Our Great Expectations: STP

What? You don't know what that is??

Allow me to enlighten you!

It's the Seattle to Portland bike ride. It starts in...

...wait for it...

...Seattle and ends in...

...you got it...

...Portland.

That's about 200 miles. 204 miles to be exact. Typically ridden over 2 days.

I've known about it for the last number of years but this year I finally wanted to conquer it. With my dad!! Turns out my neighbor, who I've fallen head over heels for, rides a lot. She and I got to ride quite a bit while we were training (she's ridden the STP 9 times already) but she was training to ride the whole darn thing in one day. Yeah, she's a little crazy.

We took a few pictures along the way and we also ordered the "professional" pictures they took with photographers sprinkled throughout the course. So, I'll post all of these here!

The before. (See the "start" sign in the background??)

This was our first stop about 24 miles in. There was a bajillion people!!!!

I was trying to get the view of Mt. Rainier up ahead. Cell phone cameras are just too wide!

This was the only stop that we saw our family/friends, Rainier. It's only about 20 mins away from home an the closest point to home. This is about 80 miles in.

About 20 miles after that last picture was the main stopping point for day 1. We stopped (my feet were killing me!!!), we got some ice cream they were handing out, got my bike adjusted, etc. and powered through to the next stop. We heard there was a big hill leading up to the next stop and we wanted to get that over with and be a tad farther than half way in preparation for day 2.

This is the beginning of day 2. What you didn't see is us LAUGHING at the riders that DIDN'T ride to Napavine and had to ride that DEVILISH hill at the beginning of their second day. Ha!

This is the first stop on the second day. Not too many people were stopped. We all knew we had quite the ride this day.

My sister wanted to see what I was eating. ;)

This is us lining up to ride over the Longview bridge, crossing over to Oregon. You can't really see it, obviously, but I have another images in a bit.

See?

YAY!!! This is the bridge crossing over into Portland!!! 10 miles to go! But what we didn't realize is that it would be the longest 10 miles of the entire 204 miles. Literally. It took us an hour to go 10 miles. Snails. Pace.