RACC

For the past several years I had registered to ride RACC (Ride Around Clark County) out of Vancouver, WA and for whatever reason I ended up missing it and losing my registration fee in the process. This year I was determined to ride it.

I left on Friday around 1:30pm, figuring that would get me on the road and at the state park where I would be camping before bad traffic hit. Boy, was I ever wrong! Between multiple accidents and lane closures due to construction, I was barely moving south. Donna, who was meeting me at the state park, wasn’t having any better luck. If I didn’t care if I lost yet another registration fee, I might have bailed and headed back home. At one point, I tried to detour around the highway, but that had me on very steep rural roads that were just as backed up. It was bad enough for my transmission to keep warning me of getting overheated. We decided to book a hotel in Vancouver figuring that we both would need a comfy bed and a good sleep after the stress of the highway. I didn’t get to our hotel until 9:30pm!! It was another hour until Donna arrived.

The ride the next day was ok, but a bit of a let-down after stressing over the traffic the day before. It didn’t reset me as bike rides usually do. After missing a turn for a second time, I pulled up Google maps and found a route back to the start line. While I didn’t get my mileage of a metric century, I still got over 50 miles and found a really nice trail that went along a parkway.