The Think Tank

As I’ve written about before, Joel and Tim and I are planning on participating in the Seattle to Portland bike ride this year, and as such we’ve been trying to train for it.  I say “trying” because we keep falling short.  We were doing very well in the early stages, but when the weather took a turn for the worse several weeks ago, our training regimen followed suit.

To that end I bought a new bike a couple weeks ago using my REI member dividend (accumulated over two years) and their annual Spring 20% coupon, plus some birthday contributions, to bring the price down to a very reasonable level.  Since I got such a good out-of-pocket deal on the bike, and since I am a certified fat ass and the wheels that came with the bike had questionable reviews, I splurged on a new wheel set.  As it turned out, that delayed delivery of my bike for quite a while due to several screw-ups, but I finally was able to pick up my new toy Thursday night.

Today seemed like the perfect day to take it out for a spin.  All in all I really liked how it performed, the lighter weight was a real boon on the hills, although my general level of unfitness did dictate that I had to stop a few times on some of the longer hills.  However, usually those stops were paired with navigational fixes, as I got lost several times due to the rabbit warren nature of the streets in west hills.  They are crazy.

My route took me up to Pittock Mansion, where I stopped for a few minutes and took some pictures, then through Washington Park and by the Zoo, up to Council Crest (where I took another photo break), and then down past OHSU into Downtown on my way home.  All in all it was about 23 miles and, according to MapMyRide, about 1,100 feet of climbing.  I swear to God it felt like more than that.

It was a nice ride and a perfect day for it.  I think I even got a couple of nice shots to boot.

It was chilly and wet in the morning

Joel and I took part in the Worst Day of the Year Ride, the second largest organized ride in Oregon.  It is so named because statistically speaking the middle of February is when the worst day of the year occurs, but despite that mathematical fact, the previous 8 rides have all taken place under blue skies with temps in the 50’s.

This was my first year taking part in the ride, and of course, it is also the first year that it has rained.  Go figure.  Fortunately it didn’t rain terribly hard or for very long, probably only the first hour or so, then it dried out.  By mid-afternoon the sun even made a cameo appearance.

I left my house around 7:30 and rode over to Joel’s house, where we met up and rode down by the Rose Garden, along the East Side Esplinade and then to the start line .  Our registration also paid for food and drinks at all of the many rest stops, including doughnuts and coffee/tea/cocoa here at the start line.

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Relishing that fact that I found myself with nothing that had to be accomplished yesterday, and mindful of how unprepared I am for the Seattle To Portland bicycle ride that Joel and Tim and I are planning on doing in July, I figured it was the perfect time to take a prolonged ride through the Springwater Corridor.   I’ve heard many people talk about it and several friends and workmates use it regularly, but I had never been on it personally.

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Tim, Joel and myself took part in the first ever Hood River Harvest Ride, a bike ride through the back roads Around the Hood River / Odell / Parkdale area. There were a total of four loops to choose from and riders could do as many or as few as they wanted to make the ride more challenging. We chose to do the main 28 mile Parkdale loop and 16 mile loop out to Panarama Point and back.

It was a good ride and turned out to be a bit more challenging than any of us had anticipated, but we had a good time nonetheless and I for one would love to do it again next year.

Since I was busy riding I didn’t take any photos, but Aleks took some at the event.  I’ll be posting those as soon as I get them.

You can get all the details after the bump…

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