because, you see, the ride starts at 4:45 AM from the University of
Washington Husky Stadium parking lot, for those going the whole way in
one day, and 15 minutes later for those staying overnight along the
way. It is quite macho among beginner/intermediate cyclists to be seen
as someone who can go 200 miles at one sitting, although why one would
want to sit for 10-16 hours on a bike is quite beyond me. The one time
I did the formal ride, I did it in one day. But because it was actually
the GHTP (Gig Harbor to Portland), my distance was about 175 mi, in
about 11 hours. Way boring, resulting in a semi-sprained ankle from
overuse. Of course, the fact that I had done TWO half Ironman races in
the previous two weeks had nothing to do with that. My son was starting
Reed College, in Portland, in the fall, and he and my wife drove down
there to check out the area one last time that weekend, giving me a
ride home.
The usual ride follows a rigid route, avoiding most hills along the
way, and passing a number of rest stops, about every 20-40 miles. Long
pace lines develop, seeded by bike clubs who train all winter and
spring for the event. They roll down the highway with about 5-15
trading the lead, and sometimes twice that many sucking along behind.
For the two day riders, belongings are trucked half way to
Centralia/Chehalis, for camping or moteling Saturday night. Once in
Portland, you are on your own for the return trip.
A few years ago, my company, Group Health
Cooperative and our associated medical group, took over the title
sponsorship of the ride. This year, a local TV personality, John Curley
of the Evening
Magazine, decided to devote one night's segment to the STP. Now,
Curley is famous for being an "Everyman", trying activities which the
rest of us would like to do, but don't have the resources or time to
attempt, like sky diving, entering a frog jumping contest, or, in this
case, riding the STP in One Day.
This being television, there had to be (a) commercial tie ins and (b) a
human interest story. The commercial tie ins included: Soft Ride
bicycles, who would provide Curley with his bike (their rep riding with
him); the Cascade Bicycle club, who provided some race team members and
route finders; and Group Health, who provided a mess of doctors and our
own cycling team (women's). The human interest was two fold. First,
would Curley make it all the way in one day without breaking down?
Second, they filmed (at another place and time) the story of a
benighted family who tried tackling the Oregon Coast on recumbents for
their first ever extended bike tour (what this had to do with the STP I
never did figure out.)
I somehow parlayed my past life as the Cooperative's Medical Director,
and my current reputation as a serious biker (see: original
Bikrutz trip and Triathlon
Diary) into a spot as a hanger-on/supercargo. After a couple of
group rides to establish my ability to draft as well as anyone at 19
mph, I met up with another GHC doc from Tacoma at 3:45, and headed thru
the morning mist to UW. There, it was dark and raining. We slowly
coalesced, and under the glare of the parking lot lights and the TV
spots, we slowly picked up steam towards the Montlake cut.
Our entourage included the aforementioned cycling teams (GHC and
Cascade); a guide car from Cascade; the KING5 minivan with cameraman,
sound guy, producer, etc; GHC's cycle team trailer and union driver;
Damien, the guy from PR/Marketing in charge of GHC's bicycle
initiatives, driving a sag wagon; and a mechanic's car, filled with
wheels, tubes, pumps, and (we would learn) the endless conversation of
the chain smoking mechanic. And, oh yes, about 15 GHC docs and
managers, desperate to participate in this magic media event.
Since I had the Couer d'Alene Ironman coming up in two weeks, my plan
was to bike no more than 140 miles, and hopefully no less than 120, but
in segments, not at one stretch. I figured 60/50/30 would do it just
fine for me. The first segment went well, through a sleepy Sunday
morning along Lake Washington and down towards Renton/Kent/Auburn. Near
Peasley Canyon on the Valley Highway, we approached a traffic
light, turned red. I thought I could get my jacket off, rolled up, and
around my waist before it turned green (the morning's rain had turned
to a warming day, and I was starting to feel a bit sweaty). We'd been
doing a good imitation of a peloton for most of the day, or maybe a
lead pack and following group, but we were all together for these first
few hours. I had the jacket half off when the light turned green, and
everyone else rode on. I figured, how fast can these guys be, I'm an
IRONMAN, for crying out loud, I just did an Olympic Distance triathlon
the weekend before, 40 K at 22 mph. I forgot that was on my TT bike
with race day clothes and taper. They had a 30 second head start, and
while I could match their speed, I never could catch them. And they
were certainly less tired than I was. The GHC sag wagon rolled up,
asked me if I wanted to ride, I said, "No, why don't I just draft
behind you?"
They didn't tell me they'd never followed a bike tour before, much less
had any experience with motor pacing. Which was OK, because while I'd
seen "Breaking Away", and watched the Tour de France for a decade, I
myself had never actually ridden fast behind a vehicle before. The were
driving a standard van, so they provided a fair wind shield. One guy
looked out the rear window; Damien, the driver, watched nervously in
both his rear view mirrors. At about 22-24 mph, on the flat road, I was
spinning my wheels easily, like there was NO CHAIN. This was pretty
cool, as
long as Damien didn't slow down suddenly, and I didn't try to speed up.
We managed to survive our mutual inexperience. As easy as the pedaling
was, it had been quite nerve-racking, so I was glad to get back to the
more friendly environment of a pack of cyclists. We bounced through the
rutted streets of Sumner to our first pit stop. The GHC cycling women
were all decked out in their team colors, including windbreakers and
shorts with "Group Health Cycling" along the thighs across the upper
hips. Now, the rest of us had been given GHC cycling jerseys, and free
GHC water bottles, but I wanted the full kit. I asked one of them how I
could get some of the shorts. She said, "Well, I think first you'd have
to be a woman."
"Um, I'm a gynecologist; does that count for anything?"
She looked non-plussed, and drifted away warily.
Curley was outfitted in a bright red cycling jersey with his name in
five inch high caps across the back. Just so the camera would know
where he was at all times, I guess, or maybe he really did have an ego
that big. The whole point of this ride, we were told, the reason GHC
was putting over $10,000 into the event (remember the commercial tie in
- nothing's free!), was to get Curley to Portland in one day, riding
the whole way. I suppose they could have put him into the van and
driven him from set-up shot to set-up shot, but the man has some pride
(and some chops). It was clear he was not only going to ride the whole
way, but he was going to do it at a serious pace.
So off we went to our rendezvous with The Hill. There is one hill of
note on the STP, about 350 vertical feet over a mile and a half or so,
south of the Puyallup valley to the top of (inventive name here) South
Hill. As hills will do, the group was separated into the climbers and
the posers. On this day, I was a poser, and chugged in with the
stragglers to an impromptu rest stop up on the plateau. By this time,
several of us had learned the value of the one tandem we had with us,
and quickly fell in behind that duo. Biking near them was a bit
strange, and they had helmets with built in radios, and were constantly
talking to each other at a very soft level, unlike the elevated
decibels bikers often use to overcome the wind and traffic noise around
them. It was un-nerving to feel them glide past, each whispering a bit
like someone on a semi-secret cell phone conversation.
About 65 miles into the ride, we crossed the "Y" in south Parkland,
where highway 7 splits to the east, and a narrower road shoots along
the edge of Fort Lewis. Somewhere in there, my bike started developing
chain/cassette issues. Rather than worry myself over trying to fix it,
and then catching the group again, I just hopped a ride with the
mechanic, who eventually found the time to jimmy a fix for the stuck
chain. However, I did have to endure his stream-of-consciousness
monologue, which went something like this:
" Jeez, these guys are worse than the race I followed last weekend. We
did that one in our regular mechanical van. I've got everything I need
in it; I keep it all organized, and can always find whatever I need. We
lost that one though, because the IDIOTS running the race suddenly
STOPPED in the middle of the road when the peloton got to the bottom of
the hill, they didn't even flag or signal or anything like anybody
normally would to, those guys must NEVER have followed a race before I
had to swerve off the shoulder just so I could keep going cause I NEVER
get caught way behind the racers they depend on me, and if they get a
mechanical, well, the EXPECT me to be there to get them going again,
whether its a wheel or a chain, or a derailleur, or whatever, so I had
to [here he lit up another Marlboro] swerve through a ditch off the
side of the road into some farmer's FIELD and hit a patch of potholes
in the dirt from the COWS or something [pause for breath] - know what I
mean?"
"Yeah, I was in a race once when..."
He was asking but he wasn't listening: "So I popped out the
differential in our van, they've STILL got it in the shop and those
guys at the race, that race director, he just won't admit any
responsibility so I don't know how we're going to pay for it, I mean,
the shop just basically VOLUNTEERS me and the van on the weekends for
the races, I don't think they get any useful advertising out of it, but
hey, I LIKE to follow races, I'M good at it, and the racers come to
EXPECT me to be there, you know what I mean?"
I didn't, but I didn't dare tell him, for fear I might miss his drift.
But like I said, these guys are even worse this week, they don't seem
to have a plan, but what do I care, at least we're getting PAID this
week, and this rental they've got me in is covered to, but so what,
cause it doesn't have near the room the van does, so that's why I don't
have an extra chain for you. I think I can get it going the next time
we stop.
Well, that he did, but by the time he fixed things on my rig, the
peloton was at least five miles up the road, so I hitched another ride
with the Group Health union driver, in a dually pick up pulling the GHC
women's cycling team's logoed trailer for our bikes. This burly,
bearded guy, all smiles (who wouldn't smile at time and a half, and
double time over eight hours on the weekend!) gently placed my bike
along one wall, bungeed it tight, and covered it with a quilted moving
van blanket. I shared the cab with one of the women's cycling team
members, who was trying out her inured knee with bad results, and so
she sat morosely silent along the second row of seats, pondering the
breakdown of her body.
Looking ahead, I noticed a clot of our riders milling about a grassy
verge along the edge of a newly built mini-mall. "Umm, something's
happened there, I think we better stop."
The driver pulled into the side street, effectively blocking not only
it, but also the entrance into the mall with his truck and trailer
combo.
The riders surrounded a downed colleague, who lay dazed, helmetless, on
the grass, blood oozing from a head wound. Piecing together the story,
it seemed like one of our docs had suffered a freakish accident. He'd
been riding with two others, who had been stopped by the light about
100 yards behind. When
they didn't answer his call, he looked back over his shoulder, trying
to locate them. His front wheel had clipped the curb. Now,
this should have been just a minor accident - the curb fell down from a
wide, soft grassy shoulder, and his landing would have been almost
pleasant, except for the street lamp planted in the exact spot where he
jumped the curb. Looking backwards at the time, he never saw it, and
managed to hit it full on with his helmet. The long and the short: his
day was done, the medics were called, and he visited the ER with one of
our tag alongs, the official crew physician, who was indeed an MD, but
also the wife of one of our riders. After about 45 minutes to sort this
all out, we were on the road again. All this happened out of sight of
the King5 cameras, so the viewing public was thankfully shielded from
the gruesome event.
Serendipitously, this allowed me to jump back into the ride, and on we
went to our half-way stop. There, while the rest of us stoked up on
food and fuel, John Curley paced under the shade trees in front of a
frantically trolling camera and sound crew. Exuberantly exclaiming to
his unseen audience, he tried to look at once exhausted from our
century ride, and enthused, full of an eager anticipation for the next
hundred miles. What he really felt, I'll never know, as his game plan
from the start was to make sure the viewing audience saw him suffer.
Kind of hard to do, when the producer keeps fluffing your hair up from
the helmeted mess it had become, and powdering the sweat of your face.
That reminded me to lather on the sun screen, as I had taken off the
sleeves and leggings at this stop - the sun had come out, and, 100
miles south of Seattle, it was starting to warm up in a serious,
mid-June sort of way. Remarkably, no one else seemed to have remembered
sunscreen. Either they were all serious, early morning only riders, or
they had labored too long in the Northwest's gloom to consider the
possibility of excessive exposure on this all day jaunt. Whatever; for
a few breathless moments, I was a hero. For naught, it turned out, as
the rest of the day was spent either in the shade, or under scudding
clouds.
Over the next fifty miles, we wound amidst the rolling wooded valleys
south of Chelalis. I put in another 30 or so miles, saving my final set
for the end of the trip down the Columbia into Portland. After I'd
popped back into the mechanic's van for a 2 hour rest, we crept up on
several stragglers, sweeping them back to Damien's van for a
well-deserved breather. Our modus operendus was to have a "pace" car at
the front of the peloton, ostensibly for route finding purposes,
although the Cascade boys certainly knew they way by heart. The the
peloton, smoothly rolling at about 19-21 mph, followed by the
stragglers, the mechanic, Damien's sag wagon, and finally, the trailer.
In the earlier morning hours, the roads had been quite deserted, and
this had posed no traffic hazards. Now, however, the Sunday drivers
were out in force, and we become a rolling bottleneck, so much so that
people had complained to the State Patrol.
The sharp-eyed mechanic noticed this immediately, and pulled off to the
side before the cops could stop him. The bubble tops did, however, make
threatening noises to the others in our caravan. The gas powered
members all stopped at the side of the road; the human powered vehicles
floated on, oblivious. I sidled out to Damien, ostensibly the leader
(at least, he was the one who'd have to cover any fines for driving to
slow, endangering traffic, etc.
I'd had a bit of experience at vehicle supported group rides (see: any
of the other stories on this site!), so I suggested the obvious: "You
know, you should just "leap frog."
Quizzical stares greeted me.
I went on, "Just let the peloton go ahead. We've got multiple vehicles,
and numerous cell phones. Send someone on ahead to the next planned
stop to wait, and keep one or more of the other cars at the rear,
leaving in time to pull into the rest stop just as the bikers are
expected to get there. That way, you can sweep up anybody who has a
mechanical or needs to ride the sag."
They chewed on that awhile, and finally figured it out. I asked to be
taken up ahead to the next meeting spot, about 35 miles from the
finish. Two others tagged along. My plan was to cruise down US 30 into
Portland, and arrive there just as the peloton got to the City Limits.
Our little crew headed off, in a semblance of a pace line. My two pace
mates were noble, but fatigued. After 10 miles of a decent speed, it
turned out that I was the only one with any gas left, and had to pull
them the rest of the way into town. And even then, I was motoring along
at about 85% of the effort level I would use in, say, an Ironman's 112
mile bike portion. Probably just what I should be doing, with Coeur
d'Alene only two weeks away.
We took a pit stop at a little roadside rest about six miles out, to
check the map one last time, and, frankly, give the other two a
breather. Then back through the final industrial outskirts into the
maze of off ramps leading into the city center. There, we got
terminally confused, looking for help from out woefully underpowered
STP map kit. I gazed wildly around, trying to figure out just where we
were, when I saw the lead car come rising over the hill like a black
heliocopter. Behind them, the 20 remaining members of our STP in one
day team. Perfection!
Our little group merged with the big one, and we spent five minutes or
so climbing up to the park where we declared ourselves "Done". Curley
had a tearful reunion with his wife, filmed another five minutes or so,
and took off with his family for wherever it is TV personalities go
when they've ridden 200 miles in about 12 hours. The rest of us
couldn't quite believe we had no more miles to ride. For some, it was a
first time experience, and they were, naturally and deservedly, quite
pleased with themselves. For others, it was just "Like, where's the
showers you promised, Matt" and "What about the pizza, Damien" and "Why
can't we just get on the bus now?" But there were bikes to load, bags
to retrieve, and rides home to organize.
The motor coach was idling, waiting for our tired bodies, to take us
several blocks to the Y for showers. Damien scooted off the gather the
pizzas. We tumbled up to the entrance of the health club. The wheezed,
then left the parking lot.
"Where's he going?"
"To get gas"
"What?! You mean they didn't fill up BEFORE they came to get us - how
dumb is that?"
"Don't worry, they'll be back by the time we shower and get the pizza."
Inside, the front desk attendant started having each of us fill out a
guest form, clearly designed as part of the sales pitch package. It
seemed a bit much just to take a shower, but they lamely explained it
was for "insurance purposes". Those poor guys - insurance companies, I
mean (after all, Group Health IS one, amongst other things) - they have
to take the blame for everything. After the first three or four started
writing, the rest of us formed a critical mass of resistance to
bureaucratic authority, and just strolled right on in while the
obviously outnumbered front desk staff gamely tried to deal with each
individual one at a time.
"Oh, OK, just show me your ID as you go buy," he said, giving up.
Once showered, we wandered back out to the front, and collectively
frowned when we saw (a) no bus and (b) NO PIZZA. Luckily, the
beleaguered front desk guy started bringing us folding chairs so we
could at least sit down. While we formed two circles, Damien drove up
and, sliding back the doors of his van, unloaded about fifty boxes of
pizzas and drinks. Two dozen of us managed to go through almost all the
food and drink in less than 15 minutes. Still no bus, though.
Turns out he went BACK TO THE BASE to fill the gas tank (company
policy). Half an hour later, We're all loaded up, and half asleep as we
cruise in style back up I-5 to UW. The only thing missing was a few
DVDs of "The Evening Show" to keep us amused while we dreamed of
squeaking pedals, creaking knees, leaking skies, and endless tailwinds.