The Conquerment of Larch Mountain

The road up to Larch Mountain went down fighting today. Ben, Richard and I stormed the hill with the fervor of religion and one goal in mind... get to the top. We left my house at around 7:15 AM and headed for the hill. It was a good crew of equal or near equal ability, and we set a good pace out the Springwater to Stark and eventually out the old Columbia Highway. Ben pulled pretty much from the Sandy River to the turn off for Larch Mountain Road, which marks the start of a 14 mile climb to the parking lot at the top of Larch Mountain.

I really had no idea what to expect from the ride. Lon described it, as he describes most things, as a piece of cake, but I have ridden enough with Lon to know that a piece of cake to Lon means that it will kick my ass and leave me puking on my shoes. This turned out to be a fairly accurate assesment of Larch Mountain. All I can say is that it just keeps going and going and going and going. There are really no flats or down hill sections after the first 4 or 5 miles, so there is really no where to rest, just keep pedalling, mile after god forsaken mile. It was brutal, and with every tenth pedal stroke came the urge to stop and rest and my will to fight that urge diminished with every bead of sweat that poured out of me. It was an epic battle fought in the trenches. I spent the last 2 miles fighting the puke, which turned out to be enough of an attention distractor to get me to the top. And I didn't puke. Sweet.

The descent was both victorious and raucous. Like a sailor on shore leave for the first time in months. All of the potential energy wound up on the climb was released in a furocious volley to the bottom. I hit 42MPH and was yelling into the wind as the pavement flew from my wheels. It was amazing.

Tearing Up The Westside

Date: Sunday, April 15th, 2007
Leave: 6:30AM
Return: 10:40AM (about ~30 mins of stoppage at Ben's and for a flat repair)
Distance: 56.65 miles
Average speed: 15.7 mph

Finally hit a long-ish ride out West via Kruger with the world's newest Microserf, Ben "The Hamma" Hickman. It was a beautiful morning, although chilly at times, but it warmed up enough to de-sleeve and let vest guy roam free for a while. I felt pretty good all day, although Ben climbs fast even when he's not trying to, so there was plenty of wind suckage going on.

Kruger is a nice climb not too steep anywhere, but long enough to remind me that I still have a ways to go to be in Cycle Oregon with Lon shape. The descent down Mountain Home is unreal, and I hit 39.9 MPH on the way down.

A Hundy, Bitches!

Date: Sunday, April 1st, 2007 (not a joke, asshole)
Leave: 7:45AM
Return: 3PM (minus watching Ben's race and stopping by my parents' house to say hi)
Distance: 102.66 miles
Average speed: 17.1 mph

Well, I got my first >= 100 mile ride in today. Hells yes. Ben was racing in the Piece of Cake road race and I decided to bail on Lon and Sally like a stooge at the last moment and drag my bike and ass up to Woodland, WA to watch him devour the Peleton of Cat 5 racers.

It was a LONG ride all by my lonesome, but super enjoyable, no rain, no flats and now I am HUNGRY. I will try to map out the route in a bit after some nourishment.

--Update--
Oh man, a steak and a beer and some salad and another beer and some cereal and some bread and a potato and some more salad and about six gallons of water and some trail mix after a ride like that KICKS ASS.

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):

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.