Let me first apologize for the cell phone pics.  I forgot my point & shoot at home and was left with just my iPhone.

Well anyways, I headed out towards Washougal with Juston, Dean and Mark to partake in the Silver Star Prison Break ride.  The weather could not have been more perfect.  Especially since we seem to be in a pattern of cold and windy or rainy and windy lately.  Saturday turned out to be sunny and cool, with just a smidge of wind.

The whole “un-event” has really taken off the past few years.  Basically some one posts about a ride via social media or word of mouth or whatever and then a few or a bunch of people show up and ride.  I like the idea of the “you are responsible for you” mentality of these events.  Meaning if you get hurt, don’t sue the “promoters”.  Hey, it’s a free event,  don’t expect someone to put up hay bales or mark out the course turn by turn.

The whole goal was for the 4 of us to ride together and take a reasonable pace.  We all confirmed on the ride out that this was not going to be a hammer-fest.  However, there must have been close to 100 people at the start and we all kind of got separated right off the bat.  Juston and Mark ended up taking a wrong turn very early with some guys and taking a minor 7 mile detour.  Dean and I did not see them again until we got back to the car.

The course itself was pretty spectacular.  The longest climb was really not as bad as any of us had feared, and when we got to the top there was cookies!

I got to kill it on the descent on the long climb and only scared myself once on a sharp left hander that I came into a tad “hot”.  A little body language and using every inch of the road though and all was well.

There was every kind of bike you could imagine today just shy of a full suspension XC bike.  Personally I think a couple riders made a poor decision with tire choices and we passed the same couple guys a few times. One guy must have had 4-5 flats with skinny 28c tires.  I was running 40c WTB Nanos and they were just about perfect today.  Especially on the couple long gravel descents.

One of the more fun parts of a ride like this is that you end up riding with a couple different groups during the day.  Dean and I spent the last 25 miles or so going back and forth we one such group.  They’d stop for a bit and we’d pass them, we’d stop for a bit and they would pass us, and then we would all kind of join up on the road here and there and ride together for a bit.  There were a couple of “clickey” groups in my mind who didn’t want to be chatty with someone they did not know.  That’s pretty typical in all of the cycling scenes I’ve had exposure to.  For the most part people are cool though and we are all out there enjoying the same thing together.

In summary it was a blast of a ride.  Beautiful weather, scenery and some pretty cool people.  There are a bunch of mtn bike trails out there too that I need to get out and explore.

Thanks to Juston, Dean and Mark for coming along.

Thanks for reading,

-Pete