Day 70: The Winepisode

Terry was up before the rest of us, as always, tiptoeing carefully around the bodies still asleep on the Bikehouse floor. He rode out alone while the rest of us took a properly lazy morning with the radio on, no rush at all — the whole day would only run to sixty-two miles, nudging the total toward 3,958, so there was time to spare. When we finally caught up to the next town, Dayville, we found Siemen, who’d stayed there the previous night and now openly regretted not sticking with us at the Bikehouse instead.

Morning at the Bikehouse Inn

We rode into a canyon and up into the day’s main climb, the road winding through some of the most striking Oregon landscape yet. Halfway up we rested on rocks under a stand of trees and somehow ended up on the subject of snake bites — Jessica, it turned out, carried a proper kit for them. What we really needed was Terry, who I was fairly sure knew everything about everything, snake bites very much included. I enjoyed the climbing as much as ever, looking forward to Mitchell that evening, home to a town bear rescued as a cub and given a purpose-built enclosure of his own.

Wim armed with a Bike pump.

Defeating the final climb.

Mitchell, when we finally rolled in expecting stores and restaurants, turned out to be closer to a ghost town — every single building shuttered, closed signs everywhere you looked. Even Henry the bear was nowhere to be found, his purpose-built home standing empty.

Henry the bear was not home, disappointed.

We found Terry at the one place in town that was open, out on the deck talking with strangers. The town had boomed once, we learned, back when logging was still the industry, and had gone bust the day it wasn’t. The bartender had his own theory, blaming “left-wing liberals from western Oregon” for the whole decline. Also in town, heading the opposite direction from us, was a small group of cyclists who turned out to be winemakers from Napa Valley, hauling over two hundred bottles of their own wine in a support van behind them.

I ordered the Nealeigh Burger, named for the biggest man in town, and demolished it in a way that visibly startled the owner — I’d built something of a reputation among the group by now, not just for the size of what I ordered but for the speed I could clear a plate. The winemakers disappeared and came back with several bottles, then kept the glasses filled long after any of us had a reason to still be sitting there in our bike clothes. We didn’t make it to the city park until well after dark, took an ice-cold dip in the stream running behind it, and skipped the tents entirely. My inflatable pillow had sprung a leak somewhere along the way, so I improvised one out of clothes stuffed into my empty mat sack and called it close enough.

The Nealeigh Burger

Napa Valley winemakers.

Can’t move for free wine!