Farewell to the West Coast and final thoughts

Sunday, June 2, 2012

 Last night James disassembled our bikes, packed them and our other gear into the bike boxes our host (and owner of Bike Flights) had given us and we left them in the Bike Flight office. The owner was kind enough to get up at 4:30 am to take us to the airport for our early morning departure.  He printed out the labels he had in his records and had Fed Ex pick them up on Monday.   I must give a huge thanks to Bill and his family for their wonderful hospitality.

This was the first day that we hadn't ridden our bikes in two weeks.  It felt strange to walk with a couple of small bags as we went to our gate at the airport.  While we were on our tour we didn't keep up with the news going on in the country or in the world.  We picked up a newspaper and learned that Doc Watson, a favorite folk music artist had passed away.  We were sad to learn the news.  I must say that it was nice to have 2 weeks away from all of the media hype which is either fear inducing or pointless information about the lives of Hollywood TV and film stars -- that I didn't miss.

I can definitely say that I'm hooked on touring and we have plans to have additional adventures on our touring bikes.  It forces one to slow down and observe the world around them as they are going to their destination.  I love the sensory aspect -- not only do you get the sights, but the sounds and smells add to the experience.  We met very friendly people and it seemed that traveling by bicycle opened up conversations that would not have been attempted had we been in a car.  The final aspect that I found attractive was the simplicity of the whole experience.  The bicycle in itself is a simple machine and to carry one's belongings forces one to narrow down the material items to the basic needs.  This in itself simplifies life.

We were very fortunate not to have any major breakdowns or crises while we were on our bike tour.  I give James a lot of credit for this and some of it was luck.  James did a great job making sure he had our bikes set up correctly, studied the equipment and purchased the equipment that he felt would deter a lot of mechanical problems.  I have what we used in the first blog post if anyone who is reading and considering doing a bike tour needs additional details.

What we did that worked

I wanted to provide a brief summary of what we did to prepare for this tour and what we discovered while on our tour that worked for us.

1. Shipping our bikes to San Francisco, CA and back home using BikeFlights was a great first step.  We got a great rate, great customer service, and it was much better than having to deal with the bikes at the airport. The owner is a cyclist and has previous experience working with the airline industry so he gets both sides.
2. Doing a practice run two weeks before the tour so we could make adaptations to the bikes and gear before we left.
3. Using waterproof panniers - I recommend the Ortlieb's.  We spent  a little more and bought the type that fold down and have pockets on the side rather than the "roll-down" type. We were able to put our high frequency used items in the outside pockets (maps) so they were readily accessible.
4. Found as many alternate routes to Hwy 101 as we could.  It was extremely busy and it was nice to get on a side road with less traffic.  Keep in mind that a lot of times those routes will have more terrain but we were ok with it.  I recommend the steps I outlined below for any bike tour. 
• Use the Cycling Adventures map as a starting point and then read the blogs and forums on their website.
• Get on Google maps and use the "google map" guy to get a view of the roads to see if they had a shoulder.
• Look at the "traffic density (or volume)" information for the roads you will travel (I know this is available for each state in America, I'm not sure about other countries).  This information is posted on most Department of Transportation for each state's website. If the highway listed on the Adventure Cycling route was reported as high traffic density try to find an alternate road with less traffic volume.
• Bring physical maps with you and don't rely on the GPS on your phone.  It is difficult to get an accurate view of the "big picture" of an area.  We used pages from the Gazetteer for the areas we were in.  He cut them out of the book so we had them for a reference.  These maps have all of the back roads and terrain information and have maps for each state.  You can buy them from Amazon.com or your local Wal-Mart or Target (keep in mind they will only have the states that the store is located in).
• Once you are in the area, look for maps made by locals for the area (like the Krebs Cycle map we found).  Some are great, some aren't worth buying, you have to make that decision.
• Talk to individual's working in bicycle shops.  Some are better than others.
5. If you do this tour in the spring - take wool long underwear, 2 to 3 pairs of wool socks, and a wool base layer to sleep in at night.  You will also want a stocking cap.  It gets chilly once the sun goes down on the coast.
6. I'd only take one sleeveless jersey (or none) and take 2 long sleeve synthetic shirts.  I found myself wearing the shirt I bought in Eureka, OR each day.  Rain gear is necessary too.
7. If you can't eat a big breakfast when you wake up, trying eating a small one and then waiting until you reach the a town 30 min -1.5 hours later to stop to eat breakfast at restaurant.  It worked well for me.  I had developed an appetite and could eat a lot more food that carried me through the day.
8. Allow yourself to have rest days -- especially if your body is telling you that you need to give it some rest.
9. One thing we didn't do was allow ourselves to spend more than one day in a spot.  There were a couple of places that I would have liked to have had more time to explore the area.
10. If your tour is during a holiday - if possible, I recommend staying put during the day that everyone is traveling to or from the destination spot if you are unable to find an alternate route.

I hope you find this information useful and maybe this blog has inspired you to try bike touring.  I highly recommend it!  It was a lot of fun.

When ever we take our next bike tour, I'll post a blog about that experience.  Happy riding!

Beer Tour in Downtown Portland

Saturday, June 1, 2012

Our host gave us directions to get to downtown Portland and we got on our unloaded bikes and headed into town.  It is very strange riding an unloaded bike after carrying around 40-50 pounds for two weeks.  The bike wobbles and is hard to keep straight.

Portland has a fantastic biking system and a lot of people get around by bike.  They have designated bikeway system that dedicates certain roads for cyclists to keep them out of the high traffic areas as much as possible.  In fact, at 5 pm we saw the bicycle rush hour.  They have all of this information detailed in maps as well as signed on the roads.

Our priority was to ride to a local microbrew to reward ourselves with a job well done. We asked a few people and were guided to Rock Bottom Brewery.  We had a beer and ordered lunch.  We then decided it would be fun to find other microbrews for a "mini-microbrew tour" and that gave us our goal for the day.

Our next stop was Deschutes  Brewery.  The decor was impressive and they had a nice porter.  We ended up splitting that beer to make sure we could get to the next stop.

We visited some local bike shops, outdoor stores, and stopped to take a picture by the river.  We also hit the bicycle "rush hour" -- so cool!  We then made it to our final craft beer destination, Cascades Brewing Barrel House.  They specialized in sour beers and they were very good.  It was our favorite stop of the day.  When writing this post I learned that Portland as a "Breweries Map".  If we had a smartphone, it would have been a useful feature to help us on our adventure!

We made contact with the bike tourer we met on our first night and rode to his house to talk about our respective trips.  We got to meet his family and it was really neat to be able to hang out and share stories with the person we met on the first day of our trip, on the last day of our trip.  I doubt that would have happened had we been in a vehicle.

Total Miles on the trip: ~975 miles

Riding into Portland

Thursday, May 31, 2012

We rode our bikes from the state park back into Newberg, OR and made our way out of town.  We climbed out of Newberg and started out on Hwy 219 as recommended by the bike shop owners.  James thought there was too much traffic (I thought it was fine and there was a shoulder) and opted to take a left onto NE Mountain Top road.  It was a steep climb and by that time I wasn't very happy about climbing steep terrain.  But, the scenery was beautiful and we got a great view of Newberg and the Valley we were about to descend into.

The road on the ridge turned into gravel for a short period of time and then started going down.  Fortunately it wasn't a very long stretch of gravel and it turned back into asphalt.  The grades were steep, some at 9% and one got as high as 17%.  Luckily we were going down but it still required some bike handling experience.













Once we completed the descent, we were into the valley and rolling through beautiful country side where the farmers were growing wine, nuts, and just outside of Portland, landscaping trees, bushes, etc.

Nike Headquarters

We rode into the suburbs of Portland from the west.  There were bike lanes that made it easy to get around.  We past the national headquarters for Nike and made our way to our host's house.  We did make one mistake.  We were advised to avoid going into the city since our friend lived on the North side of town.  Next time I'd go into the city.  We ended up doing 2 mile climb up Thompson road through some very expensive neighborhoods and then taking a big descent back to the river so we could cross the St. John's Bay bridge and ride to our destination.  It turns out that this climb and the roads that are off of this climb are frequently ridden by local cyclists but they generally avoid riding on them during the time we were there.  We hit it during the beginning of rush hour and ran into a lot of traffic as we were getting off the mountain.  As I was going down the mountain, this empty school bus was riding on my tail and wouldn't let off.  It was so unnerving that I slowed down (forcing him to slow down) and then pulled over onto the side of road onto a gravel area.  The bus driver was mad and honked at me.  Very frustrating.  I don't know why a full-sized bus was on that road in the first place and he shouldn't have been racing down a windy, curvy, steep mountain.

St. John's Bay Memorial Bridge

We made it to our friends house (the owner of Bike Flight's) and he really hooked us up.  He had already secured two bike boxes for us to pack our bikes for him to ship out and then took us to a wonderful burger and ice cream place.  Little Big Burger is a Portland chain that makes most of the food they serve from scratch -- the ketchup, french fries, and the burgers are freshly made in house (not frozen like other fast food chains).  The ice cream we ate was homemade and they had a wonderful dulce de leche with salt ice cream.  Unfortunately I didn't write down the name of the shop.  The burgers and ice cream were very tasty especially after our 50 mile day and the climbing we did.  I've learned that the people in Portland are foodies and value restaurants that use fresh ingredients (preferably grown locally if it is logistically possible), and take pride in making food that tastes good, not how fast the food is made.