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cycling

Vale

Posted on October 3, 2015

Yesterday and today: tough, amazing, more good luck than bad. I’m in Boise, Idaho now … here’s what went down:

Yesterday morning I crawled out of Prairie City at the crack of dawn, and spent almost the whole morning in the Blue Mountains (two more 5200 foot passes, hell.) Then the country opened up — way up — around the little ranching outpost of Unity, Oregon into an expansive and harsh scrubland. I pushed on after only a brief stop at Unity’s only store (junk food, hunting supplies, strange lost boy in ripped up cowboy boots) and passed through the sloped rangeland which is at an altitude high enough that it must only be used in summer. This land was profoundly, completely deserted. El Dorado pass, another frustrating climb some 15 miles beyond Unity, had burned only a few months before and conformed well to my mental image of the slags of Mordor. Even the birds had abandoned it leaving only an eerie silence and the sound of the wind.

All of this emptiness extended beyond the land and birds — I’d seen very few cars all morning. There were several half-hour stretches without anyone passing me in either direction. At about two in the afternoon (mountain time — I crossed the timezone line after the ghost town of Ironside) I descended to Brogan, a townlet at the head of a long valley that sloped some 35 miles down toward “civilization”. Brogan, if you were wondering, is the site of the Annual International Cow Pie Throwing Championship. The scatalogical obstacle course that was the shoulder of US 26 in this area made it clear why this is the case.

As the valley broadened, the air thickened and I pushed even harder to beat the oncoming rain. The roadside cow pies faded and were replaced by … onions. I’d entered a huge onion producing region, and for the rest of the day and part of the next the air would have a pleasant twinge of raw fresh onion, and the shoulders of the roads would become more of an onion slalom than anything else. Huge trucks loaded with recently harvested onions rumbled by me at low speeds, occasionally spilling a few after going over a bump. The rain finally came, but by then I was only 5 miles out of town, so I shut my brain on and pounded on to Vale, a little western town huddling beneath a huge rock.

It was my biggest day of the trip — 101 miles, over 8 hours in the saddle, 5000+ feet of climbing, all in the middle of nowhere. In a way it was too much — not advisable — and I don’t think I’d plan such a day again. The reason I was able to get it done it was a) a reliable bicycle and b) mind games. Managing extreme amounts of exercise or exertion turns out to be all about desire, and the manipulation of desire. When uncomfortable, I long for the removal of the source of discomfort. When in a high desert under a threatening sky, I long for even the smallest ex-town. This longing is the basis for motivation, for climbing one more hill, for making it to the next named place. I manipulate hunger and thirst too — “you can have a gatorade at the top of the pass” — “you can eat a cliff bar in Ironside.”

valebar — The worthies of Vale, Oregon watching Thursday night football.

I finally rolled into Vale, Oregon and quickly found a place to stay. It was a vast downstairs story of a basic main street hotel, a place usually reserved for large parties of hunters (there were six beds and a kennel room for bird dogs.) But the hotel manager gave me a good deal and there was a busy Mexican restaurant across the street. I entered, ordered a beer and a very large burrito. Some of the other diners wore huge cowboy hats, or caps bearing the emblems of seed companies. The local lions club showed up in their yellow vests — a troop of hooting senior citizens. Their headquarters seemed to be attached to the back of this Mexican place and after many greetings and a few dirty jokes to their friends at the bar they disappeared into their sanctum for a meeting. Families and ranch couples packed the dining room. The place had a buzz of human warmth about it. I’ll always think of Vale as the sort of place where people huddle together against the vastness of what’s outside.

***

I slept in this morning, rolling out of Vale at about 10:30 after a lazy breakfast of oatmeal and eggs. To the east the land changed yet again, and so did the atmospheric conditions: there was a wind — a significant one of 15-20 mph, and it was on my side. All day it blew me onward, sometimes shifting to my flank for a while if the road wound around, but it was pretty much a perfect tailwind. It also gave me a new respect for the wind as a force. Had it instead been a headwind (from the southeast rather than northwest) it would have turned today into a hellish slog. But as it was, it made today’s 70 mile ride — dare I say it — easy?

Around noon, I crossed the Snake River in Nyssa, Oregon and entered a new state: Idaho! I’ll be in Idaho until a week from today, and on or near the Snake for much of that. I’ll be tracing (in reverse) the main route of the Oregon trail through places like Glenns Ferry, Twin Falls and American Falls. The early settlers were constantly vexed by this river, which plunges in and out of various gorges, over falls and fans out to define islands and various points. It’s a strange, wily kind of waterway — one of the most easterly to support a historical pacific salmon run. But for today, I got just a glimpse before returning to onion-dodging on the eastern bank.

The rest of the day was a bit blah. I crossed I84 (my first glimpse of an interstate since suburban Portland) and then slowly slid into the suburbs of Boise. Traffic! Strip malls! Stop lights! These sorts of annoyances hadn’t been part of my life for almost a week, and they seemed particularly jarring. The last 10 miles of today I spent on a lovely (if occasionally unpaved) trail which traced the Boise river right into downtown Boise. My rear tube had finally had enough, despite my bullet-proof rear tire, and I developed a slow leak that I had to top up a few times, but no matter — I was almost home, the path was lovely, and I could see hipsters (hipsters!) as I rolled into central Boise.

It’s been an amazing week — about 460 miles of astounding country. Tomorrow I rest.

cycling

Prairie City

Posted on October 1, 2015

Today was a short day — only about 40 miles. But it still left me bone-tired. I’ve tried to come up with a good description for what I felt in my body at day’s end, but it’s a difficult kind of exhaustion to explain. I need to dig deep and find my reserves, my other gear, because today was largely about setting up tomorrow — a significant day on this trip for a number of reasons. First, there’s a decent amount of climbing — I’ll be crossing another mountain range in the morning (my third) before descending all the way into the valley of the Snake River. Second, the weather (heretofore perfect) has become less predictable, and there may be showers tomorrow afternoon. Since I’ll be over 5,000 feet for part of tomorrow morning (I’m starting at 3200 feet today) I want to get the high, cold part of tomorrow done before there’s any threat of rain. It should be doable — if I leave early enough I’ll be back down to my present altitude before the potential rains are even close, but it is something worth planning around. Finally, there’s the matter of me not being quite sure where I’m going to stay tomorrow night in the dinky town of Vale, Oregon. I called the only motel in town with a reliable phone and was told they’re full. I’m going to try again, but I’m not too hopeful and I may have to look downmarket, which is a bit of a scary thought since the one with a phone is — no kidding — called the Bates Motel.

deerschool — Deer in shadow of abandoned schoolhouse. Between Dayville and John Day, OR.

Now that I think about it, this country, though beautiful, has its spooky side. There were lots of scenes today like the above. Things that used to be things, and are now ex-things. Here’s another one: the recently-shuttered mill at Prairie City:

oldmill — Ominous sky over closed sawmill.

But I’m safe and happy anyway — and all because of the overwhelming welcome I received here in Prairie City, Oregon. Jimi, my host from yesterday, has really pulled out all the stops. He’s a retired Forrest Service employee who still does some contracting for the government. He’s also a cyclist, and a member of warmshowers, a kind of couch-surfing app for cycle tourists. His house sits right off the Trans America route, which is one of several recognized and heavily trafficked cycle routes across the continent. He and his family have hosted visitors from all parts of the country and world — even someone from the Canary Islands, he tells me. As his son Daniel prepared dinner, Jimi gave me a futon to sleep on and a beer and generally made me feel like I was a welcome guest. Later, detecting that I was being cagy about my “family situation” (this is after all about as red a region as you can get — I saw a huge “Impeach Obama” sign on a barn-side on my ride today and many a fundamentalist church) Jimi was gracious enough to out himself first — not as LGBT or anything but as a “liberal.” It was an act of pure hospitality, and one that allowed me to completely relax into being myself in this house with these fine people. I was the “first gay guy they’d had” … and I imagine that if they’d been tracking visitors on a map of the world with pushpins, I’d have received my own special pink one — in the best possibly way. It was Jimi’s anniversary, but he’d been called into work this week and couldn’t go backpacking with his wife, who was away in the wilderness somewhere. Instead, he drank most of a bottle of wine as we sat out on his porch with Daniel (a smoke jumper.) The sun slowly sank down behind the blue mountains. Haze drifted up from the remnants of this year’s fires above John Day. Tomorrow’s going to be just fine.

cycling

Fossils

Posted on September 30, 2015

I’m laying on my bed here in the John Day country — in fact I’m in Dayville, Oregon (population 193) at the Fish House Inn, a comfortable country house converted into a little inn and RV park, all with a rather incongruous nautical theme. I just ate half a pizza with the owner Mike and his dog Zander, a giant golden retriever who chased our crusts across the lawn. The pizza was made next door at a roadhouse by a couple of guys who look like they might be veterans and/or hunters (at least if the amount of camo they wore was any indication.) The sign out front said “Espresso. Never forget.” The second sentiment surely relates to 9/11 or something right? I thought it unwise to reassure them that I could never. forget. espresso.

This beautiful country is the kind of place where you must allow things to happen to you. Eight miles back up the road I made my best decision of the day and turned off US 26 to visit the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. This monument protects one of the most important paleontological sites in North America — a swath of country rich in diverse biological history (it was a jungle, then a woodland, then a savannah, then a high desert, all in the last 40 million years) and volcanic activity (it was repeatedly and often suddenly buried in layers of ash and hot mud which flash-preserved entire ecosystems in stone.) Due to its age, there are no dinosaurs here. Rather, this place entombs layers of dead mammals: a medium-sized North American elephant, a tapir so large it looks like a rhino, a large-tusked pig, a giant bear/cat sort of thing whose branch on the tree of life evidently dead-ended. There is also a rich history of plants: bananas, tea trees, avocados, giant oaks, palm trees — all grew wild in eastern Oregon in the deep past.

While I was thinking about all of this in the excellent monument visitors center, I was approached by an affable dude named Jimi (“Like Hendrix”) who asked me all about my trip and where I was headed. It turns out that he and his son cycled throughout New Zealand last year — they immediately invited me to spend the night at their house when I passed through Prairie City, Oregon. I thanked them and told them I’d see them tomorrow. Sometimes good things just happen. What’s important and sometimes not so easy for me is to remain open to these signs of hospitality.

The shoetree, between Mitchell and Dayville, Oregon. WTF

Maybe the uptick in human kindness has something to do with the harshness of the land though which I passed today. It’s as if the difficulty and directness of life in a place like this needs to be compensated by a greater sense of humanity. I first noticed this back in Mitchell, a tiny town which served as my lunch stop. Mitchell is a crusty speck of a place in the middle of a truly huge and forbidding wilderness. The only business open in town was a little cafe serving lunch to a small crowd of local people. “It’s taco Tuesday” I was told by a genuinely happy local, sitting at the bar. It was. I ate my large white-people taco with vigor. Outside, a barely functioning pickup truck pulled up with a tank in the bed which I soon detected was used for servicing rural septic tanks. Its driver was a sun-baked man who appeared to be in his seventies and spoke almost exactly like Yosemite Sam. He provided me an impromptu survey of the road ahead — especially the dangers of a stretch of road about 30 miles down where US 26 enters a deep canyon and visibility is limited. I thanked him for the info, he seemed genuinely concerned for me, which felt good. As it turned out the canyon in question was definitely a place for caution, but far worse (and totally unmentioned by the rustic gentleman) was the truly hellish climb out of town. Known locally as the “Mitchell grade” it’s an eight-mile, 2500 foot climb out of the deep canyon in which the little town sits. I climbed it in the intense sun, the taco dancing uneasily in my stomach. I had to stop four times in what shade I could find under the scrawny pines to chug water and catch my breath. At one stop I happened across a rather ominous (and perhaps politically dubious) historical marker, some five miles and a good 1500 feet above Mitchell. It read: W. W. Wheeler. For whom Wheeler County was named. First President of East Oregon Pioneer Assn. Also US Mail carrier from The Dalles to Canyon City. Was attacked near this spot by Indians. Was wounded, mail looted and coach destroyed. Sept 7 1866. Memorial erected by East Oregon Pioneers.

Just before lunch I’d descended from the high pass of the Ochoco Mountains down down down into the town. Racing down the canyon side, I knew that the land’s revenge was coming at me later (especially since I look at a climbing profile of the ride I’m taking each day.) However, it’s always been difficult for me to imagine a worse sensation when in the arms of a better one, so the fact that I’d actually have to climb this hill’s evil twin was a mere abstraction as I whizzed down from the high pass of the Ochocos.

pre-mitchell — Looking down toward the Mitchell gulch. In the distance are the mountains I’d soon re-ascend. Note the burned forest — that was from a year ago.

Of course I’d had to climb that pass too. Yes, there were two long climbs today. Departing Prineville, I ascended gradually over a 20 mile grade through the Ochoco National Forest up the side of the mountain range of the same name (for those counting that’s 2 mountain ranges down out of 4 on this trip — not bad!) The climb was long and steady, but aside from a little bit of a headwind at first, it wasn’t that bad. The odd thing about the climb was the smell — for much of the way I could smell nothing but death. While roadkill is a cyclist’s ever-present companion in wild areas, I have to say that today was way over the top. An incomplete census of animals (dead and quick) observed today: deer (dead, many), turkey (alive, one, seemed lost), skunk and raccoon (dead, countless), rattlesnake (live, one eek!), grouse (I think, live, a gaggle), cattle (live, many many.)

it’s time for bed now, after one of the tougher days on this trip. Eighty-nine miles, over 5200 feet of climbing. Tomorrow is a light day of only about 35 miles. I plan to do most of it early and to use the day to check in with work and then rendezvous with the folks from Prairie City. I’ll be glad for the (relative) rest.

cycling

What goes down …

Posted on September 28, 2015

I’m really tired right now. 95 miles. 3500 feet of climbing. My body has had enough for one day, despite being fed a constant train of high energy foods: pancakes, tacos, granola bars and the famous “Indian taco” — a huge slab of fry-bread covered in somewhat dubious taco ingredients.

indiantaco — This is an Indian Taco. Ohboy.

Fry-bread is a Native American delicacy, and indeed I spent most of the morning on the Warm Springs reservation, crossing its international border after a rather freezing hour of fighting through the exit to the Cascade mountains. Leaving Mount Hood would seem like a pure exercise in coasting downhill, but to the east one must traverse two more mini-passes, each cresting at about 4000 feet, until the real descent begins. After that everything changed very quickly. Soon after crossing the 45th parallel (“half way between the North Pole and the Equator” said the sign in the middle of nowhere) the trees began to thin, and a great sweep of grasslands opened up. The road ran rail straight for over twenty miles, running though cold and windy rangeland that had recently burned, before plunging dramatically down into the canyon of the Deschutes River to the main reservation town of Warm Springs.

It is a fact of cycling that what goes down must come up, and I contemplated this while back on US 26, post-fry bread. Subaru-driving fishermen (most of whom were of a certain age and reminded me of my dad or uncle) waded in the river casting for trout. Pale yellow moths of some sort formed clouds over the sidewaters and bushes. And then the hill. It was a brutal, rude hill, made worse by the fact that it was now after mid-day and the sun was beating down. It went on and on and on, climbing the sides of the canyon I had only recently descended until it finally deposited me back up on the arid plateau from whence I’d came.

looking back toward the canyon of the Deschutes.

I was beginning to feel as though biting off such a long day of riding was a horrible idea. How would I ever get this done? I’d planned at least two other days of this magnitude on this trip … could I not handle this amount of riding and terrain? Several things helped: first, mind-games. Looking at the odometer on my bike computer makes the miles go slower. But I like looking at the odometer on my bike computer dammit! So I make deals with myself … no looking until you’re over the next hill! Also, singing helps. Or OM-ing (like in a yoga class.). This seems to calm me, to make me less antsy in the saddle, and to expand my breathing to its full range. (There’s no one around to hear either.) If all else fails, bribe: you can eat a granola bar at that crossroads across the valley. All of these things make me feel rather like an infant, but if the shoe fits …?

In the late afternoon, a great tailwind picked me up and practically blew me from Madras, Oregon (that’s MAD-ras!) all the way across the stunning Crooked River National Grassland and into the hay growing valley of Prineville. It was late afternoon and warm, though the signs of autumn where there to be seen. Huge murmurations of birds danced low over the fields. The hay was being brought in and stacked in piles as high as a six story building. The light began to slant, in that way that makes everything seem older and beautiful.

Though my legs might beg to differ, I think I could get used to this.

cycling

Mount Hood

Posted on September 28, 2015

For new readers, a bit about what this blog is about: my company (Automattic) holds its annual meetup in Utah again this year, and some time last spring I made it my goal to get there on two wheels. This is my first post about that trip — though it may include various other personal ramblings too. To wit:

There was a general kerfuffle recently when the author Jonathan Franzen revealed that his one-time desire to have a child had been more or less destroyed by none other than his editor, and that Franzen now says he allowed himself to be convinced that as a gifted writer, raising a kid was not the best use of his energies. Many people judged this revelation to be either egotistical (fair point) or just plain wrong (why can’t people raising children produce great art too — I certainly know of some who do!) But I think I get where he’s coming from . Of course I’m no artist. That said, I do believe that all humans — regardless of whether Oprah has promoted one of their novels — are given the ability to radically engage the world around us, and if children are not in the picture, that somehow becomes more possible, though clearly at a cost. The act of breaking away from daily life which in my case right now means riding my bike a long way, or at other times has meant going to live in the woods for a couple years, or flying half-way around the world to live in India for a while — these sorts of things are occasions and opportunities to throw oneself open to experience, to other people, to transformation: in short, adventure. So while I totally cop to shirking my genetic duty to the species and missing out on the sacred experience that is having children (though I guess not being attracted to women had some sway on all that) I find joy and opportunity in this other, different kind of doing: I get to ride my bike 950 miles over four mountain ranges! Hell ya!

***

I had intended on starting out quite early this morning to leave Portland, Oregon, mile zero of my trip. However some combination of that city’s excellent beer, a wonderful conversation with my friend Leah and a certain amount of difficulty getting to sleep the night before meant that I didn’t really get going until about 9:30am. Not that it mattered really since my day’s ride was relatively short (just under 60 miles as compared to a trip average of about 77) and I thought it wise to ease into the rhythm and exertions of what I was about to do over the next two weeks. After all this is not a race — if one could even in theory have a race with oneself.

me_start — Starting out. Standing on the best bicycle bridge in the world. Its full inscribed name is “Tillicum Crossing, Bridge of the People.”

Portland said goodbye in its slacker fist-bump sort of way. Everywhere I looked as I pedaled away from the downtown area there were locals relaxing, doing nothing … slowly. Sidewalk brunch places overflowed. Hipsters on 80s bicycles lolled this way and that. Traversing the Willamette river on the stupendous new bike bridge (a structure opened just this summer which accommodates all modes of transport except cars) I was funneled into one of Portland’s many cycle paths — segregated superhighways which circulate bikes around town in a way that actually works for the people who use them. You can get nearly anywhere on a bike path in Portland and its suburbs — including out of town, as it turns out.

portland_trail — A suburban Portland bike path. Note the shadow of Mount ~~Doom~~ Hood perfectly framed by the path. A portent.

At Boring, Oregon (seemingly well-named) it was time to leave the trail and join US 26, my probable road-home for the next four days. In exurban Portland, 26 is a messy six lane highway passing through the town of Sandy and thence up into the forests around Mount Hood and up its broad flanks. I’d be spending the night at the ski-town of Government Camp (incidentally the site for most of the exterior shots in Kubrick’s the Shining — gulp.) But as I approached the base of the mountain, the close-in forest kept me wondering when the real climbing for the day would start — my route promised over 5,000 feet of climbing on the day, and I was sure I’d done less than 1,500.

I needn’t have worried. The tilt started just after the village of Rhododendron, where I’d stopped for break and chatted with a couple of young women running the local cafe. “Yah there’s a hill,” one of them said, laughing. “It’s not too bad though. Just steady.” That sounded okay. “Whenever I see a bike up there though I think they’re crazy.” That sounded decidedly worse. During the climb, along with mile markers (which I passed with excruciating slowness) there were also altitude indicators. 1500 feet. 2000 feet. 2500 feet. Then the signage vanished at the beginning of a 10-mile blast/construction zone, and so I found myself trying to guess how far and high I’d climbed. Cars whizzed by. I sweated. The road’s broad shoulder was there for me to chug slowly up, except when it was occupied by construction vehicles and I had to be inventive, making runs uphill timed to pauses in traffic. Then all of a sudden Mount Hood at its most naked reared up ahead of me around a bend, much much larger than I’d last seen it before the trees encroached.

I turned my brain off and made it to the top.

cycling

Welcome

Posted on August 6, 2015

Welcome to this new blog, which is meant to document my cycling exploits, particularly my planned mega-adventure of cycling from Portland, Oregon to Park City, Utah. There’s much to tell here — who I am, why I’m doing this particular ride, and what I’ve done before that would make me think this is a good idea, as well as a great deal of minutiae that I plan to include here for those who might be contemplating a similarly foolish but wonderful feat. But to start with, here’s the one-minute version:

I work for a great company called Automattic (yes, the same one that runs this blogging platform.) Each year, the entire company gather together somewhere in the world. This year (and last) our gathering will happen in the middle part of October in Park City, Utah. Instead of flying (yawn) I’ve decided to bicycle to the meeting this year. I live in Seattle, Washington, but I’ll be starting the ride from down the road in Portland, Oregon.
I have a history of this sort of thing, having (for example) cycled down the west coast of the United States with my brother Seth a number of years ago.
Cycling long distances is awesome. I think it could be something that far more people could do than do now.
My job is completely virtual — meaning I can do it from wherever I happen to be, given a suitable internet connection and my laptop. Therefore, my plan is to do a certain amount of work from the road.

I’ve done a reasonable amount of thinking about the route I will take on this trip (more on that later of course — much more.) But I plan to cross the entire state of Oregon and the southern (thick) part of Idaho, on my way down into the Salt Lake area and then up to Park City. In the course of doing this, I will climb four mountain ranges (for the curious, that’s the Cascade, Ochoco, Blue and Wasatch ranges) and I will descend from three (all but the Wasatch.) Though I have yet to count precisely, this ride should extend over more than 800 miles and involve well over 30,000 vertical feet of climbing.

So there you have it … welcome — and much much more to come.