Day 4 (April 23): Deception Pass, WA-Coupeville WA -- 22.5 miles biked

Miles biked: 22.5 (138.3 total)

Roads taken: SR 20, Ducken, Monkey Hill, SR 20, Ault Field, Clover Valley, Golf Course, Crosby, West Beach (huge hills to climb, not much beach), Libbey, SR 20, Madrona Way, N. Main (Coupeville).

Places stopped: Didn't really stop until Coupeville, where I got a ravishing steak gyro and potato salad for lunch.

Thursday was an easy day on the bike. I slept in and didn't get going until after 10. (I've found that it takes me about 1.5 hours to get a quick breakfast and break camp before hitting the road.)

It wasn't an easy short ride, however. Once I reached the beautiful West Beach Road, I thought I was in paradise. I stopped at the base of a nice slope, sat on a rock and ate some gorp as I gazed into the beautiful expanse of water in front of me with the sun high in the sky.

Then I got back on the bike, looked ahead, and saw the steepest, longest hill I'd encountered to that point on my journey. I huffed and puffed my way up the beast, going through a full two songs on my iPod -- about 4-minute tracks -- and staying in my lowest gear the entire way up. When I reached the top, I had to take a picture to document my climb.

However, all I could see, over a little dip, was the blue of the bay below. That, to me, spoke of how sheer the ascent had been.

That wasn't the only hill I came upon during my 7 miles on West Beach Road. It, like a lot of bayside roads -- I've figured out -- is very hilly. Of course, I get rewarded with plenty of descents.

But get this! The ascents takes a lot longer and hurt my back more than the descents. Go figure.

Anyway, I've definitely determined that with the load on my bike -- especially on the rear --my only real option when climbing hills is to get into one of my lowest gears, get down in the drops and just slowly climb. Standing up is akin to torture.

Oh, I'm also pretty sure that one thing I won't do on this trip is the Lost Coast alternate in California, which features something like 8,500 feet of climbing within 60 or 70 miles. Don't know if my back could take that.

What my back could take, however, was my relaxing Thursday afternoon. In Coupeville, I met up with my Dad's old friend, Janet, and we took the bus about 50 minutes south to the southern tip of the very vertical island. Janet and her husband have a house in an amazing location, overlooking the bay and Puget Sound and with a very clear view of the Olympic Mountains -- right out of her living room windows.

In the late afternoon, we took her kayak out in the little inlet that leads out to the bay. It was nice to get an upper-body workout after all the biking I'd done, and gazing up at the snow-capped mountains wasn't bad either.

She then treated me to a great, huge dinner -- a nice break from my back-to-back days of PB&J sandwiches -- and I got the perfect seat at the dining room table to gaze out as the sun set over the mountains. Janet said that the sight never gets old. I believe that big-time.

And in the near future, I'm definitely coming back here in July or August to hike the range when the snow is gone. It looks like there could be some great ridge-hiking opportunities there.

I capped off my night by sleeping in a bed directly adjacent to the living-room window, looking out at the hundreds of stars over the bay. Sadly, I had to wake up at5:20 to get a ride from Janet back to Coupeville so I could catch the 7:15 ferry to Port Townsend.

But there was plenty of incentive. As I write this from the Silverdale Library, I'm just about 10 miles from taking another ferry from Bremerton to Seattle and spending at least one night there in the house that Janet, her husband, daughter and others share just north of downtown.

Can't wait. More blogs and pictures later.

Until then, peace.