3 Pass Blast

[markboy]

Did a nice 400 mile trip over the weekend with an overnight stay at about the 300 mile point. It's a great loop from the Seattle area over Stevens Pass, Washington Pass and Rainy Pass. Great road with fairly low traffic in the mornings but a bit busier in the afternoon (nearly all sight seeing and camping folks though). There are two fun tourist trap towns along the way as well. Leavenworth (http://www.leavenworth.org) is done up as a Bavarian village and sits in a beautiful mountain valley just after coming off Stevens Pass. I had a good breakfast at Kristalls (100 mile point).

Lots of great roads and Eastern Washington sunshine all the way around to Winthrop (http://www.gonorthwest.com/Washington/c ... nthrop.htm) a Western themed town. This place was BUSY. Fortunately I found parking and was able to grab a quick lunch at a pizza joint (200 mile point)

Time to head over the Passes to Marblemount. The ride was gorgeous but the bike was not performing. Every time I shifted into 5th it just bogged down. I couldn't hold it over 50 (though 4th would get me up to nearly 65 - so I would lose power in 5th). I'll follow this up in the troubleshooting forum. There was a dork sportbike that did some poorly timed passing about half way across the pass - and then pulled over a couple miles down the road to enjoy a view. Beyond that the ride was smooth and the bike did fine coming off the Pass. I noticed that once I was over the Pass and on some flats the bike was performing better in 5th though still not 100%. I pulled into my buddies cabin in Marblemount and enjoyed steak and beer for dinner. (300 mile point).

And then it rained all night... It finally cleared in the morning so I hit the road for my first potential ride in the rain. I held off for the first half hour and then it hit. Fortunately I had gear that kept me dry and it eventually cleared. The first 60 miles were on great backroads but then I was back in civilization and had to deal with traffice. I was able to get back to some backroads near home and had a great final 15 miles with zero traffic. All in all a great ride. Now to go figure out what was happening in 5th gear... (400 miles).