Up to Oly for a BBQ

On Saturday, I rode up to Oly for a Barbeque at Alx's sisters house. This ride was unremarkable except for 2 things.

The Thurston County portion of SR 507 was just chip and sealed. It is amazing how much extra soreness gets transferred to your rear end, riding on this kind of surface.

 

The main the to remark upon is this was STP (Seattle to Portland) weekend and there were 10,000 riders heading south while I was heading north. I grew quite tired of hearing "Your going the wrong way". I was annoyed seeing them ride 4 abreast and block traffic which turns motorists into anti-cyclists. I was vexed to see lots of 'energy' product packets discarded on the roads and paths.

Worst of all though, was riding north on the  Tenino-Yelm bike path upstream of them.

They took over the whole thing, as if being in the STP entitled them to take everyone else's use of the facilities. I vowed to avoid the STP route on the ride weekend next year. Kinda ironic that it is bikes that would keep me off the road and not cars.

Once I turned off onto the Chehalis Western bike path, I was so relieved and the ride enjoyment shot up and my stress started to dissipate. Being around the STP riders was bad enough that I contemplated cancelling my planned ride to Gresham the next day since it was traversing the route of STP most of the way.