Orcas Island Getaway

Designed specifically for your viewing pleasure, what follows is a four-part, easily-digestible summary of the bike-centric high adventure that was had over these last four days.  A vastly more descriptive and thoughtful account is here.

1. Ferry Wait

2. Camp

Camp was hard.  Only hard men could accommodate the particularly harsh elements that we faced.  Day after day.  After day.

(Meanwhile, Betsy waited out these boyish antics at the Rosario Resort.)

Mr. Speare sure knows how to wrangle the camp grub, does he ever.

Hydration station.

Clean, wild beasts, waiting to be tamed.  And dirtied.

3. Actual Riding

Purely gratuitous porn shot.  Forgive me.  We do love our bikes, don't we.

Business end of an ungulate.  One of about a thousand (ungulates, not ungulate butts) we saw over the course of two days on the island.

Mr. Eberly, obviously enjoying the 4.4 mile casual-jaunt-of-a-climb to the top of Mt. Constitution.

Or maybe he actually felt like this.  Or wait, maybe that was me.  (It was me.)

Mt. Constitution would offer us none of its fine views on this fogged in day.

But we didn't give a krap.  We were here to ride, bitches!

Betsy directed my attention towards this fine stand of trees.  As a diversion, I now understand . . .

. . . so that she could jump-start her descent and leave me eating the mud from her tires.  Women.

On the second day, we were treated to these scarce views, just under the cloud cover.

And we only had to climb our asses off and then ride to the very edge of death, to get them.

The investment in this trip was substantial, but the riding was just fantastic.  All of it.

As I get older, and time and energy get more and more scarce, I am so very willing to sacrifice quantity for quality.  Damn, did this trip ever nail that priority.

4. Other

Waiting in the Orcas Medical Center while Betsy got X-Rayed and checked out by the "best doctor in the history of the universe!"  So grateful that her injury wasn't worse . . . not sure how we'd have all gotten off the side of that gnarly mountain.  That said, it's a badass sprain and I wish you a quick recovery, Bets.  Jeez, you rocked this whole gig so hard.  I am in awe.

Bikes were righteously dirtied, in the end.

There may be certain reports filtering through about how a certain group of hardass dudes took refuge in a cush hotel that offered Wi-fi and good beers on tap.  Those reports are patently false.