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“We get up at 4:15 in the morning at the hotel on Aurora and ride less than a mile over to Aarons for breakfast. Even with an early start and lots of local knowledge we manage to miss the official start time and location. With not too much work we find the other 9,994 riders, the sound of their tires buzzing and drive-trains working is comforting, the site of them riding, if you can call it that, is not. Pandemonium. We somehow pick-up the wheel of local Seattle roadie pro, Johnny Something. He’s fast and pulls for what feels like hours at what feels like 31 mph. He gets talked down and now we’re cruising on a bike path that doesn’t suck. We stop for the first of many cokes at a gas station. Across the street a man is selling knee-high stuffed ponies and medieval broadswords and full armor helmets. I eat a sandwich on curb at the 100 mile point and I’m thinking that I wont make it. A greyhound bus unloads in the parking lot and a stream of meth heads, pit-bull handlers, drug dealers, skateboarding girls in miniskirts and the rest of the kind of people who come to Centralia, walk by me. Ira is doing laps in the parking lot, anxious to go. So we go. The group is holding it together nicely and the scenery is pretty. We’re going down this hill and Tony says his legs feel like a million little palm trees in the wind. What does that mean? At this point, around 140 miles in, we’re all very hot and our jerseys are caked with salt, Daniel is the worst. I drop my chain on the bridge to Oregon and an hour or so later I win a city limit sprint on the thirty, my first of the ride. Now everyone cracks, even Ira. I stay on Sam’s wheel until St Johns bridge.”
– Greg Johnson
“After countless near misses around Lake Washington the Rapha crew emerges from the chaos around Kent without injury or event. Not long after we come to a hill in Puyallup, it’s nothing remarkable but everyone is crawling, some are even walking. Ira and I jump to the left, move to the front and seriously pass the field at four times the average speed. Our group reforms and we join forces with pro Johnny Sundt, though not long after the group, under pressure from Johnny, splits again and we ride into Centralia in two’s and three’s. After lunch the field slims because Centralia is where the two dayers stop for the day. The next section is the nicest, smaller less trafficked roads and some hills. After the bridge into Oregon we get to the last stretch on HWY 30, the dirty thirty. The pace stays high but we stay together until Ira’s splits us. I’m finally feeling good and Ira needs a lesson so I pull through at thirty plus. We finally regroup in Northwest Portland as we ride into town.”
– Hott Sam