Results of the Dutch Treat test

Planning the Dutch Treat ride has taken many, many more hours that I ever thought it would. There are so many variables to be considered; traffic, road conditions, the wait time at every location to make my purchase (you have to have a reciept you know). Yesterday's ride was a great opportunity to check the theoretical against reality using the day that is likely to be the most challenging. Day 4 that includes the Salem and Portland areas as well as losing an hour when going from Pacific to Mountain time. Running the test backwards put me in the Portland and Salem metro areas during a much higher volume of traffic and allowed me to test in a worst case scenario.

I've planned the Dutch Treat with a 10 minute stop at each store. During yesterday's test I halved that to 5 minutes. This reduced my overall trip time by 2 hours and 35 minutes. After completing this, I've decided that the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle and that a 7.5 minute average stop is probably pretty close to what I'll actually need. During yesterday's test (again, using 5 minutes a stop) I was able to stay on schedule right up until I hit Portland afternoon traffic. By the end of the ride I was almost 30 minutes late. My GPS stats tell me I was actually stopped for 3 hours and 13 minutes, exceeding the theoretical by 38 minutes. Most of this is accounted for by heavy metro travel that forced me to wait at practically every traffic light and have cars flowing at under the speed limit in many situations. These conditions won't come into play during the actual ride since I'll be clear of Portland by 9 in the morning.

The run also showed me that the time estimates generated by the mapping software (MicroSoft Streets and Trips)are pretty much right on with the actual numbers on the ride. The result is I'm confident now that Day 4 is do-able.