Day Ten
Corvallis-Eugene, 43 miles.
Today’s ride was a beeline almost straight south on 99W from Corvallis to Eugene. The plan was to continue SE through Eugene into the Oregon Cascades foothills and on up the course of the Willamette River tributaries, then drop onto the high Central Oregon plateau and work south to Klamath Falls. I got to Eugene, called it a day and reassessed, again.
Shannon, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
For nearly a week now, I’ve watching the slow development of a low pressure system coming my way across the Pacific Ocean. The heat dome that made my ride from Troutdale to McMinnville so miserable gave way a couple of days ago. High temperatures moderated back to the tolerable mid 80s. This low pressure system is slow, ponderous and huge, so the weather predictions about it have been highly accurate. When I say huge, I mean that the center of the low is now at the southern reaches of Alaska, while Crescent City in Northern California is being rained on, all part of one huge weather system.
As predicted, today’s wind shifted from off my right shoulder to straight into my face, and picked up. Ponderous weather, bike and rider made for only 43 miles today, with a moving average of only 9 miles per hour. Eugene was as far is I had it in me to go. On the plus side, Eugene is full of bike shops. I found an excellent bike mechanic to show me how to adjust my dragging front brake, and to straighten the grabby front brake disc. One small step towards efficiency.
A bit about today’s ride. 99W is an excellent road with an itty-bitty shoulder and a fair amount of traffic, including logging trucks, which because of their ragged loads, create a lot of turbulence as they pass. Not a problem, just a factor. Professional drivers may have huge trucks but they stay where they are supposed to. If I do too, no problem.
Buzz Lightyear doesn’t really fly, he falls with style.
And…I had my first tumble. The front tire rolled into a soft shoulder and after a wobbly attempt to recover, down the embankment I went. Martial arts training from my early teen years is still in me, so as I accepted that I was going down, I twisted out of my pedal cleats, tucked and rolled, and ended back up on my feet at the bottom of the bank. It was a soft bank, no rocks or blackberries, so with a quick brush off, I was back on the bike and moving. I have new front panniers. The right one is now dirty.
I am sure to return to the Willamette Valley again and again. Its two biggest draws are high-value agriculture, including wine grapes and beer hops, and so many colleges and universities.
https://oregonaitc.org/resources/oregon-resources/oregon-map/
Not unto ourselves alone are we born
College towns are interesting. College town people do interesting things.
The upshot of this day is my severe self-doubt about climbing a 5,100’ mountain pass tomorrow and needing to average nearly 70+ miles per day to reach Klamath Falls, given how my mileage today fell so short of goal. Another redesign is necessary.
This is my own doing, of course. The clean, laminar flow of this ride down the West Coast has been turbulated (Yes, that’s a real word!) by higher-value choices—a meniscus procedure, leadership courses to teach, selling a home, moving out, moving stuff again, moving in again, a wedding celebration—all more essential than a simple little bike ride. So the opportunity has been to see if I can learn and adapt to juggle it all, improve my fitness on the fly, which frankly just hurts, and keep a cheerful disposition and clear eye to avoid any critical or terminal errors, such as hitting or being hit by something hard and unyielding. Maybe I’ve already written this, but I keep thinking of that awful but prescient statement by Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.
New plan. I’m going to Coos Bay!
It’s on the coast, 125 miles from Eugene. I’m giving myself three days to get there. Coos Bay is back on my original route plan and is nominally closer to Mexico than I am now, so I’m calling it progress.
This avoids all those clever detours through the Cascades, Siskiyous and Trinity Alps, up and down and up and down with my (reality check here) reluctant body. I’ll stash the bike somewhere in Coos Bay and with just two buses and a train, meet Joan in Portland for the drive to Missoula, so we can move into our new home on August 20th.
Then I’ll find my way back to Coos Bay, recover the bike and continue down the coast into California. There’s yet another shenanigan to play to get to my niece’s wedding at Cascade Locks on August 31, then back again to wherever the bike has been stashed, but I’ll save that news until its at hand. Besides, that plan is as likely to change as every plan I’ve made in the last month just to get myself to Eugene, barely 500 miles into this 1,800 mile ride. This wasn’t the plan!
