For the 9th time we ride the STP together!

The STP….the 200-mile Seattle to Portland bicycle ride is one of the most momentous athletic challenges that we have accomplished.  It has been a major event each year in our life together.  And, boy, has it been fun!

For seven consecutive years we had left Seattle on a Saturday in early July along with 10,000 other cyclists (and Jules) and arrived in Portland the next day.  When we crossed the finish line in Portland, cycled onto the grass, and received our cloth “Finisher” badges, we were tired, dirty, and sore.  

STP 2018

But we were also exuberant, and each year we had tears of joy in our eyes as we kissed each other.

Every year before the STP we spent months training.  Late in the winter we would return from our 5+ month long road trips, unpack our Turtle (slide-in camper on the bed of our F350), take our road bikes out of the garage, and start cycling every day. (That is, every day that the weather on Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest didn’t play a nasty trick on us and pour rain.)

During the spring and early summer we put up to 1,500 miles on our bikes and bodies before the first day of the STP.  We rode on all the beautiful country roads of South Whidbey, the Centennial Trail, the Burke-Gilman Trail, in the San Juan Islands, and countless organized bike rides throughout Washington State.   We increased the miles week by week, until we could ride 100 miles in one day and still feel pretty good.  Then we considered ourselves STP ready!   

We did this every spring and summer with Jules for seven years, and seven STP’s.  And we loved every single minute of it!  

Then the inevitable happened.  Somehow we got old.  But as anyone who reaches seventy-years-old knows, we didn’t feel old.  After we crossed the finish line in Portland for the seventh time together, we decided that the STP was just too hard on our bodies.  That was in 2018.

We spent the spring of 2019 doing something even harder than riding the STP--we got our home on Whidbey Island ready to sell, sold our beloved home, and moved to Nuestra Casa, our lovely home in Mesa, Arizona.

We were through riding the STP.  We were sad to say goodbye to this marvelous bike ride.  We have such wonderful memories of it and all our cycling in Washington.  But every day living in Arizona we were having new adventures and making new memories.  We were cycling on our tandem bike, swimming, playing ping pong, and after a few weeks we headed off to camp and hike in our favorite deserts. 

And of course, we were dancing together every week or more.

Then the pandemic hit the world.  And most everything was closed or canceled.  The world came to a standstill.  Luckily, we had each other so we could continue much of our life and activities.  

The iconic Seattle to Portland bike ride after forty continuous years was cancelled!  

Zoom, Google Duo, and FaceTime became all the norm.  And soon after, everything, including hugs and visits with family and grandchildren, became virtual.  

Candice’s business, DestinationTrail, converted a bike ride across the USA and all the 200+ endurance runs into virtual races.  We entered and completed all of her virtual races. (And we didn’t come in last in all of them!)

Suddenly, we discovered  that the Seattle to Portland ride was going virtual.  We had the opportunity to ride another STP!   And we did.  What’s more, we rode the 2020 STP virtually with Emily, Sean, Soren, Sebastian, Bill, Jules, Diane, Ian, and Adam.  This was a dream come true, to ride the STP with so much of our family!

With COVID-19 still raging, this summer, the Cascade Bicycle Club offered another Seattle to Portland virtual bike ride.  Once again we signed up for the STP.  The ride allowed twenty-three days to complete the 200 miles.  

This summer it has not only been extremely hot, but the monsoons have hit Arizona with a vengeance.  So completing it in 23 days was somewhat of a challenge!

We have ridden the STP in the dark around 4 a.m. to avoid the sun and heat.  As we cycled around Leisure World  on our tandem bike, we were often watching the storm clouds to gauge how closely the rain or lightning was approaching our retirement community.  We rode fourteen of the last seventeen days.  We had five days left before the cutoff time.

Today we once again (virtually) crossed the “finish line” of the STP in Portland and earned our cloth “Finisher” badges—our 9th STP!

We are so happy to have had this experience one more time together.