2-Year Stp Veterans Still Riding It Out
TWO CYCLISTS have started every Seattle To Portland ride since 1979. And Jerry Baker of North Seattle and Paul Wantzelius of Maple Valley, both in their 50s, don't intend to stop now.
Soaked and hungry, Jerry Baker pedaled into the wind and rain toward Portland.
His wool shorts and short-sleeved track jersey were standard racing attire in 1979. He spread olive oil over his skin, a pre-Gore-Tex method for waterproofing himself.
Paul Wantzelius was somewhere behind Baker during that inaugural Seattle To Portland (STP) ride. His polypropylene pants and long-sleeved jacket provided more conventional insulation from the elements. Wantzelius reached Portland City Hall some 6 hours after Baker was the first of 70 entrants to complete the inaugural 200-mile ride.
They have watched the event grow from hundreds of participants to thousands in the two decades since, from a fringe activity for dedicated cyclists to a Northwest tradition. They waited through the one-year hiatus in 1980 after the eruption of Mount St. Helens and have come back every year since.
Now in their 50s, they will start their 20th STP tomorrow. They are believed to be the only two who have started every STP ride. Wantzelius is the only one to reach Portland in one day every time. But, united by the ride's history, they share little else.
"He's an acquaintance," Wantzelius said. "We don't move too much in the same circles."
And they move at different speeds.
Baker, who lives in North Seattle, began racing in 1965. Seven years later he quit his job as a mechanical engineer at Boeing to focus on cycling. That was 1972, the year Wantzelius began working at Boeing. He commuted to work on his bike from Day 1 and has never raced in more than three decades of cycling.
Wantzelius, 50, commutes from Maple Valley to the Renton plant every day, 42 miles round trip. He has driven his '73 Datsun truck 135,000 miles in 26 years and ridden his five bikes more than 240,000 miles in that time.
"I'm not trying to do it faster than anyone else," Wantzelius said.
Wantzelius is the tortoise, Baker the hare. Baker, 57, stopped racing competitively in the mid-'80s, but he remains involved with the Marymoor velodrome in Redmond.
Baker won the inaugural STP in 10 hours, 26 minutes, 53 seconds. Cyclists originally had the option of riding under time-trial guidelines, but the event is no longer timed.
"It was just a wild idea at that point," Baker said. "There were a lot of unknowns because nobody had done a 200-mile ride."
Wantzelius remembers getting a photo-copied road map, the route to Portland traced with a highlighter. Riders now get a 30-page manual with a clearly marked route, training tips and lodging information. They also get rest stops every 20 to 25 miles, something Baker could have used in '79.
Baker had no pockets and relied on his support car for supplies. He planned the first food drop in Yelm, the second in McKenna.
"They didn't catch up with me until Chehalis," Baker said. "So I didn't have any food until then. I was starving. I was really hurting at the end."
The first questions about finishing popped up much earlier. Baker ate breakfast at his parents' house on Canyon Road in Puyallup and would have considered abandoning the ride had it been raining there. Instead, the rain started a few miles to the south and didn't stop until he was past Longview.
His socks, which were white when he started, were so muddied by the end of the ride that they blended with his black shoes.
"You just keep pedaling along," he said. "What can you do? Hitchhike? How many people would want to pick up a wet, grumpy cyclist with a dirty bike?"
But weather did get the best of Baker and his wife, Deborah Stephenson, in the early '80s. He's not sure of the year. But he remembers the rain kept falling when they stopped at his parents' house for breakfast 40 miles into the ride.
They waited for it to let up and it kept falling, harder and harder until they finally accepted his dad's offer to drive them back to Seattle.
"That year the `P' in STP stood for Puyallup," Baker said. His wife hasn't entered the ride since.
Baker took two days to reach Portland two years ago, riding with his son, Andy. Andy will be one week from his 15th birthday when he attempts to complete the ride in one day tomorrow.
Organizers hope for 7,000 riders this year, down from 8,500 last year. The ride reached its limit of 10,000 riders for the first half of the 1990s, but that string was broken in '97, when 9,100 registered.
About 1,200 are expected to complete the trip in one day this year. The others will stay overnight about halfway, near Centralia.
The totals still surprise Jon Jacobson, who hosted organizing meetings in '79. It was designed to push the boundaries of distance riding, doubling the traditional "century," which is a cycling benchmark.
"We wanted an event that required preparation and training like you have to do for a marathon," Jacobson said.
Eric Salathe ran a marathon in Pittsburgh in 1985. That prompted him to take up cycling, and he is now president of Cascade Bicycle Club, which sponsors the STP ride.
"This is much less damaging to you than doing a marathon," Salathe said. "It's much more more approachable."
Wantzelius plans to ride back to Seattle on Sunday. That's what he did last year, passing more than 7,000 two-day riders who were still pedaling toward Portland.
"Portland's that way," some shouted, pointing south.
"I've already done that," he responded.
He will do it again this year, riding somewhere behind Baker.