Day Nine
McMinnville to Corvallis, 48 miles.
That’s right, Corvallis, not Lincoln City. Yesterday was my needed limp day, and I changed up the whole ride. As I’ve mentioned, Joan and I sold our house last month and have been vagabonding around for a few weeks. While I was back in Missoula last week to receive and build the Priority 600 bike I am now riding, we used the days to also consolidate all of our worldly possession from 4 smaller storage units to one big one. We also looked at a new house, which was completely wrong for us, and realized that we don’t want to deal with buying and remodeling another house anytime in the immediate future. So we decided to rent an apartment, and our move in date is August 20th. So I’m not going to get all the way to Oakland, CA by the end of the month. I have to get back to Missoula to move again, then get back on the road once Joan and Ozzie Bailey the dog of dogs, very dog of very dog, are in our new place.
Problem: short of renting a car and driving a 1,000 miles from the coast to Missoula and back, there is no way to skitter home from somewhere near the ocean beaches of Northern California. However, by letting go of my dream to cycle the Oregon Coast, there are other ways to get to the Mexican border. The new plan is to ride 5 days to Klamath Falls of all places, where I can catch the Amtrak Coast Starlight train to Portland and hitch a ride back to Missoula with Joan and Ozzie, at the end of their housesitting stint in McMinnville. Complicated? Not really, once you recover from the whiplash. The new route takes me over the Oregon Cascades, south on US 97 past Crater Lake National Park to Klamath Falls, where I’ll store the bike for a week. Returning to Klamath Falls by train after our house moving, I’ll continue cycling south towards Yreka, CA, where I’ll decide to either head towards the coast or stay inland, veering towards Mt. Lassen and southward through the northern Central Valley towards Davis. How plans can change!
Today I got a 9 AM start from McMinnville, through country my family first settled in the late 1840s. Yes, Oregon Trail wagon train 1840s.
'The Oregon Trail Beyond Devil's Gate', Wyoming - by W H Jackson. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)
Heading straight south on W99, today I spent more time in my ancestral homeland than I think I have in my previous 65 years. And even now, I can see why they were drawn to Oregon more than 175 years ago. It’s verdant, productive, prosperous, well-ordered but not over-controlled, varying between woodlands, fields and wildlife refuges. Vineyards, filbert orchards, blueberries, hay, tree farms and much more are cultivated here, without any sense of expansive, mono-culture, corporate farming seem across so much of America.
I rode past Albany, OR, where my dad was born. Tomorrow I will ride through Eugene, where my family first homesteaded next to Eugene Skinner, and where my (I forget how many greats…) grandmother was the first graduate of the U of O medical school. I am of this place and I have spent almost no time here. I’m coming back for more than a passing look.
I stayed on W99, straight south, ending up in Corvallis at a restored mid-twentieth century motor inn. Corvallis is as nice a town as any here in the Willamette River Valley. They are all nice. Today was cooler and the miles not so arduous. I’m not necessarily strong yet—no beast today—but I feel improved and optimistic. Tomorrow will be a little longer and quite a bit wetter. Yes, rain. The day after: 5,100 foot elevation Willamette Pass. We’ll see what kind of climber this bike is, and me too.
