Portland, OR| 1044 total miles
Okay, folks – it’s time for a bit more expansive update. We’re sittin’ here, chillin’ in the sun at Ashlee’s house, enjoying the beer and gouda we’ve been fed.
First off, let me expand on a few highlights that Megan missed in her previous update (which, by the way, has been repaired to its original form after it had been mangled by internet gremlins – I’ve also done some other housekeeping to the site, including making it show your name if you post a comment). So, the second night of trip, we were at a loss as to where we would bed down – the hills had sapped us of all our strength, and the villa of Pope Valley is little more than a grocery store/gas station/post office. Whilst i studied the maps to investigate the shopkeep’s suggestion (“go down this road to the T, make a left, make your second left past the henhouse, etc.”) a man approached Megan, and after hearing what we were up to, announced “Have I got a deal for you!”. He put us up on his land, next to a beautiful little pond, complete with bullfrogs and woodducks. He eventurned off the electric fence for us, so we could move the tent a little closer to the pond. After repositioning the tent, we went back to the other side of the fence to gather more gear, at which point I noticed it began to get a little gusty. No sooner had the words “Gee, I hope the tent doesn’t blow into the pond” left my mouth when, sure enough, my tent was making like the Titanic, drifting out into the pond whilst simultaneously sinking. I bolted towards the pond, shedding clothes along the way, and plunged in after it, rescuing it from its watery grave. Luckily, the same wind that had perpetrated the crime quickly dried the tent out, living us with dry, albeit pond-smelling, quarters for the night.
Further down the line, in Northern California, we again opted to take a detour from my (perhaps ill-conceived) route – rather than ride along US Forest backroads of questionable quality, we decided it better to stay along reliable highways. However, in order to begin our new plan, we needed to climb a ‘hill’ between the towns of Manton and Shingletown. We asked a local about the advisability of bicycling this particular road, and her straight-faced reply was ‘Steepest grade in the United States.’ We figured this was a joke, or, at best, an exageration. Though it was probably not the steepest grade in the US, it was pretty dang steep – the only thing I can compare it to is riding up into the Oakland hills (which I’ve done often, but never while hauling 50-60 pounds of gear). We probably climbed 1500 feet in 4 miles, and pretty much had to stop for a breather every tenth of a mile or so. I was in my next-to-lowest gear for the ‘easy’ parts of the climb, and on several of the steeper sections, it was all I could do to keep the front wheel on the ground and prevent myself from popping wheelies. Nonetheless, we persevered, and rewarded ourselves with pizza and beer in Shingletown.
In order to get a good start at the climb up Crater Lake, we rode as far as we could the previous day to bring us right to the base of the mountain. Fueled by ginormous omeletes from Pappy Gander’s in Merrill, we rode 88 miles that day. We camped at an absolutely beautiful campsite outside of Fort Klamath, right on the headwaters of the Wood river, where the water literally came gurguling out of the mountainside. The water there was soon clear and pure that the sandy bottom appeared a blue-green that you would expect to find on a beach in the Carribean (though it was an awfully chilly diversion from the hot showers we had hoped to find there). Unfortunately, the campground’s beauty came at an awful price – the mosquitos! Oh, the mosquitos! Now, I’m not going to claim that they were as bad as the mosquitos of Big Hole, Montana (see BikeBums 2004), but, then again, we weren’t stupid enough to camp in the Big Hole. We quickly covered ourselves head to toe to avoid the little beasties, but apparently, in setting up the tent, Megan’s hoodie rode up enough to expose an inch of her back to the wrath of the insects. I counted no fewer than 11 bites there the next morning. They lay in wait on the sides of our tent all night, and in the morning, we found at least 100 clinging to the tent and fly, undoubtedly anticipating a breakfast buffet of my friend and I. We quickly rode out of there, and found solace in the higher climes of Crater Lake. The ascent was really not that bad – only the last few miles were really ‘steep’, and even those weren’t as bad as other climbs we had done.
Okay, now let’s bring you up to date on the happenings since Bend. Immediately outside the library, we met a threesome of tourists from Berkeley who had taken the train to Klamath Falls, and were essentially taking the same route we were up to Seattle. We’ve run into them a few times since then. That night, we found ourselves once again at a loss for lodging in Madras (pronounced MAD-res). We attempted to follow an old-timers advice to camp along a creek, but apparently he hadn’t been there since the subdevelopment went in. We ascended a hill hoping to find a remote park admid the national forest, as our map had detailed, only to find two little league games going on in the sprawling athletic complex. Finally, we asked two women walking around the track, and took us to their friend’s place around the corner. There, we were invited to join their dinner party, were fed rhubarb cobbler, and exchanged stories with a group of 50-somethings. Jennifer and John, our hosts, then blessed us with a hot shower and the most comfortable bed in the world to sleep in.
The next day, we had a decision to make – we could either stay on our route, which required that we do some pretty serious climbs, or we could follow the advice of one of the party-goers, and take a detour that would be fairly flat, but add 20 miles to our journey. We opted for the detour, because at the junction, the winds seemed in our favor. Cursed wind, servent of Loki! Soon we realized our mistake, and by the end of the day, we were leaning our bicycles at a perilous angle to avoid being blown off the road (and stopping every time a semi went by, creating contrails threatening to suck us into the vehicle). I found that I would have to pump hard to maintain 11 miles per hour on a downhill! This prompted the following coversation – Megan – Why does the wind blow? Greg – The wind blows because, unlike a hill, there’s no end to it, it’s unpredictable and inconsistent, it wears down your entire body, it ruins the downhills, and generally makes riding a frustrating chore. Megan – No, I meant why does the wind blow? Greg – Oh. I dunno….science, I guess.
We ended up checking into the town of Moro, where we a guy and his family from El Cerrito. He had just completed an Ironman competition, and was also a well-traveled bike tourist. We exchanged stories over beer, and then camped on the lawn of the fairgrounds-keeper, a colorful character named Dick, who might have spent a bit too long at the local watering hole that night. (Actually, as he informed us, the lawn belonged to his attack-cat, a rather chubby-looking feline who seemed to bit interested in nothing but fleeing Dick’s grasp.) Dick’s place was on top of a hill surrounded by wheat fields, and on the horizon you could see the snow-covered peaks of Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams. It seems that one theme of this trip is that natural beauty is often accompanied by a plague of insects. When I opened my pannier the next morning, I discovered that hundreds of earwigs had taken refuge there. For the next two days, Megan and I would venture into some corner of our gear only to find more of the creepy-crawleys bumming a free ride.
The ride along the Columbia to Portland was beautiful, although arduous (the Columbia gorge channels the wind, and it certainly wasn’t about to go our way). Most of the ride was along a low-traffic scenic byway (that sometimes became a bicycle path), but the rest of the time we had to ride along Interstate 84, which mostly had a wide shoulder (though some of the bridges were a bit scary). We ran into and Adventure Cycling supported tour group (meaning they had all their gear shuttled around in a van). We mooched bananas and energy bars from them, in exchange for stories of our adventures.
So, here we are now in Portland – last night we went to the Portland blues festival, and saw Buddy Guy play, which was sweet. Ashlee’s been an awesome host, making sure we’ve been cleaned, fed, and entertained properly. This morning we slept till 1 PM! Ok, here’s the big news that sure to lose us fans – since we’ve been getting behind in our progress, we were considering options in getting to Seattle from here – either take our original route through the mountains, which would take us 4-5 days, or take a shortcut that would only take 2-3 days, but would basically be all through suburban communities (the I-5 corridor). Then we came upon a third way – take the Amtrak in 3 1/2 hours for $75 total. OK, OK, so the whole trip will not be done entirely by pedal power – but we figured its better to skip through the boring stuff than have to be rushed for the rest of the trip. Anyway, we should be in Seattle tonight, partying it up with Maxwell and Jake. Okay, congratulations to anyone whose managed to finish this giant post. Enjoy the pictures in the photo album, leave us comments.
We miss you….
–greg and megan
