Day 71: Its Called A Rideover

Some heads were sorer than others that morning — Jessica nursing a proper hangover, while I’d simply slept with my head against concrete after the pillow finally gave up the ghost the night before. We rode just out of town to the only breakfast option around, run entirely by one woman who was very obviously drowning under the demands of maybe eight customers. She asked us, with real exasperation, to tell any cyclists we passed not to bother stopping, because she couldn’t cope with any more of us. Then, unprompted, she launched into a rant about how the government punished anyone for earning too much, which was exactly why she had no intention of working any harder than she already did.

Asleep on the floor without a pillow.

Not cyclist friendly.

Out on the road we rode through fossil beds and canyons — Oregon seems determined to cram every landscape it owns into one state, California-style. One big climb was on the agenda, same as most days by now, so I put on some Simon & Garfunkel and spun happily up the mountain. For one thrilling second I was sure I’d spotted a bear, a dark shape working its way through the trees on four legs. It was a cow.

Still going, but I enjoy climbs remember.

The descent dropped us back into the valley for an all-you-can-eat salad and soup bar, and a few bowls in I felt entirely restored — more than most of the others, who were still nursing the previous night’s free wine. Forty miles to Sisters looked too much for Terry, who wanted library time instead, so Wim, Jessica and I peeled off toward Redmond on our own. Riding hungover, I decided, deserved its own word: a Rideover. Siemen had made up his mind he was reaching Sisters that day regardless and pressed on ahead of us as storm clouds gathered and lightning began cracking against the distant mountainsides. By day’s end we’d covered seventy careful miles, enough to push the running total past four thousand for the trip — a milestone none of us thought to mention out loud.

We took a room at the Village Squire Inn, a shabby little place we settled on mainly because none of us felt like shopping around town for anything better. Terry rolled in eventually, and between us we did laundry, found dinner, and got to talking about the days ahead. There’s no real rush to the coast when you’ve got time to spare, but it’s close enough now — properly, tangibly close — that all of us are getting restless for it. So instead of stretching the last stretch over three easy days, we settled on two: a hundred and fifteen miles to Eugene tomorrow, then eighty-five more to the water itself.