Day 6 and 7 – June 18 and 19, 2015

Day 6 and 7, June 18-19, 2015

Audrey

Well we had what is known as a “O” day in Portland. That meant that we did not get on our bike and go anywhere. The day for me began by getting a Text from Valerie in LA saying that they liked following this Blog but wanted to have the ability to comment on our little adventures. OK, I had a task for today, figure this out.

Before leaving I had very little time to devote to structuring this Blog. As I hate getting in front of a computer screen after coming home from work, where I spend a good portion of my time in front of screen, I really never had the time to really learn how to set up the Blog properly. The screen aversion is something real. Since moving to California and coming back to beautiful weather, I told myself that any and every opportunity that I get to go outside and enjoy the outdoors I would do. I think it also has to do with expanding my field of vision. I would rather hold my head up at an expanded view then at a box. I can understand the interest of people to “socialize” on these little boxes day in and day out, and even walking across a busy street, I would rather hold my head up and see the world. I can’t really understand spending so much time in front of a computer if you are not forced to do it.

All of this translated into a procrastination when it came to the Blog set up. I pretty much just learned the basics about 2 weeks before we left, then went on a work trip and promptly forgot most of it. So waking up on the Portland “O day” I said I got to fix this thing. The easiest way was to find a good YouTube tutorial. I spent 2 1/2 hrs watching the video, then I spend the next few working on the Blog. I was excited, I thought I got it down but no, Valerie wrote back that we had been “hacked”. Posts about marijuana, foot fungus, and PVC pipes starting popping up. Oh no! It is midnight and I have a corrupted site!!! Quickly I installed a spam pluggin.

After a sleepless night I woke up to more spam. People were emailing Gregg – love your site and love following but, you have been HACKED. After another 2 hrs of work I fixed it.
So much for a “O day” in Portland.

But Portland was not all about this Blog it was about getting around without a car and without walking too much. The bus it is. After a nice lunch with Eric Bean, a good old buddy of Gregg’s, we had him drop us off at the REI across the river in the Pearl district. REI is the mecca for us outdoories. There we got our much needed cans of stove fuel. Gregg bought a sharpie to label each to know exactly what was the newest can. A system was in place. Let’s see if it works.

While in Portland, a mecca to bike culture, we visited some cool bike places that I discovered while filming a special on Portland for ARD German Television. Our ARD project was great fun as we visited the bike scene, sustainability projects, food carts, and just the general “weird Portland” that everyone knows from Portlandia. So I took Gregg to a great bike shop Universal Bicycles on Burnside and then we headed up to 42/Broadway to Velo Cult Lounge. Velo Cult is kind of a cross between a bike museum, a bike shop, a repair shop, a craft beer bar and a music venue. Sky, the owner, moved his operation up from San Diego a few years ago and never looked back. I asked him about the weather change and he said the weather is much nicer than people assume, the summer is full of sun and the winter it rains – about 40 inches per year and that is why Portland is so green, which is something we don’t have in So California. But for Sky it was mostly about finding his tribe – the bike tribe of Portland.

In the evening we went to The Farm on E Burnside for some nice farm to table food. I had the lamb meatballs on polenta with fresh string beans and Gregg the Portabello soup and a side of salmon egg deviled eggs topped with lamb bacon. A place of would recommend for cool home style ambience and fresh fresh food.

The Ride

On Friday we hit the road again. This time from Portland to Ainsworth State Park. But wait, Gregg needed to know if is heart is still beating. Remember the “tweaker” stole his watch. Off we were to find Sports Authority – kind of on the way – to get him a new watch. So the first 8 mils were thru Portland. First quick stop back at Universal Bicycles. We had to return a little handle bar device that was to replace a Topeak handbar bag mount of mine that Gregg forgot at home. The new one didn’t work so Gregg decide to order the real Topeak part from Universal and have it shipped to us in Walla Walla WA to “general delivery”. Let us see how that works?

Then it was Sports Authority where Gregg got a watch and I got a tiny little speaker for my iPod. Yes, I still use an iPod. I couldn’t leave home without my 4896 songs!! The speaker I got was a Tiny one from iHome that squishes down into a compactible 2″x 2″ clam. And it works!!!
This little device just added that little something that made our cocktail hour at the campsite a little bit more relaxing. Nothing like Stan Getz in the forrest with a good glass of Cabernet.

This 3rd day of riding was a hard one. It was not an extraordinarily difficult day. We had some climbs but they were gradual. But, I think it was just that our muscle did not really have enough time to heal. I don’t really have much pain anywhere. My arm feels a lot better. The tennis elbow is still there but manageable. My knees are holding up fine. My upper neck and back muscles, that tighten as I go downhill or alongside a major highway and large trucks, seem to be loosening up some. But this day was just a tough one. Gregg says the 3rd day of riding is the hardest.

Just after Troutdale, where we had a nice little pasta lunch and met a couple with cute standard poodles, one black on white, we started climbing. At the town of Springdale we stopped at the local “country store”. Pretty bad store. No fresh food. I started to panic, “is this what will be ahead of us? no fresh food?” We looked on the map to see there was one more store in Corbet. Yippie! got to this store and they even had freshly BBQd ribs – got dinner! Now, just a good bottle of wine and we were set. Also got a fresh locally grown tomato and a cucumber which with a little olive oil and Spike (seasoning) became our veggies for the perfect meal.

Once we got to the top of the hill we were in for a treat – Portland Women’s Forum Look Out. A strange name for a lookout but , OMG – there is was – the Columbia Gorge in all its beauty. We went on to one more lookout and decided to attach our new little Sony action camera to the our bikes. Let’s see how it turned out? As we rolled down the hill, we stopped at Latourell Falls, then another falls, then another one, then finally Multnomah Falls. All of them were beautiful and worth a stop, however short. Finally we got to the Ainsworth State Park campsites. It was a honor system campsite but there where no envelops left. So we didn’t pay?? the $10 for the campsite. Bummer maybe that camp host or ranger will come by? We also had a hard time locating the hiker/biker campsite. Finally found it. It was a quiet large grassy knoll next to a bathroom that was super clean and had piping hot showers. Perfect place to stay for the night.

Gregg

Ainsworth Campground

I finished Bruce Weber’s book, Life is a Wheel: Memoirs of a Bike-Riding Obituarist, the other day. It is a travel log and self-reflection of a New York Times writer journey across country for the second time. He, with his no day-by-day master plan for his route, evolved into nearly the same route we have planned. I decided to re-read/skim the book again, focusing on the bike-riding parts for comparison, as we move east, our reality juxtaposed to Bruce Weber’s narrative. Also, the self-reflection bits give me encouragement to write on my own self-reflections.

A few bike nerd comments: Bruce paid way too much for his bike. $8,000.00 for a $3000.00 bike is way too much. You might say that a $3000.00 is a very nice bike and you would be right. In fact, Bruce’s bike is a fantastic, exceptional, wonderful bike anyone would be happy to ride. Yes I know, $3000.00 sounds like a huge amount of money for a bicycle – but it isn’t always too much money. The point is, you can get a bike just as good for $5000.00 less — about what I paid for my Co-Motion. There, it is out…I paid a huge amount of money for a bicycle. I will claim, however, that my Co-Motion is equal to Bruce’s bike in quality and ride while having better and more appropriate brakes and drivetrain. My Co-Motion also has S&S Couplers which allow the bike frame to be taken apart so the entire bike can fit in a large suitcase.

Bruce’s trip is a little different than ours. For example, Audrey and I are sitting at a picnic table at Ainsworth campground, me with my Macbook and she with her iPad, writing our blog. Bruce does’t camp but stays in hotels. Bruce does’t cook, and thus doesn’t fill up a front pannier and a half with cooking gear like we do. I would guess that Bruce has one point and shoot camera. Audrey has five cameras with her. Thus Bruce is traveling much lighter than we are. We are going the same way and will have many similar experiences – the most important, the ride and views are similar. The biggest differences is our experience of the terrain. We prefer to spend the majority of our nights camping. We see camping as one of the most significant parts of our experience. We are more likely to make best friends for a few days by spending time will fellow bicyclists we meet in campgrounds. Camping give us the feeling of self-reliance. That feeling may be a bit of an illusion, but it feels real.

Yesterday’s ride was one to remember. At times the views were stunning. The ride felt harder than the number of miles suggest (about 41). Covering much of the same days ride, Bruce comments: “It was a rewarding day, though a little too much hard work for the distance…”

Yesterday, I felt, for the first time that we were no longer coastal or inland from the coast, but crawling like two wheeled ants across an enormous continent. The sense of scale was palatable.