Day 4 of #30daysofbiking, WOU to Wilsonville

Joe T planned to drop a vehicle off for his daughter at Western Oregon University in Monmouth, then ride back. He invited me to join him. I rode around a bit while waiting for our rendezvous and found that 3 laps around the Fry's parking lot makes 1 mile. ;-)

Joe arrived and we hauled bikes to Monmouth then began pedaling back via our "western option" that brought us up through Amity and Dayton. It was raining yesterday and through the night, but turned out pretty decent this morning. We had a gentle tailwind. Life was good.

I had allowed ridewithgps.com to map our route and was surprised when we got to Dayton and bypassed my usual left turn and instead went straight ahead (past a "no outlet" sign). We arrived at a pedestrian bridge over the Yamhill River that I did not know existed.

Joe T photo

As we exited the bridge it started looking a bit dicey. Grass and mud met us initially for the first 30 feet or so, then we got on a dirt road with some gravel. We followed that for about 100 feet then it turned to very rough asphalt. We picked our way through that for a mile or so. Finally that road was turning away from where we needed to go, my Garmin mapped us straight ahead despite the fact that the road did not go that way. No problem, Joe and I practiced cyclocross skills and got back on route.

Joe T photo

From that point on it was just a pedal. We kept up a pretty good pace, assisted at times by a tailwind.
We were on busier roads during much of this ride but didn't have too much trouble. We arrived back in Wilsonville and stopped for teriyaki. I guided Joe to a road that would get him easily to Oregon City so he could cross the Willamette River. From there he'd continue back to his home in eastern Multnomah County. As for me, I was done!

Despite the forecast, it was a great day to be on the bike!
Day 4 of #30daysofbiking

Thanks Joe!

............road bike..........rollers........mtb.........lifecycle....total
Today.........60................0..............0...............0............60
Jan............710................0..............0...............0...........710
Feb........... 578...............0..............0...............0............578
March ...........701.............0..............0...............0............701
April..........132.................0..............0...............0..........132
Total..........2121...............0..............0...............0.........2121