Wilsonville Century, official ride

Today was Easter, and what better way to pay homage than to be out riding! The weather was predicted to be less than optimal, winds to 15mph and an 80% chance of rain, with 1/2 inch accumulation likely.

5 Folks had said they were going to ride today, last night one canceled out. This morning 4 brave souls gathered in Wilsonville to begin our ride. The rain was falling moderately with a brisk south wind.

We pedaled out Advance Rd then turned into the wind on Mountain Rd and rode to the Canby Ferry.



At ten miles into our ride at the convenience store at Lone Elder two decided that today wasn't going to be as much fun as they had hoped and bailed on us.

Kris said she still wanted to ride and I always like to ride so we said our goodbye's to our riding compadres and pedaled on towards our goal of a full century.

It was a slower pace than Dave and I rode on Friday, but with the headwind it was just fine. The rain quit by the time we reached Union Mills and with the wind the road dried quickly. Before long we arrived 25 miles in at the town of Molalla. We grabbed some snacks and took the opportunity to talk some smack about those who bailed out on the ride. ;-)



The first half of this ride has some climbing and it begins with some gentle uphill riding on Wilhoit Rd. As we turned right on Bird Rd the climbing became more serious. Kris had failed to ride this the last time she tried it. This year she has been more serious about riding and the work has paid off, she pedaled all the way up!

We had a bit more directly into the wind riding as we turned towards Silverton.


From Silverton to Keizer we had a very stiff cross wind. The gusts made it very hard to hold a line as we were blown around several feet from side to side.
At Keizer, just over 50 miles in, we took a pretty long break and had some V8 juice, refilled our water, and snacked on some of our supplies we had been carrying.

From Keizer on we had good stretches of a very brisk tailwind. We found the wind to be right near 20 mph. That made for some very fast riding. As we pedaled along Matheny Rd it began to rain lightly. By the time we got within a few miles of Champoeg Park the rain began falling very hard and we had turned with the wind now to our side. We both were finally getting wet, but were warm so all was reasonably well. Sunshine and 65 might have been nicer, but I've been riding in worse weather, and today was nicer than predicted.

As we reached I-5 we noted that it was very slow with very heavy traffic. We have to ride on the shoulder of the freeway for .7 mile (to get across the Willamette River) and with the strong tailwind and mostly downhill run we were passing the cars!

We took the turn into Wilsonville and made our way to our finishing point. Literally within 30 seconds of pulling into the parking lot it began raining HARD and even turned to hail for a bit. It was good to be finished.

Kris was very happy to have reached her goal of a century in mid April.

(102.97 miles--click on photo to enlarge)

It was nice to have her company today.



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
...............Road Bike.....LifeCycle.....Total Miles
Today...........103...............0................103
Jan total.......501.....+.........30.......=.......531
Feb total.......614.....+.........0........=.......614
March total.....860.....+.........0........=.......860
April total.....369.....+.........0........=.......369
Year to date...2379.....+.........30.......=......2409
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++