SHAKEDOWN RIDE. 16 Days To Go

We planned a 2-day ride to test our preparations. Many lessons were learned, bike problems solved and some ride planning done. It was a fun and necessary process.

Mary encountered the bike problems. Her rear dérailleur cable broke which meant she could not shift gears. With hilly Chuckanut Drive ahead of us and then more miles of climbing to our overnight at Alice's house, she was happy that we found a bike shop about 5 miles away. In the time it took us to have lunch and do some browsing at the bike shop, they had it fixed and we were on our way.

Day 2 brought more problems for Mary. The squeaking noise was her jerry rigged rack which wobbled and seemed threatening. We found a welcoming farm to pull over and leaned our bikes against this well decorated shed. .

Mary was working on the problem with my Leatherman Crunch (thanks Mark) when the farmer arrived, gathered some more specialized tools and fixed it well enough to make it to Mexico (we hope!)


The heaviest concern (literally) is the weight of our panniers. Mine were 30 lbs when I left Sequim. I had stuffed everything in but couldn't close them so on the ferry, I unpacked everything and unloaded some items. Mary and Alice have smaller panniers and were well under 20 lbs each. (Hey! I'm bigger and my shoes and clothes are bigger!) After the first day of riding, we all dumped out our bags and each of us gave up some things. Each little item seems so small and hardly weighs a thing but they all add up. I need to do more work on this and am even contemplating tearing unnecessary pages from my guide book. Luckily there should be many stores and bike shops along the way. I don't need the multiple tubes of toothpaste and chamois cream I packed. If we each have 2 tubes we should be fine. I didn't really need the half dozen I had packed. More purging of the packs is planned before we leave!

We were thankful that the smoke from the wildfires had cleared enough to make our ride possible. We might not have been able to go even a day earlier. We enjoyed pleasant temperatures and beautiful sights. Last night we refueled on Crab Mac and Cheese prepared by Alice. Yummy! A visit to Dairy Queen on the drive home was the perfect end to our Shakedown Ride!