Terwilliger Four Beers Deep

Date: Friday, March 30th, 2007
Leave: 4:00PM
Return: 6:00PM (minus a pitcher of beer at the Lucky Lab)
Distance: 25.3 miles
Average speed: 17.6 mph

I always allow myself to get talked into riding with Ben and Lon after a couple of beers and it is, without fail, awesome and sucky at the same time. We had a banner quarter at work this year, so the booze started flowing at around noon and didn't stop for the rest of the afternoon. Just as I was thinking, "wow, I kind of have a buzz...", both Ben and Lon proceeded to call me a pussy until I agreed to ride up to the SW Lucky Lab with them. Not really a difficult ride, but enough hill climbing that 4 beers is not a welcome inhabitant of my stomach.

The other thing about riding with Ben and Lon is that Lon has 1 speed, Fucking Flying, and Ben has many speeds, but none of them are slower than what anyone in sight is going, so it pretty much means Dave is sucking air and wheezing like pansy the entire time. We of course hit every green light, so it was a hammer fest all the way up Terwilliger to the Lab. I think Ben and Lon enjoy dragging my younger lungs around and then trying to make conversation the entire time, as if they aren't even breaking a sweat. Since I was the last one to Lab, I had the honor of buying the beers. Fuck.

After pleasant conversation and a pitcher of the organic Golden Ale, I parted ways with Ben and Lon and headed back to the office to get my bag. The descent down Terwilliger was as fun as I expected it to be -- it's rad to hit 36 mph on a sunny day. I zipped back to the office and grabbed my bag and headed home via the Springwater Trail where I got a nice 25mph pull from a racer guy.

Me getting ready to have my ass handed to me (photo courtesy of Brian Myers):

Marine Drive With Crafty

Date: Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Leave: 4:30PM
Return: 7:15PM
Distance: 38 miles
Average speed: 14.6 mph

Justin and I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous day yesterday and take a nice easy run around "the horn"; out St. John's Bridge to Marine Drive and home via the I-205 bike path. My Achilles was still pretty tender from Monday's pathetic jaunt around the same course, but I was otherwise feeling pretty good, and it was such a nice day that it seemed silly to not get some miles in and soak in the sun a bit. I left work at around 4:30 and zipped over to Justin's office in the Pearl. I was wearing my trusty, yellow, ripped and filthy rain jacket, so I was a little warmed over when I arrived, which reminded me that the sleeves of this particular jacket are removable, and thus emerged Vest Guy. No sooner than Vest Guy emerging did I run into an old coworker, who I hadn't seen in years, who promptly remarked on how much of a dork Vest Guy is. Awesome. Justin was his usual 10 or so minutes late, so we said our goodbyes to the work day and headed out through NW Portland towards Hwy 30.

While I certainly enjoy the hell out of a good, long solo ride, I really enjoy riding with other people too. The company and conversation is always nice to have, and it is easier for me to regulate speed and effort more (for some reason) when I'm riding with other folks. We kept a nice, easy pace up and over the St. John's Bridge, but traffic was extremely heavy on Hwy 30 due to some trees getting drunk and trying to cross Hwy 26 in the middle of the day, so crossing 30 to the bridge ramp took a little time.

Once we got over the bridge onto Lombard, we made good time up to Marine Drive and were pleasantly surprised at the lack of a headwind all the way to I-205. Overall, it was a kick ass ride, I love that route for an after work ride, it's the perfect amount of length, time and effort.

Dragging Ass Along Marine Drive

Date: Monday, March 26th, 2007
Leave: 4:45PM
Return: 7:15PM
Distance: 38 miles
Average speed: 15.5 mph

My lovely family decided to go to the beach for the night Monday night, so despite the fact that I put in a 70 mile day the day before, I thought I would take the opportunity to see if I could do my long route home, which goes from work downtown, over St. John's Bridge, up to Marine Drive and home via the I-205 bike path. Normally, this route is pretty easy, albeit somewhat long for an evening ride, still, I can usually knock it out and be home by 7. It's flat and the only dicey part is if you get an easterly wind in your face on Marine Drive, it can be a long and slow trudge from I-5 to I-205.

It started off well-enough, a quick slice through downtown to Northwest Portland and out St. Helens Drive to highway 30 towards the St. John's Bridge. However, just as I was turning from St. Helens on to Highway 30, I started to feel a little queasy and shaky, not exhaustion sickness or even really nauseous, just a bit off, almost like the feeling of too much coffee on an empty stomach. I drank some water and tried to ride it off, but it wouldn't go away, and it started to sap some of my energy, so my pace slowed. In retrospect, I think it was due to my lunch of extra-spicy Thai food, probably not the brightest thing for me to eat before even a low-effort ride like this.

To make things even lovelier, just as I was starting to climb up the hill to the base of the bridge, my Achilles tendon began to nag, and by the top, it began to hurt, which slowed my pace even more. I decided to keep going since Mandy wasn't home anyway, and the ride straight home from the St. John's Bridge isn't much less than finishing out my planned route anyway. It was right about this time that it started to rain rather steadily.

The ride through St. John's was nice enough and fairly quick. It's a little sketchy at the base of the bridge to get onto Lombard and head North, but it's certainly safe and doable. Once onto Lombard, there are few lights and a nice, wide shoulder for a ways out past Pier Park to Columbia Blvd. There was a pretty gruesome-looking accident on the corner of Burgard (Lombard) and Columbia, with several police, firemen and EMTs on the scene. They didn't look like they needed the services of a bike-riding computer programmer, so I decided to ride on by.

Turning again north onto Lombard proper, I made my way up to Marine Drive at Kelley Point where I discovered that I would indeed be the frustrated recipient of a fairly brutal head-wind for the next 10+ miles, which goes wonderfully with a turning stomach and a sore Achilles. Wonderful. Cycling is great for these kind of moments because your options are:

1. Turn Around
2. Keep Going
3. Call someone to pick you up

Being a male under 80 years old without any broken limbs, option 3 is not possible, and I had already evaluated and turned down option 1 miles earlier, so my only option was to keep pedalling. This is the point in the journey where my internal dialog starts to sound like an insult comic:

"You fucking idiot, you could be drinking a beer and reading a book by the fire place, or meeting some friends at the pub like a normal Portlander. BUT NO!, as if 70 miles yesterday wasn't enough, let's work a full day and instead of being happy with the normal and respectable 8 miles home, let's do 40! Jackass."

The good thing about all of this self loathing monologue is that it ends up passing the time pretty efficiently, and before I knew it I was on the east side of I-5 plodding along the Columbia River. I love this part of the ride, but it sucks a whole lotta balls with a 20 mph wind in your face and rain coming down on you. I had pretty much completely bonked by this point too, so I was just trying to keep moving forward. This was turning out to be either an excellent exercise in mental conditioning, or a completely ridiculous and all-around stupid idea. I felt like I was weighed down with rocks, and more than once, I checked my tires to see if they were flat; that's how sluggish I felt.

Then I remembered that I had a nice, juicy steak in the fridge at home (still ~20 miles away). I began to mentally picture the steak on the grill, and my pace quickened a little bit. I remembered that I had a Clif Shot in my pocket and I quickly devoured it, drank some water and my pace picked up a little more. I finally found myself in a nice, steady rhythm and made good time the rest of the way to I-205.

The I-205 bike path heading south has some rolling hills, and gradually gains elevation as you get closer into Portland. I was feeling a lot better, still pretty tired, but not quite so maligned as before, although my Achilles was still really sore. The big difference was the lack of a headwind, which was enough impetus for me to get a good pace rolling and get home and put that steak into my face.

Without fail, it is this point in the journey, tired, wet, sore and just south of miserable that some skinny little perky road racer guy in full Velo kit on his $5000 Kestrel rolls up on you and wants to talk shop while your lungs are dragging on the pavement behind you. Of course, this guy was super nice and was riding fast enough that I had to take secret gasps of air during our conversations to keep from talking like Stevie from Malcom in the Middle. Portland is FILLED with these guys, not all of them are nice, mind you, but most are, and anytime you start to think you are in shape or doing well on your bike, you will inevitably be knocked down a few rungs by these annoying little waifs. Anyway, this guy was cool as shit and we rapped for a bit, and I turned off at Foster Road and made my way down Woodstock and home to my wonderful steak and a cold beer.

To The Falls!

Date: Sunday, March 25th, 2007 Leave: 7AM Return: Noon-ish Distance: 70.4 miles Average speed: 16.4 mph

Ben and I met at the Tideman/Johnson Park rest area at 7AM on Sunday for our biggest ride to date: the wonderous (and far off) Multmonah Falls, which is about 35 miles east of downtown Portland. The weather was pretty iffy, a little drizzley and cold, but not unbearable on either front. We set off heading west on the Springwater Trail, keeping a nice and easy, but steady pace on the flats of ~17mph or so. Both Ben and I have ridden this portion of the Springwater several times, so we made really good time up to 182nd, where we turned north and rode up to Stark and turned east again. Stark is your typical large street bike path with lots of junk and debris in the way, so it wasn't long until Ben was gifted with a flat rear tire. It was just cold enough that waiting the 5 mins or so for him to change the tube had completely chilled me to the bones, and I was stoked to get back on the road... only to find that we were at the top of a 3/4 mile descent down to the Sandy river, which chilled me even further. As if on cue, as soon as we got to the bottom of the hill, Ben was flat again, so on came another 5-10 minutes of standing in the now increasing rain freezing our asses off.

While changing the tire just before the Sandy River bridge, and at the base of a fairly significant climb, three guys rode past us, at least one of which was on a fixie, which quickened Ben's tire changing pace and got us on our way, although we never saw those guys again. The climb up through Corbett warmed us back up, and was uneventful save for the fact that it began absolutely DUMPING rain on us... so much that it was ridiculous and fun to be trudging through the sheets water. The climb is not very steep, but pretty long and ends as you can either start the climb up to Larch Mountain or descend down to the Vista House and ultimately Multnomah Falls.

The quick descent down to the Vista House is really fun, especially after ~5 miles or so of climbing. We stopped at the Vista House and soaked in some more rain along with the spectacular (even in shitty weather) view. The stop was ultimately long enough to cool down again, which, given the descent from the Vista House down the historic Columbia River Highway, proved to be somewhat of a wool-headed move on our part, as by the bottom we were both frozen stiff again. Despite the cold, the only thing I could think during the descent was, "holy shit, we gotta climb this on our way back!"

The ride from the Vista House to Multnomah Falls is so awesome, especially on a bike. I have driven it several times in a car, but never on a bike, and it was just spectacular. There are so many falls and gorges and things that you miss at 35mph in a metal box that just jump out at you when you're on a bike. We were passed by only 3 or 4 cars, all of which were very careful and gave us lots of room, which was nice because it was still a colossal Oregonian downpour in our faces.

Getting to the falls was awesome, simply because it rules to roll up on a bike to a place that's a fair ways away from civilization, let alone that it was dumping rain and witch-tit cold. Ben snapped this picture of me with my shitty camera phone, which works even less in the rain -- thanks Cingular! I had a couple shots of espresso at the coffee stand and filled up my water bottles and we were off back up towards the Vista House. We took it easy on the climb back up, but even still it proved to be far less daunting than it seemed on the way down -- the more big climbs I do, the more I realize this is pretty much always the case. Still, getting back to the Vista House and up into Corbett felt great, and just as we crested the top, the sun came out in full force. It was totally a moment of shining awesomeness for me, and I think I began to annoy Ben with all my, "boy, this sure is awesome!" talk.

The ride back was pretty uneventful, but there was a bit of an annoying head-wind that made it less enjoyable than it could have been. I made it home to an empty house and took a shower and proceeded to construct an ass-kicking omelette with about 10 pieces of turkey bacon that tasted like it was made by the Specialized Angel.

Here We Go Again

Ok, I am going to try this whole blog thing again, but this time it's got a theme... my bike rides. I will attempt to catalog pretty much anything interesting that happens to me on my bike, so check back often, or add the feed. Und now, ve HAMMA.