My little camera died the day before the ride so I have no photos. Sorry!
The short story is that I finished, and met my pre-ride goal of doing the entire 1200k in daylight. I'm glad that I didn't ride any nighttime hours because the scenery was just incredible. I've never been anywhere where there is such variety of terrain in such a small area. Everything from lush green forest with ferns and flowers along the roads to death-valley style desert with not so much as a joshua tree, just sand and tumbleweed, to huge rocky outcroppings like you would see in a western movie, with ranches down below, to giant snow-capped peaks with snow melt rushing down steep ravines. My favorite lasting memory of this ride, I think, will be the overpowering scent of Balsam Fir on Washington Pass.
I'm still in one piece and didn't really suffer any physical problems to speak of, largely due to sleeping 6 to 8 hours every night. I think this was probably harder than the 508, but less damaging because of the rest opportunities. I'm really not at all beat up. Hands and butt are fine. Mentally I had a rough time of it, often spending an hour or two just looking at the road in front of me wondering why I was out there. But the real heros are the ones who are really bad off physically and still plug away. I saw Bernie several times during the ride and he always looked close to death. But he finished. He said "you gotta just keep showing up" and he did.
Conversation around the breakfast table on day 4 rated this ride anywhere from "harder" to "much harder" than PBP. It was sort of a "1200k meets Terrible Two" style ride. The climbing seemed to get harder and steeper as the days wore on, but that might just have been my legs getting more tired.
Ride organizer TerryZ expects to send out a CD with a compilation of the best photos. I'll try to share some of them if/when this occurs.
Ok, back to the real world!
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