The First day was long and succesful

 The first day of any ride is a bit stressful and exciting at the same time. It's stressful today because some of the rider arrived late last night and early this morning because of transportation issues with the airlines and several bikes needed to be assembled yesterday and may of undiscovered issues. Exciting because this trip has been in the planning stages since January and were all looking forward to experiences in riding new places. Also today was the first of 10 ferry rides and who doesn't like to hop on and off a ferry.

The following group photo was taken at the ferry landing with the Seattle skyline in the background.

The ride from the hotel to the ferry landing was 15 miles along mostly dedicated bike paths and we make it to the ferry with time to spare. The ferries are huge, fitting a large number of cars and possibly hundreds of people.  I'll try to get a couple of photos of these monsters in the next couple of days.

We arrived at Bremerton at 11:30 AM and we would be at the lunch stop in 10 miles. You will notice in the recording of the ride the elevation profile at the bottom. It almost looks like dragon's teeth. Most of the climbs are add to the daily elevation gain and some of the grades were greater than 8% with some reaching 11 or 12%.

There were some issues with the routing that I plan on reporting the RideWithGPS that provides the routing software, but no one got lost.

I got a chuckle at the road sign below. It's not often you see a bicycle, a pedestrian and Bigfoot on the same sign.

had 

Lunch was in a nice location, overlooking the water, picnic tables, rest rooms and good parking for the truck carrying the luggage and food. 

After lunch the climbing of the dragons's teeth continued. Seemed that each climb was a bit higher than the previous. It was pretty warm when in the sun and nice and cool, almost chilly when the road became shady. We had two long bridges to cross. It was at Port Gamble, a cute small town overlooking the we found a general store with an ice cream parlor in the rear that we found what every biker is looking for, ice cream floats. We were all pretty worn out at the time and to spend some time enjoying ice cream was a real treat. With 26 more miles to go and some riders were calling for the sag wagon to pick them up. 

The sag wagon is a SUV that we have that can seat several people with a bike rack so that if someone has issues, they can be assisted. 

Mark had created a spreadsheet used to help us plan the trip. It has all the details, start time, travel distance and speed, ferry crossing times even times for breaks. The spreadsheet had calculated that we would be arriving at the hotel in Port Townsend at 5:23 PM. As we were rolling into the Harborside Inn, it was 5:45 PM. Just enough time to check-in, grab a shower and meet in the lobby for dinner at a local sea food restaurant. With no injuries, gorgeous scenery and fun riding partners, we had a very successful day. and tomorrow we get to do it all again as we head to Port Angeles.

Today's Photos

Happy Riding,

Brian