Reach The Beach

On Saturday, May 19th myself and two girlfriends completed the 55 mile route for the Reach the Beach ride. The ride is a fundraiser for the American Lung Association of Oregon http://www.reachthebeach.org/. With one friend recovering from being sick out both ends as a result of food poisoning, and myself and the other suffering from the wonderful Oregon seasonal allergies of pollen, mold, and 10,000 other types of allergens indigenous to the wonderfully lush pacific northwest; lets just say the three of us were not functioning at peek athletic capacity. We arrived in the town of Amity and were forced to do a double take when we saw a woman in full bike swag SMOKING!!! Did my husband perhaps take a wrong turn and end up in North Idaho? WTF, smoking before a ride sponsored by the American Lung Association; we were all overwhelmed with the irony. The ride itself was wonderful and beautiful! It was my longest ride of the year by 20 miles. The weather was perfect, 60 degrees with overcast, Just the way we true Oregonians like it! The thing that always ceases to amaze me in cycling are the amount of fat old men with beer guts who effortlessly make me eat their dust. Definitely a blow to the ego. I think Jethro and Cleatus sitting amongst the mound of empty beer cans cheering the cyclists on gave my friend and me the final motivation we needed to catch, jockey, and ultimately pull with a head wind a daddy long legs and one of them "older fatties" I am secretly jealous of. My bruised ego from being passed so often earlier in the ride was healed when the two guys we pulled commented “we were strong riders”. Considering I normally get my ass handed to me in a triathlon on the bike leg, this was just what I needed to temporarily inflate myself to think I am some amazing cyclist. After the event I was feeling so crafty I even slapped down 10 bucks for the ugliest bike jersey I have ever seen. It has rats and power lines. I do not believe a further description is needed. My ultimate goal is to own ugliest bike gear of anyone I know! The husband of one of my friends was en route to pick up the female cycling entourage and blew a head gasket (not him, the pickup). As result we had to endure a charter bus ride pack to Portland; an experience that can only be paralleled on a Greyhound. Behind us was some elitist Vocal Diarrheaist from the east coast with a voice about as annoying as a cat caught under a car tire. She was going on about a whole myriad of topics. One being how us simple little Oregon folk are just so darn nice, whether in the city or the country. She obviously has not met me ;-) VD also went on about the different kinds of poop and the effect on the vegetation in her yard. I would have loved to offer up the goods from me and my Rottweiler for her to “try out”. This actually may have shut her up! On a ride my two friends went on a few weeks ago a certain serial killer looking thing took a liking to one of the girls, boring her to tears for FOUR hours straight on a previous 60 mile ride about his cycling glory days back in 2003. Nothing was thought much of the annoying guy with the bad comb over until we ran into him on the “greyhound bike charter”. He kept looking back at my friend the entire time, despite her attempts to ward him off by blatantly ignoring him and mine and my other friends doubled up hysterical laughing when “Lance Bundy” walked back to obsessively attempt, just one more time, a conversation. We also learned to never eat community boxed cookies. “Tinkle treats” went out to take a leak when we were dropping passengers off at the first stop then had no problem coming in with his urine hands and feasting on the shared goods. Nasty. We rolled into Ptown at midnight and that was a day! Cannot wait for our next adventure!!