Spring Equinox Dart & Arrow Ride Report

Dart ride report
3/28/2007
Eric Ahlvin

The first drops of rain hit the windshield as I left Jon Beilby’s house at 5:30 am on a Saturday. It was forecast to be a rainy and windy day, and we were going anyway. We met Dan Youngberg at the Albany train station and our team, the Vader Invaders, was complete. Jon had printed the Dart rules, so he gave them to Dan to review. A Dart is one of a variety of Randonneuring events. The 4 pages of rules for a Dart boil down to a few essentials. It’s not a race; it’s a ride. The objective is for each team to cover 180 km (112 miles) along a route they design, converging on a common destination at a specific time. The teams can start within a window, but must ride for exactly twelve hours, with at least 25km in the last 2 hours. They can stop no longer than 2 hours at any one location, and all team members must finish together.

Our destination was the Olympic Hotel in Centralia, 9:00 am Sunday, for brunch. I’d designed the route to take us into the coast range at Vernonia, across the Columbia at Longview and finish via the Cowlitz river valley. We planned to take the early train from Albany then take the Max light rail to Hillsboro. The proposed 10:30 am Saturday departure target from Hillsboro would give us a couple of hours of riding in the dark and would get us to the Olympic Hotel in time for dinner and a beer. It looked like a fairly flat route, and the overall target speed of 10 mph looked pretty easy.

The train started in Eugene, and was only a half hour late by the time it arrived in Albany. We’d bought tickets for our bicycles ($5) and the process of riding this particular Amtrak was very easy. Some trains require bikes to be boxed and handled like baggage. This particular route, we were allowed to roll the bikes onto the baggage car and hang them on hooks. It was quick and easy. We settled in for the two hour train ride to Portland. The train kept the (revised) schedule and we had a relaxing ride. At Portland we loaded the bikes, got out our rain gear for the light, scattered rain and rode the three blocks to the Max stop. We rolled our bikes onto Max and hung them on hooks for the 50 minute train ride out to Hillsboro. It was another quick and easy step; Oregon really is a cycling paradise.

In Hillsboro we found a bike store across the street from the Max station, and they were happy to sign our cards, for proof of the start time and place. We adjusted our clothing and raingear for the intermittent sprinkles. We rolled out of town along Susan France’s recommended route and were quickly in the countryside. We started and stopped as we adjusted our clothes for the weather conditions, but settled on raingear as the light rain became steady. Just north of Banks we picked up the Linear State Park, also known as a Rails-to-Trails Banks-Vernonia trail. The trail was partly paved and we got to see a cool timber trestle. It spanned a small valley and had a graceful s curve. We avoided the worst of the gravel by going back to Highway 47. Good shoulders and a moderate amount of traffic as we climbed into the coast range made for a potentially pleasant ride. The rain also increased as we climbed toward Vernonia, ranging from light but steady rain to moderate intermittent rain. The climb in raingear left us wet on the inside from perspiration and on the outside from precipitation. The downhill into Vernonia eliminated the sweating and replaced it with shivers. In Vernonia we found the Black Bear Café with slow service but good food. Jon and I took advantage of the slow service to dry our wet clothes in the Laundromat two doors down. Between the long stop and the uphill, we were about on our 10mph overall pace, but it felt like we’d been working pretty hard while we were on the bike. One of the keys to long distance riding is short stops, and that was reinforced for us again. With short stops we could’ve ridden at an easier pace. With long stops we had to keep the pace up while we were on the bike.

We left Vernonia in a steady rain and headed for a couple more long climbs. The 30 miles from Vernonia to Longview was some of the nicest riding of the whole route. We crossed the coast range heading northeast on Apiary road. There weren’t many houses and very little traffic. Coming down to Rainier Oregon via Fernhill road we followed a beautiful valley that steepened as we approached the river. The wet roads and brakes made us moderate the descent, but on a dry day it would have been a wild ride.

We crossed the Columbia River into Washington at Longview, almost exactly the half way point of our ride. In Longview we looked for another laundromat to dry out, but settled on a Starbucks. We took over some couches near the entrance and spread out our clothes to dry. Jon and I had racks and panniers and had brought extra dry clothes along. Since Dan used a large Vaude saddle bag to hold his street clothes for after the ride he was tight on space and didn’t have spare dry bike clothes. He had to keep his cold wet clothes on. He said he was only chilled when we stopped. Jon and I were warmer and dryer but the extra weight definitely hurt us on the uphills. After the ride I measured a pound difference between my Vaude and my rack plus trunk. The real difference was not that pound, but rather that with the extra capacity in the trunk and pannier we could fill the capacity with stuff and add several more pounds of spare dry clothing. We’d already completed the three sustained climbs, but from Longview there were 30 miles of rollers. It added up to about 4000’ of climbing overall, not a lot compared to many of our rides but enough for us to feel the extra weight.

In Longview the rain was heavy and steady. The warm dry feeling only lasted a little way out of town until we hit the first of the rollers. We followed the Westside Highway on the west side of the Cowlitz river heading north. The rain finally diminished to just sprinkles, but we’d been teased by the weather so often we just left our raingear on. The roads in Washington had more traffic and more litter and trash alongside. We didn’t meet any dangerous drivers but they definitely went a little faster on the Washington side of the river. We stopped to admire a drone (missile) mounted on a post in front of the Castle Rock High School (Home of the Rockets). We were a little confused when the roads didn’t match my homemade route sheet, but eventually made it to Vader.

Vader is a small town and we didn’t see any place to get our cards signed. Eventually we saw an old fellow walking on the sidewalk and had a great conversation with him while he signed us off. At Vader we got ready for night riding with lights, reflective vest or sash and ankle reflectors. It was twilight as we headed north and checked out our lights. The rain came back, the heaviest so far as we pushed over the rollers on the way to our last stop. We needed to meet the requirement of finishing 25 km in the last 2 hours and roll in exactly on time. We were doing the math in our heads as we rolled into Napavine about 7:30. We needed to kill a little time, and this was the place to do it. We went into a café and ordered some beer and fish and chips. Dan listened to the beers on offer and ordered a Schmidt, since it was the only one he hadn’t heard of, and he was hoping for a local micro-brew. Fat chance. We used the last of our spare clothes and left puddles on the floor for the waitress to clean up. The entertainment was watching a sweet young thing be chatted up by some crusty old farts. She was going to drink for free, but also had to put up with their attention.

At 8:15 we started on the last leg. It was completely dark, the rain had mostly abated and we had a more or less downhill run. It was peaceful as we rolled through the dark until we woke up the dogs. I heard one scramble after us and crash into a garbage can before he got to the end of his chain. Another didn’t have a chain and came out into the road after Jon. I was on the other side of him, so I had a good view from a pretty safe spot. Nonetheless, the scrabble of claws on asphalt always gets the adrenaline flowing. We all found out that our route sheets, computers and the street signs weren’t adequately illuminated. We were on the last leg when Dan made a comment “We’ve been pretty lucky, riding through all this rain and debris on he road and not even a flat tire.” Immediately, Jon’s rear tire started feeling a little soft. In the dark he couldn’t see the status of the tire, but it didn’t feel good. We were fast approaching 10:00 and the deadline to arrive at the Olympic hotel, and a stop to change a flat that would have been no big deal in the morning could push us just past the deadline. After feeling our way into Centralia we found a lighted gas station. Jon’s tire was indeed low, but not flat. He decided to just pump it up in the interest of time and ride the last mile hoping it would hold. It did and we arrived at McMenamins exactly on time, within a minute.

After a warm shower we each discovered that our street clothes had indeed remained dry in our dry bags. A beer and well deserved meal finished our day.