The 30th anniversary of the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic might be remembered as the best of rides and the worst of rides.
Those finishing the 200-mile course in one day on Saturday will note the warm sunny weather with friendly breezes into Portland.
The two-day riders will no doubt recall being greeted with cold wet weather as they started out Sunday morning for a blustery ride that was punctuated by thunder. OK, that doesn't make it a “worst” ride, but it's probably not the kind of ride most people were thinking of when they signed up.
Of all the cyclists who arrived at Portland's Holladay Park on Sunday, you gotta give kudos to the last rider who battled on to arrive at 9 o'clock that night. Also thanks to the Cascade Bicycle Club staff for hanging around.
Another last of the bike ride was the last bib, No. 10,000. This was auctioned off on eBay as a fund-raiser for the Cascade Bicycle Club Education Foundation. Brad, a local fitness blogger at Fat Kid's Ironman Fitness, won the bib and wore it proudly.
If you blinked on Saturday, you probably didn't see him. He finished the ride in just under 10 hours.
That's his video at YouTube above. You'll find other videos there as well. Also, check out Seattle to Portland 2009 at flickr.com for 100s of pictures from the ride, as well as my pictures from down Lake Washington on Saturday morning.
I'll leave the STP Twitters through the rest of the day. Interesting to read people's impressions from the road.
One thing that struck me on Saturday was how some people were tweeting that they were passing through Centralia while others were boasting they were just rolling into Spanaway. That indicates at least a 50-mile line of cyclists on the road.
Lots of bicyclists benefit from this event. It gives them a target for conditioning every summer and introduces more people to the joy of bicycling.
It also benefits the Cascade Bicycle Club. Quoting figures supplied by Cascade, the event is expected to raise about $1.1 million for the non-profit. After deductions for overnight camping and hospitality along the way, as well as paying police agencies for traffic control, Cascade still will make about $637,000 on STP.
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