Lopez Island

After not slipping to my doom on Mailbox, I thought I ought to curb my misanthropic ways and maybe trying hanging out with some people. My girlfriend from high school, Myra had sent out an evite a while back for a bike ride out in Lopez Island, which I declined in favor of a solo backpacking trip, but then changed to a “Yes”. It ended up being an awesome trip. I saw an old elementary school friend there, and met a bunch of other people that likes doing outdoors activity.

When Myra called me on Friday to arrange carpool and such, I found out a total of 19 people will be going. I remember thinking there’s no way in hell 19 people will show up. Some way…some how, all of us managed to get up at 6am on a Saturday morning to gather each other up, drive 1.5 hours over to Anacortes, to get in line on time for the 10 o’clock ferry. EVERYONE made it. We even got an unexpected group discount for the ferry ride. That means some 19 people (probably) didn’t spend Friday night getting smashed until 2am.

The day was just beautiful and perfect for a bike ride, sunny but not boiling. The island was sweet for someone like me who hadn’t ridden her bike since she started this blog (except for the day before the trip to de-cobweb and make sure the bike still maybe works). Most of the island is pretty flat, the parts that were hilly weren’t too bad…every one of the hills were just long enough to get your heart-rate up but flattens out right before you think you’ll die.

The only snag we ran into is that with 19 people…there are varying degrees of fitness even though all of them are young and in shape. All my backpacking buddies are crazy fit and I’ve always felt like a slow out-of-shape person next to them…but apparently the slowest of the fittest is amongst the fastest of the fit. The fastest riders in the group were a few of the people who own road bikes and rides regularly; I didn’t seem to have a problem keeping up with them. The rest of the group always trailed behind by a good half an hour…and the people up front mentioned it’s because most of the slow group has mountain bikes. I looked at my bike and looked at them, looked at my bike and looked at them…they said, “You don’t count because you’re a monster. In fact, you’re never allowed to ride a road bike with us.”
In the end, we ended up riding around 34-35 miles. I wasn’t too sore in the legs…but every part that touched that seat was not happy with me. When we had to hop back on the bike to ride out from the ferry home, everyone groaned.

I’m now intrigued by the idea of a road bike…it’s fun to just ride really really fast. So, somewhere between buying mountaineering gears, and a kayak, I’ll need a road bike.

Slide of the trip here.