@
iab,
Great thread! I really should do the
Madonna del Ghisallo ride someday, my Italian relatives are north of Como (find Campodolcino on the map). I've visited the area couple of times, but not on a bike.
Lots of great rides, my favorites are ones done with friends, and of those, my favorite is last year's Magical Mystery Tour of the PNW was 6 days of riding through Washington and Oregon with 5 good friends.
It took planes (@nlerner, @
crampy and @
Spaghetti Legs flying in from the east coast), trains (Bob and Jim G. from Bay Area to Portland, then all of us except Hugh taking the morning Portland to Seattle Caltrain), and automobiles (@Andy_K running sag duty on the last day) to make this happen. Oh, and several bikes.
Just a few of Bob Freeman's collection of 100+ vintage bikes. It's not quite like Madonna del Ghisallo, no historical artifacts from Coppi or Bartali, but it was the best we could do on short notice...it was nice for Bob to invite us over to start Day 2
Out on the Ironhorse Trail ouside of North Bend, Washington
Entering the 2 mile long Hyak tunnel, a rails to trail conversion. Bring your own lights!
Sometimes we chose the gravel, even when there was a perfectly acceptable paved alternative.
Hot day in Yakima Canyon. There were a couple of spots where the road dipped down near the river so we could cool off.
This is what a 20mph headwind looks like to six experienced riders. We developed a lot of trust very quickly on this ride.
Sometimes the best lunch stops are out in the wild
At least two of these bikes had the right tires on them.
Team photo, Trout Lake, Mount Adams in the background.
Half the time we were on the green side of the Cascades, the other half on the brown side. The ride started in a major city (Seattle) and ended in another one (Portland). 25% of our riding was on gravel. I was the only person who knew everyone going in, but by the end of the week we were all BFFs with a common memory of something done that was both hard and wonderful. We had several people join us for parts of the ride, especially the first and last days.
As @
iab stated, this isn't a topper thread, and I'm looking at other's postings and thinking, man, I really want to do that one someday. Here's hoping that somebody sees this one and decides to follow the bread crumbs we left behind. I'll certainly look for the ones others post and do the same.