Kah-nee-ta, OR. Wednesday June 22, 2005:
As days go, I am not sure that this one could have been more up and down.
I was pretty beat after yesterday’s ride – as you may have learned from dad’s blog yesterday, our route was pretty much flat for the first 40 miles, then the last 20 were painfully uphill. I started to question my ability to ride on an everyday basis over those last 20 miles, but I realized that I must ignore those negative thoughts and just push on.
Waking up this morning was hard. I didn’t sleep all that well and I found that my legs were aching unmercifully. To add to the pains in my body, we got outside and found that it was pissing rain in the mountains. The highlight of the morning was breakfast. Though we had to travel down the road to a bar/grill for food, it was a good spread with bacon and eggs and pancakes and overweight guys smoking cigarettes at the bar. One of the guys that was serving us was originally from Marlboro, MD, and we bonded on our east coast roots.
For the second day in a row dad and I were the last ones to leave camp. We put on our bright yellow rain jackets, arm and leg warmers, and started pedaling. The temperature in Welches, Oregon when we left was probably somewhere in the high 50s, but the rain made it feel much colder. Our initial climb out of Welches called for us to go up something like 2,500 feet over the first 13 miles. I was not too happy to be doing that at all, I was cold, tired, and in a great deal of pain because of my knee (which has been acting up at the beginning of the rides so far).
It took us around two hours to climb those thirteen miles, but a rest stop was intelligently placed at the top of the mountain. It was cold (officially 45 degrees) and rainy there, but it gave us a chance to reflect on the ride so far. Dad said that the views of the Cascade Mountains made the climb worth it; I disagreed. When our ride leader, Mike, asked us how we liked the climb I responded with an emphatic, “it sucked.” Mike said in response to me, “Youth is wasted on the young.”
Leaving the rest stop I had little hope that I was going to be able to continue riding for the next fifty miles – but once again we ignored all of our rational instincts and got back on our bikes and rode.
I don’t know why I was surprised to start going down the other side of the mountain, but I was. I honestly thought that it would never come. The ride started to become fun as we were flying down the road – the skies were clearing up, the temperature was rising as we descended into the desert, and the scenery finally revealed itself as jaw-droppingly beautiful. On the way down we saw a turkey buzzard eating a dead deer with a hawk also looking over (I don’t know how to fit that into a paragraph in an articulate way).
The rest of the ride was essentially downhill and we had a tailwind that really pushed us for the last 20 miles. We stopped to take pictures every now and again when we felt so compelled, but only in-between the awesome descents that we had going into Kah-nee-ta. It turns out that the place that we are staying here is an Indian casino/resort that reminds me of some kind of paradise. There are rolling desert hills all around us and a hot springs pool below us (an amenity that we immediately took advantage of).
After sitting in the sun by the pool for a couple hours we came back to the room and prepared for dinner (while watching baseball which starts in the afternoon because of the time difference, yeah!). Our America By Bike group ate dinner like a bunch of animals, and it is becoming clear that feeding frenzies like that are going to be more like the norm than they are the exception. We just get so hungry!
Okay, I am tired, dad is tired, and we really need to start taking care of ourselves in preparation for our 117 mile day on Friday.
Rock and roll America. Paul.
I was pretty beat after yesterday’s ride – as you may have learned from dad’s blog yesterday, our route was pretty much flat for the first 40 miles, then the last 20 were painfully uphill. I started to question my ability to ride on an everyday basis over those last 20 miles, but I realized that I must ignore those negative thoughts and just push on.
Waking up this morning was hard. I didn’t sleep all that well and I found that my legs were aching unmercifully. To add to the pains in my body, we got outside and found that it was pissing rain in the mountains. The highlight of the morning was breakfast. Though we had to travel down the road to a bar/grill for food, it was a good spread with bacon and eggs and pancakes and overweight guys smoking cigarettes at the bar. One of the guys that was serving us was originally from Marlboro, MD, and we bonded on our east coast roots.
For the second day in a row dad and I were the last ones to leave camp. We put on our bright yellow rain jackets, arm and leg warmers, and started pedaling. The temperature in Welches, Oregon when we left was probably somewhere in the high 50s, but the rain made it feel much colder. Our initial climb out of Welches called for us to go up something like 2,500 feet over the first 13 miles. I was not too happy to be doing that at all, I was cold, tired, and in a great deal of pain because of my knee (which has been acting up at the beginning of the rides so far).
It took us around two hours to climb those thirteen miles, but a rest stop was intelligently placed at the top of the mountain. It was cold (officially 45 degrees) and rainy there, but it gave us a chance to reflect on the ride so far. Dad said that the views of the Cascade Mountains made the climb worth it; I disagreed. When our ride leader, Mike, asked us how we liked the climb I responded with an emphatic, “it sucked.” Mike said in response to me, “Youth is wasted on the young.”
Leaving the rest stop I had little hope that I was going to be able to continue riding for the next fifty miles – but once again we ignored all of our rational instincts and got back on our bikes and rode.
I don’t know why I was surprised to start going down the other side of the mountain, but I was. I honestly thought that it would never come. The ride started to become fun as we were flying down the road – the skies were clearing up, the temperature was rising as we descended into the desert, and the scenery finally revealed itself as jaw-droppingly beautiful. On the way down we saw a turkey buzzard eating a dead deer with a hawk also looking over (I don’t know how to fit that into a paragraph in an articulate way).
The rest of the ride was essentially downhill and we had a tailwind that really pushed us for the last 20 miles. We stopped to take pictures every now and again when we felt so compelled, but only in-between the awesome descents that we had going into Kah-nee-ta. It turns out that the place that we are staying here is an Indian casino/resort that reminds me of some kind of paradise. There are rolling desert hills all around us and a hot springs pool below us (an amenity that we immediately took advantage of).
After sitting in the sun by the pool for a couple hours we came back to the room and prepared for dinner (while watching baseball which starts in the afternoon because of the time difference, yeah!). Our America By Bike group ate dinner like a bunch of animals, and it is becoming clear that feeding frenzies like that are going to be more like the norm than they are the exception. We just get so hungry!
Okay, I am tired, dad is tired, and we really need to start taking care of ourselves in preparation for our 117 mile day on Friday.
Rock and roll America. Paul.
posted by Len Burman at 3:27 PM
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