1994 Bike Trip - Day (-1)

Woke up early the next morning, ate breakfast, and hopped on the bus for the airport. There was a delay at the airport because the plane we were supposed to take to Cincinnati (and on to Seattle) had a mechanical problem. We were able to take a different flight to Detroit. We had a pretty long layover at Detroit, but we eventually got on our plane to Seattle. Louis and I sat together on the flight to Seattle since he was my first “friend”. I was wearing a Clarkson hat which caught the eye of a passenger on the plane. Turns out he was a Clarkson alum. It was about a 4 hour flight to Seattle. It was neat looking out the plane window and viewing some of the mountains I’d soon be climbing on my bike.

Seattle seems to be a great city. Mt. Rainier is a prominent feature of the Seattle skyline. It’s too bad we didn’t have any time to do any site seeing in the city. We all piled into a bus which took us to the church we were staying at. The church had a large gymnasium where everyone set up “camp”. This was the first of many carpeted gymnasiums we stayed at.

First order of business was finding my bike. It was all put together and seemed to have made the trip unscathed. A number of us suited up in our cycling gear and took a quick spin on the local roads. I was surprised at how hilly Seattle was. It was great to ride my good bike (Orion) after more than a week on my beater bike (Rex). I scoped out everyone else’s ride to see who the “pros” were and who the “pretenders” were.

It was soon dinner time and a bunch of us went to a nearby pizza place called Zeke’s Pizza. We split a Puget Pounder which had every type of meat imaginable on it. A lot of people were hanging out and getting to know each other. Others, such as myself, concentrated on getting all our crap organized and preparing for tomorrow’s ride.

As I said, everything you own is in that hockey duffle bag. Over the course of the trip, I became very good at packing the bag. In my bag, I had several cycling outfits including clothing for inclement weather. If it’s 40 degrees and raining, we still have to ride from point A to Point B. I also had maybe 3 or 4 outfits of regular clothes. Of course I had my assortment of toiletries as well. One thing that I brought which was one of the best decisions I made was my own bike tools, cleaners, etc. WW has a couple mechanics on staff but I like to work on my own bike and knew that there’d be long lines of other riders wanting their services. And the mechanics were there to fix bikes, not to clean them. I made sure to bring all my stuff to make sure my bike was in top shape.

The head of WW is “Coach”. Coach was probably in his 50s and looked as strong as a bull moose. I don’t know if he was actually a minister but he was also the “spiritual leader” of the group. Every day after dinner, we would all gather together and Coach will hand out maps and go over the itinerary for the next day’s events. We were going to a boat launch on Lake Washington to have some pictures taken prior to setting off on our trip. It’s traditional to dip your bike’s wheels in the ocean when starting and completing your trip. Coach also talked about the typical morning routine. He told us what time breakfast would be served and what time we all needed to be on the road. We all needed to get our bags loaded on the truck by a certain time too. We typically got up early (6:00 on average) because there were many advantages to getting on the road early. It was cooler in the morning and there was also less traffic to deal with. After Coach spoke to us, people just hung out and kibitzed the rest of the night. Most of us were “in bed” around 10:00 as it was an early start in the morning.