Seattle to Bozeman by Bicycle

Welp. All the bike stuff is done (Di2 charged, maintenance complete, bolts tightened, etc), and I'm about half packed. Tonight is laundry and the rest of the packing, and tomorrow is bike ride time. At this point, I'm mostly worried about wildfires; there are a bunch of active fires right now, and the AQI in Washington basically ranges between bad and terrible. So the first couple days are going to be hazy, smokey and miserable. East of Spokane looks a little better, and the forecast says tomorrow will be better on this side of the Cascades, but... Basically, from Washington Pass to the Idaho border will be pretty rough. Not much I can do about that but hope for the best, I suppose. Also I can't find one of my knee warmers, and morning temps look like low 50s for most of the route, so that's a thing I'll need to find or replace today. Getting excited/antsy, just like I always do this deep into a taper.

Today was bike prep round one. Two new tires and a new chain, 9 days before departure. Basically, if the new chain has a crap pin and snaps, I want that to happen rolling up Dexter on my commute this week, not in BFE Idaho. Ditto one of the beads in the new tires not being quite right. Buuuuut I also don't want to run a 2500 mile chain or 1500 mile tires, because then I'd be nervous they'd wear to the point of failure. I also commuted with the new pannier setup today (a  Tailfin  T1 with two bags). I have... mixed feelings. Let's start by saying that the Tailfin setup is fantastic. I mean really great. My issues are/were basically as follows: -- I only took one bag this morning. So the bike leaned slightly to the right, and I compensated slightly, and ugh. By the end of a 60 minute stretched commute, I felt a little off. I'm getting old, and am suddenly hypersensitive to fit issues; leaning the bike half a degree over seems to count as a fit issue. Lesson learned...

I mean, realistically? I should have started this blog a couple months ago, and periodically talked about training. But I didn't. So, here's the short version: About three months ago, Kate said, off the cuff, "you should ride to the wedding in Bozeman." She was kidding, I think, but... Here we are. I live in Seattle, so we're talking about 800 miles on the bike. Three months of training was ambitious, so I figured I'd sub volume for intensity, and hope I didn't get hurt or sick (the risks with that approach), and away we'd go. At this point, I'm approaching race fitness, I'm feeling decent on the bike, and I think this might be a real thing. So, let's dive into the last bits of prep, and then I'll post from the road.