A recovery ride

I rode hard yesterday, and reasonably hard the day before. Today was a perfect day to take it easy. Carol, a member of my social bike group, called with an invitation to ride "something around 30-40 miles with rolling hills beginning near Hillsboro". There were to be about 4 of us. I got the duty of mapping a route. As we got ready to pedal she started getting calls and it became clear that it would only be Carol and I.


Here's where we rode:

We started from near the intersection of Cornelius Pass Road and Hwy 26 near Hillsboro. We rode north on Cornelius Pass Rd to Rock Creek Blvd then cut through some residential neighborhoods to reach West Union Rd which we rode to it's eastern terminus then began the climb up Thompson Rd.






We eventually reached Skyline and turned left. The views today were great. The snow capped Cascade volcanoes were just beautiful.

(Mt St Helens with the Columbia River in the foreground)

From about 1200 ft elevation we dropped to around 600 ft at Cornelius Pass. I was a bit faster than Carol today and pulled off in a large gravel area at the intersection of Cornelius Pass Rd and Skyline to allow her to catch up. As I was waiting there, about 10ft off the pavement, a black Jeep soft top with a small utility trailer pulled up to me, stopped, and let me have a piece of his mind. Luckily his brain was obviously not very large, so the piece he gave me wasn't too much of a burden. He used his entire vocabulary of 4 letter words in the process of informing me just exactly where I should be riding. I learned my lesson, all I said to him was "have a nice day" with a smile on my face. He responded with "didn't you f#$%ing hear me?" I just smiled. He drove on. The trailer obscured my view of his license plate. I did note that he drove away on the same road we intended to ride. Sure enough, 20-30 minutes later as we rode Skyline near Elliot Rd here comes the same Jeep back towards us. He lays on the horn and crosses the centerline coming towards me in a show of "metal superiority". This time I got his plate number. I called 911 and left a report with the police.

That was the only problem encountered today. The weather was nice, the traffic accommodating, and the company nice. The day was quite peaceful.


We had climbed again after crossing Cornelius Pass and reached nearly 1400 ft elevation when we turned down Moreland Rd, then turned on Dorland Rd, then Shadybrook Rd on our way to North Plains.

In North Plains we turned on West Union Rd and made our way to Jackson School Rd. We turned on Meek Rd, the Sewell Rd, then the fun run on buttery smooth Evergreen back to Imbrie Drive and the end of our ride for the day.

The GPS says we rode 41.07 miles with 3457 ft of climbing.

The slightly slower pace made this a very enjoyable and relaxing ride.


............BIKE............LIFECYCLE.........TOTAL
Today.......41................0.................41
Jan........618...............0................618
Feb........692...............0................692
March......466...............0................466
_________________________________________
TOTAL.....1790...............0...............1790