TransAm Day #64 Corvallis, OR - Grande Ronde, OR
TransAm Day #64
July 30, 2018
Corvallis, OR - Grande Ronde, OR
56 Miles
Ride Time 4:30 Hours
Tour Total Miles 4444
Last night I slept in a queen-sized bed with sheets, blankets, and a real pillow in my very own room at Chava’s house. It was a great night’s sleep! This morning Chava made us a fantastic omelette cooked in a Dutch oven, my second Dutch oven meal in three days. She also prepared a fruit salad, and Barbara made a cobbler from berries she had grown in her garden.
Chava and Barbara are both unicyclists and jugglers. Barbara even completed a year of clown college. Chava’s husband Jack is a fellow completist. He's crossing every single lake in Oregon. He’s tackled all the low hanging fruit, and is now doing all the difficult mosquito infested crossings. I wish him well. Chava showed us the boat she was building as well as her nearly completed tea house, where we did yoga poses and hung out. I found some turkey feathers from all the wild turkeys running around her yard. Before we left, Chava read us a passage from her favorite poem, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, by John Keats.
In Corvallis every single street had a bike lane. It was amazing. Corvallis is home to Oregon State University. I rode local roads out of Corvallis before getting on State Route 99W. I was able to take another local road heading into Monmouth to avoid the traffic. In Monmouth we all went to Koyote’s Taco for lunch where I had a Chili Rellenos burrito with chips and salsa. Eileen showed us a diagram she had created that illustrated the hierarchies of civilization. The top level was what I was accustomed to in Brooklyn- a job, an apartment, proper hygiene, and respectability. Lower levels included sleeping outside, pooping outside, talking with your friends about pooping outside and other bodily functions, going for more than four days without taking a bath or changing your clothes. The bottom level was cannibalism and/or eating Mormon crickets off the side of the road. I was called out for having descended down to the second lowest level during the tour.
North out of Monmouth there was a bike trail to to Rickreal. It was a nice path off to the side of the highway. There were signs for air and tools for cyclists, which was pretty progressive. The highway smelled like weed- cannabis, not alfalfa hay. At Rickreal, State Highway 22 was a four-lane highway quasi interstate. There was an eight hundred foot climb, and I could swear I could see the Pacific from the top, but it was probably wishful thinking. When I had been approaching the Rockies and then later the Cascades, I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was the real thing or a mirage.
The closer I got to the coast, the colder it got. I took Yamhill River Road to Fort Hill to avoid busy State Highway 18. I saw numerous billboards advertising attractions on the coast. I got in to Grande Ronde around 7pm, was tired, and just wanted to head to the RV park. My degenerate companions lured me to Spirit Mountain Casino, where they were scheming to win a free room for the night.
Comments
Post a Comment