Sierra Cascades – 8/15/2013 – The Prolog

 

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The ride we start tomorrow parallels part of the Pacific Crest Trail.  It is a beautiful and challenging route - a 30 day, 1310 mile journey starting near Seattle in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. We will wind our way through the dense forests, mountains, lakes, ranch land and national parks of Washington, Oregon and California ending in the always-awesome Yosemite National Park. This route includes the Volcanic Scenic Byway with views of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, The Sisters, Crater Lake, Mt Shasta, Lassen National Park (to name a few), before entering the Sierra, Lake Tahoe and finally Yosemite.  It basically goes over the top of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountain Ranges. 

It’s going to be a pretty difficult ride.   IT WAS BRENDA’S IDEA; NOT MINE!.  Actually I had suggested it in the epilog to my cross country blog four years ago but I had forgotten about it. And besides, I was younger then.  So I have more fear and doubts about this ride than probably any I’ve ever done. Most of my doubts are about the climbing; surely I can do the distances, although I haven’t done many long distance rides this year.

By the way, “Happy Birthday” to my daughter Pamela.

 

Like most of our tours, this one is organized by Bicycle Adventure Club. Our experienced and extremely competent volunteer leader is Alison Stone, known in the Bay Area cycling circles as “The Pink Lady”.

The current roster for this ride lists 19 members.  Due to injuries and other personal situations, this number is somewhat fluid and may change from day to day.  Of the 19 riders, 13 are females.  I’m fully prepared – well almost – to be humbled every day as all 13 females arrive at the top of the mountain before me.  Of course, they’re all younger than me.

Ignoring rest days, we’ll cycle 4 days in Washington, 8 in Oregon and 13 in California. In the map to the right you’ll see our basic route.  (Click on any picture for a larger image.)  Also note on the map the locations of San Francisco and San Diego – we cycled between these cities last year.  So it looks like we’ve got the West Coast covered. Anyone want to organize a ride down the East Coast?

 

We’re starting the ride from the Best Western Plaza on the Green in Kent, Wa.  Alison has arranged for us to all have balcony’s on the golf course.  Brenda and I have arrived two days early just to be sure our luggage, including bikes, has arrived and to be sure the bikes assemble and operate properly.  We assembled the bikes  yesterday and everything seems to work.  We’ll go on a test ride in the morning.  The ride distance from the test ride will be included tomorrow’s chart (below).