The route I chose for Saturday involved riding 40 miles directly to Coeur on a bike path (boring but nice) and then taking a 2 hour cruise (with your bike) most of the way down Lake Coeur D'Alene. Absolutely beautiful lake, by the way, surrounded by piney hills. Here's a scene from the boat:
Once off the boat, the ride went 38 MORE miles along the eastern shore of the lake, which is even more lovely than the view from the boat. This scene is typical:
OK, here's the bad news. I rode geared on this f?rst day because I didn't know what this piece of road was going to be like. It turned out to be nonstop rollers, with one climb of 700' and a total of over 2000', so I was kind of glad I had the gears. Yeah, I'm a wimp.
Now 99% of the people on this tour spent Saturday night in Coeur D'Alene, but being the contrarian that I am I decided to stay in a campground a few miles out of town. Here's the lake again, this time early Sunday morning at 31 degrees:
I managed to ride the 10 miles into town, drop off my baggage and convert my bike to singlespeed (swapped cassette out for single cog plus spacers, pulled off the RD) just in time to make the 7:30 mass start for the "Three Lakes" return route. BTW, this is what the bike looks like without the 550 grams of unneeded gear hardware:
The "three lakes" return route went past - guess what - three lovely resort-ish lakes, and totaled 61 miles after a slight shortcut. It was mostly flat, but had a few rollers including some short steep ones. Here's Hauser Lake:
Some interesting observations:
- It's amazing how much quieter my bike is in SS mode than everyone else's. Even the fancy Ultegra and Dura-Ace bikes make a constant "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" from the chain snaking its way through the derailleur pulleys.
- Everyone else slows way the hell down for hills, even short ones. This was an annoyance a couple of times, as I would come up on a wall of bikers all downshifting and slowing at the same time, and I would have to bust around into the opposing lane to get around all those people and maintain my momentum up the hill.
- The above observation is pretty funny, because when I'm running gears, I'm slower than most roadies on the climbs. I'm used to passing people on descents, but not on ascents. Singlespeeding changes the paradigm!
- Not many people notice you're on a singlespeed until you point it out, though at rest stops a few observant people did notice. A couple of people who saw the lack of external gears asked if I had an internally geared hub. Also, several people who saw my triple chainring assumed that I had 3 gears available, until I explained that the chain would fall off if I tried to use one of the other rings.
- At least half the people I talked to about my setup - basically those who were already familiar with the concept - asked if the bike was a fixed-gear. My reponse was that with my physique I have to work my ass off to get up hills, and there's no way I'm going to waste that energy on the way back down! :-)
- Pretty much everyone needed to have me explain why you would have only one gear on a road bike. "What's the rationale for that?"
This was the 6th event ride I've done this year (second that involved SS riding), and it's the nicest one I've seen in terms of scenery and how well-organized it is. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a really nice ride to finish off their road season next year. My total distance was 139 miles, of which 61 miles was done singlespeed. Depending on which route options you choose, the tour can be anywhere from 80 miles total to 193 miles total.
- Dan
Bonus pic: nice view down the Columbia River Gorge on the way home Sunday night:
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