It's a bit before 1:00 AM on Saturday, May 26, 2001. I've had nearly five hours sleep and that's plenty, so I defuse my alarm clock before it can go off and wake my wife. What may seem odd to many is perfectly normal in the Peterson household and even our cat has gotten used to an early to bed and early to rise schedule that makes Ben Franklin look like some kind of lardabout wastrel. Purrl Grey opens one eye briefly but she knows it's too early for breakfast and she curls up and goes back to sleep.

I go out to the kitchen, heat up the coffee and check over my gear one more time. I eat the first breakfast of the day, check the weather and try to dress appropriately. Luckily, it's not raining and it's a comfortable 50 degrees outside. The sky is clear and the wind is still. Over my short sleeve SIR jersey and shorts I add my long sleeve jersey and tights. For a little added warmth, I add a light nylon wind shell. In my backpack, I have a fleece vest, long fingered gloves, a fleece ear band, vapor barrier socks and rain mitts. In addition to the clothes, I've got food, water, sun block and cash. I'm set for a long day of riding.

I kiss my wife before I go and at 1:45 AM, I grab my bike and ride south towards Enumclaw. Enumclaw is 49 kilometers south of Issaquah and is perched on a low plateau that's about 700 feet higher than my home. It's a gradual climb with a couple of small hills but nothing compared to what lies ahead. I roll easily down the dark country roads, enjoying the night and the feeling that comes from slipping easily through a world that is quieter, cleaner and far less crowded than its sunlit counterpart.

At 4:00 AM, I roll up to the Best Western Park Center Hotel in Enumclaw. I always budget time to have a flat tire or some other misadventure before the start of a brevet, but today my luck was holding. I'm the first rider to check in with Ken Carter. Over the course of the next hour more riders check in. A few minutes before 5:00 AM, Ken gives the pre-ride briefing and at 5:00 AM we roll south out of Enumclaw.

The terrain is familiar to many of us. The ride is quite similar to last year's legendary 600K which climbed up and down Windy Ridge on Mount St. Helens before going over White, Chinook and Cayuse passes around Mount Rainier. Today's ride will skip the Windy Ridge section but adds a small jog on the eastern side of the mountains to the outskirts of Yakima to fill out the 400K. Additionally, another, more famous western Washington ride, RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day), covers many of the same roads and several of today's riders are RAMROD veterans. Part of Ken's pre-ride briefing had entailed explaining exactly where our route deviates from the RAMROD route. At over 700 riders RAMROD is a far bigger ride than our little SIR brevet. But at 254 miles, our 400K is a full century beyond RAMROD's puny mileage total. Over 700 people a year ride RAMROD. This morning, there are 15 riders attempting this brevet.

I'm off the front but this is just a fluke of my physiology; I don't "warm up", I just go. As the others warm into their respective paces, the group sorts itself out. A bit past Buckley, Bill Dussler passes me. Around South Prairie the tandem team of Terry Zmrhal and Anne Marie McSweeney blow by with Mark Thomas close behind. By the time I turn onto Orville Road, Tom Brett and Jon Muellner have passed me as well. I'm riding with Jim Trout now. Jim had gotten a bit of late start but had easily caught up with us. Jim and I chat a bit about LEL and other summer plans. Jim is a super strong rider and since he rode over 24,000 miles last year on the Odyssey 2000 round the world tour, he's got one heck of a mileage base. On Orville Road, he drops the hammer and rockets on ahead.

Orville road has some gentle climbing and by the time I reach Kapowsin, I'm in the number two spot but experience tells me I shouldn't count on catching up with Jim. The same experience tells me I'll be seeing the others soon enough.

At the intersection of the Kapowsin Highway and SR-161 Ken Carter yells to me as I almost blow by the secret control. As I'm getting my card stamped, Jon Muellner rolls into the control. I roll onto SR-161 and head to Eatonville.

The weather is fabulous now with pure blue skies and peek-a-boo views of Mount Rainier. Before the climb up to Eatonville, I see a black-tail deer standing just off to the right side of the road.

Jon catches up with me and we ride together through Eatonville and the forest around Legrande. Before long Jon pulls on ahead and then a bunch of riders pass me: Anne Marie and Terry, Bill, Tom, Mark, Ron Himschoot, Don Harkleroad and Bob Brudvik. At 8:22 AM, I pull into the store at Elbe to get my control card stamped. Most of the other folks are still there. I fuel up with milk and chocolate and top out my water bottles. We all leave the control about the same time, but soon I'm passed again.

Near Ashford I see a couple familiar landmarks: the steel sculpture garden and my favorite road sign, "NARROW SHOULDERS NEXT 13 MILES. WATCH FOR PEDESTRIANS, BICYCLES AND ELK".

After Ashford, I turn south on Skate Creek Road. This is a gentle climb from about the 1,200 foot level to a summit at 2,600 feet and then a descent into Packwood, a small town with an elevation of 1,051 feet. At 9:45 I'm at the summit and at 10:34 I'm at the Packwood Texaco. Again, most of the gang is here, except for Jim Trout who by now must be miles ahead. There are riders behind us as well: Peg Winczewski, Ken Krichman, Bob Magyar and Mike Harshbarger.

Bill Dussler isn't looking quite like he's up for this and I see he's chatting on his cell phone. I figure this is a bad sign. Cell phones are on high my list of things that make you weak.

It's warm now; 65 degrees and we've got the White Pass climb ahead of us. I strip off my tights and long sleeves and cover myself with sun block. I eat part of a ham sandwich, stuff the rest in my pack, top off my bottles and head out of town.

White Pass summit is 38 kilometers from Packwood and it's at an elevation of 4,500 feet. I realize that I've never climbed White Pass in daylight before. It's a warm climb. When I reach the summit around 1:00 PM, it's 78 degrees but it feels hotter. My bottles are empty but there is a store at the summit and I refuel. Mark, Anne Marie, Terry and Jon and I all leave about the same time. We figure that Jim Trout and Tom Brett are ahead of us. Terry, Anne Marie and Mark make quick work of the descent, while Jon and I pay the price of being lightweight descenders. I only hit 63 kph but that's fast enough for me. I realize that not only have I never gone over White Pass in daylight, I've never gone over it on anything but a fixed gear. This descent is quite a bit more fun on a bike that can coast! For some reason the song that's going through my head as I descend toward Silver Beach is REM's "Losing My Religion". Hmm.

A few weeks ago Ken Carter and Pete Bajema pre-rode this course in 23:07. They are both very strong riders (Pete competed in RAAM last year) and a few of us had quizzed Ken about their relatively slow completion time. "It was that fixed gear Pete was riding," Ken informed us. "His knees were bothering him. He'd stop and take off the chain so he could coast on the descents. That's not exactly proper, is it?" As the club's resident fixed gear aficionado, I assured Ken that such shocking behavior was certainly frowned upon. What ever possessed Pete to think he could ride this course on a fixed? Oh yeah, that would be me. Last year I rode all the SIR brevets (including our 600K twice) on a Peugeot PX-10 with a 42/16 fixed gear. I also rode the fixer on the Redmond Cycle Club's two cross-state marathons, Cannonball and S2S, and finished out my fixed season by riding the PX-10 on the Canadian Rocky Mountain 1200. I switched back to a geared bike for Boston-Montreal-Boston and I have to admit that I was beginning to see the appeal of these complicated bikes with their fancy gearing and their freewheels. Of course, like cell phones, coasting can make you weak. But I can see the appeal.

It's hotter now but I can see Jon ahead of me. Coming up to the turn for the eastern run out toward Yakima, I see another rider heading up SR-410. That must be Jim and by my calculations, he's a couple of hours ahead of me now. He's obviously having a great ride.

I catch and pass Jon at Naches. About halfway between Naches and the control on the western edge of Yakima, I see Tom Brett cruising back. I pull into the Yakima control just as Terry, Anne Marie and Mark are leaving. It's 91 degrees, it's 3:49 PM and I'm 3,250 feet lower than I was less than three hours ago.

I fuel up with some of the water that Terry, Anne Marie and Mark have left behind. I down a pint of chocolate milk and a couple of granola bars. Since it's hot and I've got a lot of climbing ahead, I pack a bottle of PowerAde in my saddlebag. Jon pulls into the control a few minutes before I head back out down that hot road.

A couple of minutes later, I see Ron, Don and Bob heading towards the control. It's damn warm. I look at the roadside and see not only sagebrush but actual honest-to-God cactuses. OK, they're little cactuses, but still, I'm obviously not on the wet side of the mountains anymore. And the route back involves crossing a mountain that's over a mile high.

I'm only a couple of minutes out from the control and I'm already sucking down more water. Just past Naches, I pull into a roadside fruit and espresso stand and buy a tall, cool glass of milk.

The good news is that dreaded headwind hasn't shown up. The bad news is that the still air is hot and there isn't much shade until I get to the higher elevations. When I finally do see a tree with a bit of shade, I pull over and celebrate with the bulk of the PowerAde from my saddlebag. The rest of the PowerAde goes into one of my bottles.

It's a fairly gentle climb to Cliffdell. As the terrain is going up, the sun is getting lower in the sky. There are more trees now and the mountains themselves are blocking some of the heat. When I pull into the Cliffdell control at 6:26 PM, it's down to 80 degrees. Terry, Anne Marie and Mark are there and Alex Taylor is running the control. Alex knows my eating habits from my ride reports and apologizes for the lack of chocolate but I find that a banana and a fistful of potato chips are just what I need. Terry, who had been doing an excellent impression of a corpse at the moment I rolled in, now revives somewhat and shares part of his CocaCola with me. A few minutes later, Jon Muellner rolls in. I've been trying to limit my stops to about ten minutes each, so I say "well, that hill's not going to climb itself" and roll out.

It's 43 kilometers from Cliffdell to Chinook Pass but before I've covered too many of those kilometers, I stop for a bathroom break. I'm just getting back on my bike when Terry, Anne Marie and Mark catch up with me. We ride together for a bit but eventually they pull ahead.

It's getting dark now and the road is getting steeper. I'm looking at my computer and the route sheet and running the calculations in my head.

I'm about 16 kilometers from the top and I'm going about 16 kilometers an hour.

Time passes.

I'm about 12 kilometers from the top and I'm going about 12 kilometers an hour.

Time passes.

I'm now about 8 kilometers from the top and I'm going… 8 kilometers per hour.

Time may be passing, but I've been an hour from the summit for at least the past hour. I'm living Zeno's paradox!

Fortunately, 8 kilometers per hour is as low as I go. Somehow, I manage to keep Mark's tail light in sight and I keep the pedals turning. My speed isn't going lower and I'm definitely going higher.

Chinook Pass is nasty because you can see a lot of it. It's long. I see car headlights coming down from someplace several kilometers away and hundreds of meters above me. The really annoying thing is when I realize that the headlights dip behind the mountain and then take a long time to reappear. The road curves away, out of my line of sight. A nd I have to climb it all. I keep turning the pedals. There are snow banks on the roadside now and the air is quite a bit cooler.

At 9:30 PM I see that I'm closing on the taillights of Mark's bike and the tandem. We're at the summit and they're stopped to pull on warm clothes for the descent. I stop and pull on my tights, long sleeve jersey and my wind shirt.

I cross the 5,430-foot summit and as soon as I begin my descent, my fingers start to freeze. The air temperature may be 49 degrees but the wind coming across the snowmelt makes it feel much colder. As I pull off the road to put on my long fingered gloves, Terry, Anne-Marie and Mark roll past.

Even with my long gloves, it's a rather cold but quick descent. By using both my headlights (the Lumotec which is aimed fairly low and the Cateye Micro which is aimed higher) I can zip down the road with reasonable confidence.

At 10:19 PM, I pull into the control at Crystal Mountain Boulevard. Duane Wright and Ken Carter have created a really cozy control here, with a motor home, space heater and hot noodles and cocoa. Terry is wrapped in a blanket and Tom Brett is sitting in the motor home munching on something. Bill Dussler is also here, but he's migrated from being a rider to being a member of the control crew. He'd decided before White Pass that he just didn't have enough training to complete the ride, so he abandoned and took SR-123 over to US-12.

If anything, the Crystal Mountain control is too cozy. I stretch my typical ten minute control break to 20 minutes and the others are looking like they were getting ready to go at the time I head out. I know the pattern for the day will hold and they'll catch up with me soon enough.

From Crystal Mountain Boulevard to Enumclaw, the road is mostly a gentle downhill. It's now nearly 11:00 PM, the road is smooth and the traffic is light. To save my batteries, I shut off the Cateye high beam.

I am doing about 30 kph when I damn near run over the elk. It is standing right in the center of the road and by the time my headlight beam picks it up and my brain processes the information, I'm about 4 feet from the beast. I utter something harsh, timely and monosyllabic as I manage to maneuver around the blunt end of the elk. I decide there is no point in getting back to Enumclaw with any excess electrons in my battery pack. I switch the Cateye high beam back on.

At Greenwater Terry, Anne Marie, Mark and Tom roll by me. The final miles are refreshingly uneventful and at 12:45 AM, I'm back at the motel. My elapsed time is 19:45. My bike computer lists the total distance at 413 kilometers and tells me that I spent a total of one and three-quarters hours off the bike. Mark Thomas has extra space in his motel room, so I take him up on his double generous offer of both a place to sleep and a ride back to Issaquah the next morning. Before settling in for the night, Mark offers up this concise comparison of the ride we've just completed with RAMROD. "RAMROD," he declares, "is for wimps."

Here are the final finishing times for all the riders: