Oregon Bike Tour Day 2: Ainsworth State Park, Dodson, OR to Hood River, OR

Monday 7/14/2008

After a great night of sleep, thanks to a crapload of biking as well as a dearth of alcoholic beverages, Seth and I made a pact that we wouldn't travel without beer again. My legs were a little sore, but not too bad. There was another part of me that was also sore... a part that made direct contact with the saddle. This was not good; we were only one day into the tour.

I tried not to think of the chafing pain that was situated between... everything. Packed up camp and headed out. Almost immediately we went out onto I-84. Yes, contrary to wisdom and common sense, bicycling on the interstate highways in Oregon is legal (except for certain restricted parts in urban areas). Sure, the 10 foot wide paved shoulders on I-84 were great... but WOW, it's a bit hairy to have cars passing at 80+ mph. And 18-wheelers as well:


As seen in the above video, the shoulder also gets quite narrow in some places (bridges, for example). One thing that I did notice is that the Oregon truck drivers were very courteous - most of them changed to the left lane when possible to pass us. Thank you!

After a very long 2 miles on the interstate, we headed off onto a bike only path. What a nice change! We got the unique opportunity to walk our bikes down a very steep set of stairs. They definitely thought about us bikers as they had a bikewheel groove along the stairs - although, it wasn't easy to get these heavy bikes down. Mental note: do not attempt this route the other direction. Most definitely would not have made it UP these stairs. Here's Seth doing an expert job with the wheel groove:






It wasn't too long after this feat of strength, patience and balance that we hit the small town of Cascade Locks. While looking for a decent place for lunch, we found a supermarket. Supermarkets sell beer. So we bought beer at the supermarket. That's not the only thing we got, though - we got a great tip from a couple of bicyclists who were headed the opposite direction.

You see, we were planning on crossing over to the Washington side here at Cascade Locks and cross back over to Oregon at Hood River (goal being to avoid 10+ miles of riding on I-84). Like so:


View Larger Map

These bicyclists advised us that the bridge at Hood River didn't allow cyclists. So if we did indeed cross to Washington now, we wouldn't be able to cross back to Oregon until The Dalles. Like so:


View Larger Map

Well, we definitely couldn't miss Hood River! After all, it's the outdoor mecca where adults play nice. Thankfully, that NYTimes article was written a good 9 months after our trip; I didn't want to be any more outdoorsy than I already was. The only thing I knew about Hood River was that it's the home of the Full Sail Brewery. Case closed. We definitely could not miss Hood River.

Although our plan was laid out, we still had to eat. In what was perhaps our worst dining choice the whole trip, we ate at this cafeteria style tourist trap called Char Burger:



where the only redeeming quality was the great view of the Bridge of the Gods:


We finally got the hell out of Cascade Locks, and out into some really beautiful roads. We followed Wyeth Bench Road, which has this one tremendous climb. This brings me to Touring Tech Tip #2: Toe overlap can and DOES matter on a geared bike. My pursuit geometry track bike has tremendous toe overlap and I'm accustomed to dealing with it (e.g., timing my turns or skipping to get the pedals in position). When riding freewheel bikes, I've pretty much ignored it - there are many easy ways out of it like coasting or backpedaling.

But I almost killed myself while climbing this hill. I was in my lowest gear climbing at around 3 mph. It was getting pretty tiring, so I decided to do a little weaving on the empty road. At this low speed, it's very easy to turn the wheel enough to engage the toe to overlap into my front fender. That's exactly what happened, but the regular remedies weren't feasible - if I stopped pedaling with this weight on this grade for even just a second, I would stop moving. Luckily, I got out of the bad situation and started using my expert pedal timing to make these weaving turns.

In reality, I suppose I couldn't have gotten too hurt. Probably a zero mph fallover at worst. But after the incident, I couldn't stop thinking what it'd be like to really pedal through the overlap on the loaded bike. On a light track bike, you'd likely do an endo and go over the bars. On the heavy loaded touring bike, would you simply shatter your foot? The bike probably wouldn't budge.

Hit my max speed of 38 mph blasting down the other side. Here's Seth on Bench Wyeth Road after it flattens out:



Part 2 of day 2 to come in a following post.