Cycle Oregon 2011 recap

Welcome to Salem!

I am suffering from a loss of words to describe the weekend we had. Simply said, it rained. Most of the time it rained....BUT before it rained there was the sprinkler.

We had just settled into our tent for the evening and within a half hour or so the sprinklers popped on. So at a regular interval, our tent was being watered. Not knowing how long the sprinkler would be one, Tom decided to "fix" the problem and tied a trash bag over the sprinkler head.

AAAAHHH....no more sprinkler.

THEN - it started to rain...not long after the sprinkler incident. It's hard to say how much time went by. The rain was pretty constant throughout the rest of the evening. Into the morning hours.

Oh, if we weren't awake enough...there was the TRAIN.

Lost count of how many trains went by Friday night but we know that it was more than one train.

OYE.

So, yeah...sprinkler, rain and trains...great start to our weekend away from the 'Couve at a Cycle Oregon event.

Morning rolls around and low and behold...it's not raining - much. So we got up, ate breakfast and got ready to ride.

Smiles!

Before we arrived we had decided to ride the mid-distance route of 43-ish miles. It was a pretty nice route, only one steep section mid-way through, that took a whole lot of effort to turn the pedals over and pretty fast finish back to the university. Lunch was at the Oregon Gardens and an ODS rest stop at the Willamette Valley Fruit Company. After we arrived at Willamette University we got cleaned up and hung out until dinner time. There's a coffee shop on campus, so we found ourselves enjoying a cup of coffee and watching the afternoon rain and reading. Dinner was pretty good.

Pork Carnitas, Garden Salad and Mexican rice

After dinner we went decided to rest for a while and then made our way back to the Main Stage. Where we heard the announcements for the evening, saw the bike camp kiddos on their bikes and listened to the musical duo of Stoddard and Cole...a little music and little comedy...good times.

Announcements, announcement...announcements!

We both had better rest on Saturday night - thanks to Tylenol PM! And I think there was only one train that evening, the sprinklers were turned off in our area, but it did start raining again some time a couple of hours after we went to sleep (guessing).

Day 2 wasn't nearly as enjoyable. We went from planning to ride all the way to Champoeg Park (75 miles) to  just to riding to Willamette Mission State Park for lunch (35 miles) to making the final decision at the first rest stop to just do the short route (a whopping 24 miles.) It rained and rained and rained...oh, it was also windy. So, yeah...not so great of a day.

Wet and unhappy.

We got back to Salem and started packing up our stuff into the car and showered. Before we left we made sure to have lunch. We were home by 1:30 Sunday afternoon.

Overall, it was nice to get away from our reality for a couple of nights. The past couple of years were so great - but you just never know what the weather will do, especially this year. We learn to just roll with what comes.

A couple of extra shots for fun...

A field of Daisies!

A much happier Tom on Saturday evening.

A mini tune-up by the one and only - Grand Fromage, Jay Graves of Bike Gallery

Waiting...come on Jay!

Bike Gallery

Okay, so there was a good long time that I just wasn't totally in love with the Bike Gallery. In fact, just to be quite honest, I disliked them quite a bit.

My dislike of this bike shop started way back in 2003 when Tom and I started shopping around for a road bike for me. I had spent the summer riding my mtn bike all over the place and I kept up my end of the deal by riding so many miles by the end of summer. So...I researched entry level road bikes and decide that I want a Trek 1200. Aluminum framed...Tiagra/105 components...aluminum alloy frame...perfect for a newbie dork such as myself. It would be a couple of more years before I would realize my inner bike geekness.

We checked out Bob's Bicycles on Division which is where we bought our Mtn Bikes way back when. Found the Trek that I was interested in and then decided to check out another shop or two and go from there. The other shop was the Bike Gallery on Sandy. After being "helped" by one of the associates and telling them what we were looking for, we started to wait. We waited for quite a while before we decided to hunt down the sales person and ask if they ever found the bike. It appeared that they had not found it and it also appeared that if they couldn't find the bike, then they didn't need to find us again to let us know that they DIDN'T have it at their shop.

Thus began my dislike of the Bike Gallery.

Fast forward to Cycle Oregon 2011.

On Day 1 of CO 2011 I noticed that my rear derailleur wasn't acting quite right and shifting took a little more than on tap on the shifters. It wasn't so much that I couldn't ride, but just enough that it was a little annoying. After awhile I mentioned to Tom that I should probably have my bike looked at and maybe event call Mark A. and see if he would have time to tune-up my Fuji. Now, I was aware that Bike Gallery had several mechanics available during the event and since the road was pretty mucky on Saturday I was pretty sure that I probably should at least have one of the guys lube my chain before we started out on Day 2.

So, I decided to have someone lube my chaing and look at my rear derailleur. May as well, they are available for such situations. So we moseyed over to where the Bike Gallery people were set up and had the Owner/ Grand Fromage himself take a look at my bike - that would be Jay Graves. What a super nice guy!

He started to look at my bike and after a couple of minutes asked if I had any problems riding my bike...um...NOPE. Then he asked if I had any accidents with this bike...NO...not on this bike at least. He appreciated me clarifying that no accidents on the Fuji...he was somewhat amused by that. Then of course, I had to tell him the raccoon story - which entertains all who hear it...

Well, he was a little surprised that I hadn't had more problems with a bent derailleur hanger - which I think may have been bent from day one, which would be why I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. So he got to work and got that fixed to his satisfaction and then went on to lube the chain and checked out the shifting. Still not quite right...so we (me and the bike) got passed off to the other mechanic that was still on site...James.

James manages the Woodstock Bike Gallery and he checked out (inspected) what Jay had done and decided that he had done well...hehe...then after tinkering a little more decided that the cable and cable housing needed replacing. Not a bad idea since I have over 5000 miles on my Fuji and all the cables/housings were original. Turns out there was a kink of some sort in the cable AND there could have been some stuff wedged into the cable housing that would cause the shifters to not work that great.

So, I got a mini tune-up for $12 - They had to have spent at least 30 minutes working on my bike and with shop rates at a minimum of $40 per hour (depending where you go) I got a bargain of a price for a job that would have cost way more.

After a very positive experience, I'm thinking Bike Gallery isn't so bad after all.

Jay Graves working on my bike....James in the background wearing the beanie

2011 Cycle Oregon Weekend

Cycle Oregon Weekend Ride
Salem, Oregon
More to come...

We're Off!

We are going...

Capitol Building
Salem, Oregon

And bringing...

To do this...

We'll be back Sunday! More to come then...

How Does Your Garden Grow?

It's been quite a while since we have grown LOTS of stuff...back when we thought we had more time and energy. Maybe we did have more time...because these days it seems like we are go-go-go...most days.

We got ourselves a real nice garden this year, we must be doing something right!

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