Portland Pedaling Preparations

Like all great trips this trip began with us questioning ourselves. “Why did we think it was a good idea to book a 7am flight?” Helen moaned as we were still packing at 10:30pm the night before our trip.

"I don’t know– why did you decide to make cookies, rice crispy treats, and poodle socks for everyone the night before the trip?” Adam fired back, as we played out our usual roles of Queen Dreamer and King Pragmatist. This is why Adam wanted to pack two nights before, but without the pressure of a pending deadline Helen insisted she was too tired.

“We have to get everything for Saturday night into this Patagonia duffle bag,” Adam announced, plopping it on the floor.

“Ugh, why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”

“I did, but you weren’t paying attention.” We bickered like the married couple we are as the desire to sleep set in.

You may be wondering, why are we in this predicament? Well, several months ago our dear friend Ali reached out to us to ask if we’d like to join her on a bike ride from Seattle to Portland in celebration of her 30th birthday. To which we said of course. However, this now meant we were socially obligated to complete the 205 mile bike ride in 2 days. So for the last few months we upgraded from casual bike riders to “Cyclists.” We bought padded latex shorts. We dedicated our weekends to pedaling around Chicago. We discovered the performance enhancing benefits of consuming 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour. And now we were ready. Well, almost.

As always, the family rallied together to finish packing and around 11:30pm Adam set his alarm for 4am so we could go to sleep.

In the morning we flashed our TSA Pre-checks and breezed through security at terminal 5. We bought overpriced airport breakfast burritos and found a semi-cozy spot to sprawl out for the hour and a half wait til boarding.

“Why did we get here so early, when we can't even go to a lounge?” Helen whined. During our travels through Southeast Asia she had grown quite accustomed to the delight that is an airport lounge, which made O'Hare rather disappointing as the only lounges we have access to are in the international terminal.

“Maybe I factored in a little too much buffer” Adam conceded.

The time eventually passed and we stood up to walk to the flight. Suddenly, Adam realized something… “Helen I think I’ve let our family down” he lamented.

”What is it?” Asked Helen, picking up on the fearful tone in Adam’s voice.

“We’re in terminal 5…”

“And…?”

“Terminal 5 is the international terminal…"

Helen putting the pieces together: “You mean…”

“Yup. We could have gone to the lounge."

This trip was truly off to a rough start.

5 hours of flight time later and we were greeted by familiar faces at Seattle- Tacoma baggage claim: our friends Matt, Ali, and Annabel, who had flown from San Francisco. Ah yes, that’s why we booked an early flight, it was so we would all land at the same time, Adam thought.

With the gang together we got on the train and made our way to the University of Washington campus where we’d be spending the night. We even bumped into a social media influencer who was also in Seattle for the STP.

Adam did not recognize the influencer, but saw that her tan-lines didn't have even a hint of a gradient. This could mean only one thing: Spandex. "Are you doing it in 1 or 2 days?" Adam asked already knowing the answer.

"I'm doing it in 1, what about you guys?"

"We're doing it in 2, it's our first time."

"Oh, you'll have a blast. Just a heads up the dirty 30 is really the dirty 60.” She said as she walked away, clearly having somewhere else to be.

What's the dirty 30? We thought and then moved on because we were hungry.

We found a Xi’an restaurant nearby and fueled up on some delicious hand pulled noodles.

We then made our way to the UW field so our friends could assemble their bikes while we walked to the rental shop. We picked up a couple fancy carbon bikes that were way nicer than what we’d been training on at home. Then we did a test ride back through the beautiful UW campus to the crew, who were just about finished with assembly.

In the afternoon we decided we needed some ice cream to fuel up for the day so we walked to the nearby mall. At this point Helen's feet were getting sore from wearing a pair of toe-thong flip flops that barely had enough support to shower in, much less walk the several miles we had been doing. “Why didn't you let me pack a good pair of walking shoes?” Helen groaned.

“Honestly, that was a mistake, I may have gone overboard with our minimalist packing regime” Adam admitted. “But we have a credit card and we’re in a mall…”

So we walked to the nearest shoe store and bought Helen a nice pair of Tevas. “Better?” Adam asked.

“Much.” Said Helen, smiling from head to sole in relief.

That night we set our alarms to 4:45am for our 5:31am departure. Tomorrow the real journey would begin!