This morning, home from the STP, old things are novel. Typing seems like some distant career and Hershey’s syrup is pungent as I never noticed before. My plants are alive. I did the dishes before I left (good for me).... which was only two days ago. I woke up craving a bowl of cereal, something I haven’t wanted to eat in awhile. The morning ritual usually involves a protein shake. But I can’t eat any more processed sport foods. It’s been goo and energy bars and gatorade and bananas for the last 200 miles. My left palm is still asleep, I notice, as I type. The tenderness is from leaning on it all those hours. When my knees started hurting, I compensated by distributing body weight to the seat and the handlebars. The knees still hurt this morning, but feel better—I’m not immobilized like I was after the first injury several years ago.

As we were driving that tired stretch up I-5 back from Portland last night I was amazed at the speed with which those old landmarks approached and passed, those that take their time approaching whenever I drive that route to Portland, those same ones that took me two days to find by bike. Last night it was one after the other every few minutes. I was thinking, "I was here at lunch time today." "This is where I slept last night." "This is where we stopped at the park and rested among second-growth trees."

The route follows picturesque side roads along the I-5 corridor that offer fewer long uphill grades and glimpses into those little towns that heretofore have only been words on freeway signs. The worst stretches were between Spanaway and Tenino, and Goble and Portland. Both were 30-something miles of boring scenery and poor road conditions.

We saw a lot of ambulances and each one signaled a rider down. I witnessed three accidents personally. At rest stops, stories of other entanglements with cars and bikers were told. These people were getting rims repaired or road rash taped. We rode without incident, without even a flat.

We saw people of all different shapes and sizes riding along, sometimes with dogs or kids or stuffed animals attached. There was an old woman riding in jeans and a T-shirt, her face all done up. I saw her at mile 86 and wondered how she’d gotten that far. We saw a girl in a tube top and other women dressed in tiny tanktops that left their skin frying in the sun. We saw a guy on a unicycle who does this every year. I overheard someone say his wheel was bigger this year. We saw every kind of bike imaginable. At lunch on the first day, while we sat on the curb eating our bananas and fruit and nut sandwiches, we watched all the people milling around in their lycra shorts with giant padded butts, lycra shirts bulging at the back pockets, and uneven shoes, and the whole get-up looked absurb. What funny clothing poured over all these shapes and sizes. Some people bulge through the tight wrap, others are too small and their shorts and shirts sag. Nobody looks good in bike clothes—except children; their straight skinny shapes are cute in the little clothes.

And we saw every kind of bike imaginable. Most were expensive bikes and it was weird to see people ditching them at rest stops to go for food. At first I didn’t feel comfortable doing it, but after awhile, I didn’t care either.

Obviously, I’ve never ridden in an organized ride, and I’ve never ridden this far at one time. We did two centuries in two days. But I learned that if you can go the 100, when you wake up the next morning, you can go the rest. Your body recovers. I was surprised how much energy I had left at the end. We passed a lot of people in those last 20 miles.

Saturday night we stayed at Napavine high school, which is located on top of the hill at mile 114. Our luggage had been dropped off earlier in the day by support vehicle. We showered and ate and pitched our tent. They hadn’t anticipated a vegetarian, so they quickly made more pasta and meatless sauce just for me. And then we went to bed and I was so tired I forgot to put down the Thermarest. It didn’t matter—I was asleep immediately. But some guy next to us snored like crazy and it woke me at 4am. I couldn’t go back to sleep with that guy sawing logs like that. He snored with unimaginable abandon and it was so funny and unbelievable that I spent the minutes till dawn wondering if he lives with anyone and how someone could tolerate it. And then, as if his behavior gave precedent to let loose, other people began snoring. It was too much, like a chorus of narcissists, singing in unison but each hoping to be the soloist. Not one could match the passion of that first guy, however.