Wind, rain, hail, chip seal, cold

And with that slew of 4 letter words we were welcomed to the first day of Spring!
A friend called and wanted to ride today and I hardly ever pass up a chance to ride. Erinn suggested we ride the Snoozeville Populaire route that she was unable to ride last week. I had a meeting in Salem and didn't get back until almost 12:30 so we had a bit of a late start. The weather that started out decent had been deteriorating. By the time we were on the road there were some showers playing around the hills and we had a pretty stiff south breeze blowing as a crosswind as we pedaled west. By the time we turned up into the Mountaindale canyon we were getting some pretty cold rain from time to time. The wind was at our backs at this point and it made that "invisible hill" a little easier than normal. We arrived at Snooseville (big metropolis that it is!) and took a short breather and talked bikes. We remounted the bikes and headed back downhill ...and into the wind! We kept up a brisk pace so we kept warm but the drops hitting the cheeks felt like BB's! During one of the heavier showers we pulled off under a big fir tree and used it as an umbrella. A couple of llamas checked out the funny creatures in spandex with two legs and wheels. I'm not sure who was funnier looking, us or them!


We kept on the Populaire route until we arrived in the town of Banks, then with one eye on the increasing rain showers and the other on the clock we decided that the western end of the loop could wait for another day. We set our sights on a 50 mile ride at that point.

We worked our way back through the little burg of Roy and then did our best to stay off the busier roads because we were getting into rush hour traffic. We did a pretty good job of that only having to ride less than a mile on each of Cornelius-Schefflin Rd and Glencoe Rd, the two busy roads in our way.

We came pretty close to our 50 mile goal with just under 49 miles. Erinn said that was close enough!

She is a good smooth and strong rider. Triathletes get that way. :-)



I have ridden with Erinn twice before, both times last year as I was still recuperating from the car collision issue. She buried me badly on the climb up to Vista House from the east, then a month or so later left me in her dust on the Monster Cookie Metric Century. I got a chance for redemption today. I held my own and then some. ;-) The miles must be doing me some good.

Still planning on riding from Hood River to The Dalles and back this Saturday. Dry side of the Cascades, it should be a good ride. If you want to join us be ready to ride from the Hood River Post Office (2149 Cascade Ave) at 9AM Saturday. There is plenty of on street parking in the area as well as a public parking lot.

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...............Road Bike.....LifeCycle.....Total Miles
Today...........49................0
Jan total.......98.....+........402....=..........500
Feb total.....385.....+.......220....=..........605
YTD............928.....+........663....=........1591

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