Oregon Gravel Epic Fail

The gloomiest/wettest/coldest spring in my four years in the PNW continues. Although it's been a week since the trip down to Oregon with some fantastically sunny/dry/warm-ish days in between, I'm currently sitting here listening to the sound of raindrops pattering against my living room window while I type this. 

I'll warn you now that there aren't that many photos of the ride itself. Constant driving rain has a way of encouraging me to keep my camera safely stowed away, especially when the roads are loose and bumpy. The Oregon Gravel Epic has been on the plans for the better part of a year and was meant to be one of the highlight rides of this season. With that in mind, you'd think that somebody that plans as meticulously as I do and has as much clothing for various conditions would be prepared for pretty much anything Mother Nature threw at us, but we'd both be mistaken. I was a victim of my own over-confidence in the forecast for shorts weather. Don't be like me; pack EVERYTHING.

ALL. THE. CLOTHES.

We woke up on Saturday morning to strong coastal winds, and though it was overcast and dry. That lasted for all of about 30 minutes or so because as soon as we left paved roads and hit the first dirt section, the sky sprung a leak and continued to empty itself for the entire morning. Long story short, Alex and I bailed out at the first aid station and took the option to do the short course instead of the full monty. When the organizer tells you that first aid will be at least an hour away if things go sideways and you're soaked to the bone with not enough foul weather gear, common sense and self-preservation should probably triumph over ego. It's a shame because despite the wet spring hampering my ability to get regular training in, my body felt fine and wouldn't have struggled with the terrain or ride profile at all. I had a handlebar bag full of om nom nom and with three total aid stations, it wouldn't have been a problem keeping up with caloric intake. There's always next year.

The good news is that we had plenty of fun off the bike hanging out with Alex's college roommate and his family and running into the usual spots in Portland. One of the highlights was Alex running into a former riding buddy who knows the owner of VeloCult and getting to venture down into the basement. If you've been there and seen the stuff that's hanging in the rafters on the main level, just imagine the cool shit that's packed away downstairs.

Fashionable People Doing Questionable Things

Rarely has a song been more appropriate.

How do I even begin to do justice in my description of the anarchy that is Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships? After missing out on the opportunity to witness the 2015 iteration in Victoria, I knew I had to make the pilgrimage down to see this year's quote-unquote race at Kruger Farms in Portland.

Qualifiers were held on Saturday morning, but seemed to lack the feats of strength competition. I had no idea what was going on. Potato sack racing was apparently involved, but I got too distracted by the dual slalom course and the dude paddling around in a canoe in the flooded section of the field. I was able to catch a few people sending it off the jumps at the end of the slalom, but had arrived a little late to the party so things had mostly wound down.

As my friends and I were leaving the course, we spied a familiar face walking by with one of the riders from the American Trek Factory Racing team. Having been without data since crossing the border and really shitty/spotty wifi at our AirBNB when we finally arrived at close to midnight, I hadn't seen any of the social media coverage of Friday night's package pickup/party at this point. Could it be who we thought it was?

"Sven?" I questioned as he walked past. He looked up in acknowledgement and continued on, debriefing the Trek rider. Yep, definitely Sven. I asked a buddy who had come down from Vancouver to race if he knew what was going on and was told Sven had ridden qualifiers earlier. Interesting...

Fast forward to Sunday morning and after a decent rain overnight, the course had been moistened to a state that everybody knew would only get worse after the three PDX Trophy Cup races for those who'd brought geared bikes and the loser's race for everybody who'd failed to qualify for the championships, just in time for the main events.

I'll say it again: this race was total sensory overload for me as a first time spectator; I can't imagine what it would be like to be in the race itself. Let's see if I can rattle off all the ridiculousness:

  • Le Mans start (with a twist!)
  • Mud ranging in consistency from chocolate pudding to peanut butter, mixed with grass, leading to chain retention issues even for some of the proper SS setups.
  • The aforementioned dual slalom course
  • Optional take-off ramp into the pond
  • More mud.
  • Exercise-ball-pit of doom
  • Smoke grenades/machines
  • Snow machine
  • Foam
  • Smashed pumpkins
  • Ginormous water balloon slingshots fashioned from Yakima car racks
  • A drum line
  • Stripper bus shortcut with both male and female strippers.
  • Heavy metal Hodala corner
  • Copious amounts of free-flowing booze of every kind

There was so much going on and I feel like I spent all of my time running around trying to decide whether to sit back and soak in the atmosphere or try to capture it. Looking back now, it feels like I failed to do either to my full potential. Honestly, even if I had a dozen cameras on remote and maybe a drone, I'm still not sure I'd be able to do this event justice. If you're after a more comprehensive report, Anne-Marie Rook and Adam Kachman have done the best job I've seen so far of hitting all of the event's important parts on Ella.

Some random thoughts:

  • The Le Mans start was cool, but the organizers threw a wrench in everybody's plans by randomly hiding and relocating competitors' bikes. I get that this isn't a traditional race and that hijinx are to be expected, but felt that the random nature of this took a bit away from the competition. Maybe I just don't get the spirit of it and I'm guessing that there are only a handful of racers in each category who are for-serious racing for the win, but it would suck to have your race blown right after the gun goes off because it takes you a few precious moments to locate your trusty steed while your competition rolls away.
  • Somebody actually tried cheating in the men's championship race by hiding in the corn field while the rest of the group went back to the staging area to wait for the official start, but this story has a happy ending: two bad-ass ladies laid him the fuck out by tackling him mid-run while he was looking for his bike. Karma is a bitch.
  • The ball pit did not unfold the way I thought it would. I thought that racers would have to drop in and then simply wade through a muddy pit, but neglected to take into account what a few hours of day-drinking would do to the crowd. Remember the rubber dodge balls of olde (as opposed to the foam ones schools are now forced to use)? Now scale those balls up a few hundred percent and put them in the hands and/or feet of a bunch of drunken hooligans. It started off harmlessly enough early in the day, but became much more violent as peoples' BAC went up. See photo of Adam Craig tackling a spectator who got too enthusiastic in his kick ball game and took things a little too far.
  • I am sad that it's all the way in Verona, Italy next year :-(

 

Anyway, without further ado, here's the gallery. Photos will open in a lightbox if you click on them.

One last hurrah for summer

I don't exactly remember when my first trip to Portland was after I moved to the PNW, but I do remember hearing my friends and co-workers hype it up after I had settled into life here and began looking for adventures. My cycling buddies loved it for its bike-friendliness. My non-cycling friends loved it because of the food, drink, and tax-free shopping.

Since that first trip, I've tried to return at least once every year. In the past, I've tried to time the visit to coincide with various shop garage sales, but there didn't seem to be one happening this year. I've also wanted to visit the famous beach(es) of the Oregon Coast and see some big-ass rocks.

After roping Tobin in, finding a sweet AirBnB, loading up two bikes into the back of my tiny Civic (without a rack), off we went after work on Thursday evening. I'd given him plenty of grief for traveling on a long weekend across the border without a Nexus pass, but I was actually the one who came this close to screwing up the trip before it had even begun: we were sitting in line at the border crossing talking about something or other related to travel documents and as I'm opening my passport to the photo page in preparation to present to the agent, I notice that my passport expired back in April. Merde. I'd actually considered not bringing my Nexus card considering that I wasn't going to be able to use the dedicated lane, but am glad I brought it along anyway.

Once through the border, we made our obligatory stop at Aslan Brewing in Bellingham for dinner and then continued the long drive down the I-5. There aren't too many exciting details here as we arrived in Seaside, OR around midnight, checked into our motel, and promptly hit the sack. We were greeted by a nice salty mist in the morning, a far cry from the sunny weather that had been forecasted. After rolling down the boardwalk to get some mediocre coffee, we decided to hit the road and make our way to our planned destination: Canon Beach.

Sure, there are beaches in Vancouver. There's even a cool rock, but it's not really that big. And there's only one. Maybe it was vacation placebo effect, but the sand felt "beachier" there. The views of the coast coming in and out of view as the lighting shifted with the clouds and the mist was spectacular. The ground was firm enough closer to the water that we were able to ride along. We resisted challenging tourists to "beach crits." Sure, the combination of salt water and sand probably wasn't ideal for two guys riding steel bikes, but whatever. Prudence be damned. Sometimes you just want to act like a kid again and go splash in the water. Totally worth it.

Our original plan was to stay in Canon Beach until dark, light a bonfire, make smores, sip bourbon, stargaze, and sing Kumbaya, but decided we'd rather get a head start on the drive to Portland so we wouldn't have to do it in the dark. We didn't have a firm itinerary for the weekend aside from two planned rides, the first of which was the Forest Park / Skyline Loop. If the Seymour Demo Forest road had a ménage-à-trois with the climb from Mulgrave School to First Lookout and any of the trails in Stanley Park, this is what you'd end up with: 5.5km of relatively packed down dirt and gravel climbing upward at an average gradient of about 5% with absolutely no vehicular traffic allowed. A little slice of heaven just outside the city limits. From there, the route takes us through rolling rolling rural roads before dropping us back down some nice twisty descents (including tunnels!) back into the heart of town.

Our only other planned outing was to go climb Mount Hood. This part of our trip could have gone...better. My over-zealous planning for an early morning start in order to: a) avoid any vehicular traffic on the drive to the mountain as well as up the climb itself and b) to ensure we still had an afternoon to spend in town meant setting the alarm for 6AM and getting to the base at 8AM. Avoiding traffic on the climb was actually a moot point since we'd planned on ascending a Old Leg Road (a service road used for the OBRA uphill TT Championships) instead of the Timberline Highway route. What we didn't account for were the temperatures associated with a starting elevation of 1,379m. The plus side is that I was greeted by a perfect combination of misty roads punctuated by golden hour light, resulting in one of my favourite things: #angelboners. Instead of risking hypothermia, we ended up driving up the highway route and parking at Timberline Lodge, descending a good chunk of Old Leg Road and then climbing back up. It wasn't quite what we had in mind, but probably better for, you know, not dying.

Finally, I leave you with this collection of random images from the trip that didn't quite fit into their own galleries, but can roughly be divided into some distinct categories:

  • Tobin using Google Maps.
  • Tobin drinking things.
  • Coffee.
  • A rather inadequate collection of #baaw
  • Our AirBnb hosts' cat: Apollo.