Rickreall Recon Ride

"I've been in hairier pickles than this!" - J.B.

There are any number of things I would rather do at 7 A.M. on a Sunday than getting up and packing the car with a bike and gear. Sleeping, number one. Followed by a leisurely breakfast, the New Yorker, and lots of coffee. I am, at heart, a lazy person. But I've discovered, by accidents and turns, and fits and starts, that riding a bicycle helps keep my head on the level. It's a revelation that I constantly forget and must rediscover. Having friends that share my interest in bikes certainly helps. Because, without the ignominy that comes from breaking a riding date with some feeble excuse, I most certainly would have picked the sleeping/New Yorker/coffee option.

So it was that I got the bike onto the car and drove down to the coffee shop. For a leisurely summer Sunday ride, a 10 A.M. start would have been acceptable. But January days are short and so we gathered at 8 A.M. to launch what may go down as one of the more interesting rides of the year. With me were India and Ryan, Cristina, and Jason, the brains behind this particular mission. He wanted to scout out the route for an upcoming gravel grinder.

I filled-up on coffee and purchased two bagel sandwiches (one for now, one for later). We drove down to Rickreall, OR, west of Salem. We briefly greeted Jason's friend, got dressed, and readied the bikes. This is when I realized that I had forgotten my bike shorts. I decided that tights would be sufficient (after all, we only had an "easy" 50 miles planned). Barely a mile into the ride, I realized that I had left my outer gloves at the car. Not wanting to make everyone wait for me to double-back, I decided that I could just tough it out. A mile or two later, I begged an extra pair off of Jason.

Frosty!

  The backroads out in the rolling farm country were hard-packed dirt and gravel. But it was so cold that they felt more like pavement, with occasional washboards. Soon we crossed the highway and headed into the forest and the hills proper. The climbs were punchy enough and I alternatively stair-stepped and walked my single-speed up the hills. Though Jason had warned us that we might be turned-back by snow we only ever saw a thin layer of snow. At the upper reaches of our route, though, an interesting crystalline ice structure covered the road, in a thickness of several inches. The bikes instantly punched through to the road and the ruts bounced the wheels around, making control difficult.

We had been in a fine mood on the way up: taking pictures and joking. Ryan had taken a particular interest in busting through the ice-covered puddles. Even the climbs did little to dampen our enthusiasm, we just grinned and laughed at how a lazy holiday season had de-tuned our bodies.

Then, as we got nearer to the road that would take us into Falls City and the twenty-mile road ride back to the cars, Cristina's pedal fell off. Her crank arm was stripped-out and, although Ryan tried to get a little bite out of the wasted threads in the crank, it was useless. Now Cristina had one pedal and we were still a good distance from the finish. Even so, things did not seem so terrible. It was reckoned to be three or four miles to Falls City, all downhill. Cristina would find a warm spot in Falls City, we would ride to the cars, drive back to Cristina, and we would all celebrate with a post-ride beer, no problem.

Then it started to appear as if the main through-road that we were on was heading higher into the mountains, becoming more narrow and more brush-laden, and generally not being very through-roady. We backtracked to recent intersections where we may have made the wrong turn but none of the alternatives looked promising.

If you look at a map of logging roads in hilly country, it looks a bit like the human vascular system. Main arteries flow through, following the contours of the hills, and the veins of cut-offs and spur roads snake from the arteries, meander their own way for yards or miles, until they are swallowed by the forest. Getting through such territory requires staying on the main road and, even then, sometimes there is just no way to make a route "go". But it had all looked very simple on the map, Jason's friend back at the farm had ridden the route more than once, and the intersections all seemed to be well-marked with Forest Service road numbers. Yet, somehow, we had managed to dead-end ourselves.

Backtracking our route was a straight-forward matter. We just hadn't wanted to do it because the prospect of a town with hot coffee just a few miles out sounded much better than riding the same route the 25 miles back to base, one of us doing this one-legged. However, it was now 2 o'clock. We had three hours until dark and none of us were getting any warmer. So it was quickly decided that Ryan, India, and Jason would ride back to the cars and Cristina and I would head for Dallas, OR. where they would pick us up. It didn't make for the perfect Sunday ride but it seemed like the best plan, under the circumstances.

So we set off and the others quickly disappeared from sight. Most of my rides seem to quickly settle into some kind of mental turmoil, where I'm wondering how far I have left to go, how many hills remain to be climbed, how hard can I push myself, and why the hell I am out here anyway. Yet, somehow, I end up enjoying it. At the very least, I do enjoy finishing and eating a giant cheeseburger with no guilt whatsoever. Anyway. On this particular ride, though I had to concentrate on keeping myself warm, there was very little to think or worry about. I could go only as fast as one-legged Cristina (which was still, actually, a pretty sporting pace) and I knew that, sooner or later, we would get to Dallas. 

Though it had seemed like a steady climb on the way out, there were plenty of little inclines and rollers that Cristina had to one-legged hammer over. Or just walk. And everytime she walked her cleat gummed-up with gravel and mud. And the descents weren't really that easy for her, either. Normally, on a bumpy descent, you raise yourself above your seat, standing on the pedals and using your legs as shock-absorbers. This is not very much possible with one pedal. I attempted one-pedal climbing and descending for a couple minutes, out of sympathy. It was even more difficult and awkward than it looks. It shouldn't surprise anyone that knows her, but Cristina was game for all of it. I think that I might have caught her with a slight grimace, just once. But she was nearly all jokes and smiles the whole 15 miles back to town.

It never was a life-and-death situation. Or even life-and-limb. The worst possibility seemed to be that we would be hiking out of the woods under the light of Cristina's headlamp. But it was about as intense as a lazy Sunday ride should ever get and we were ecstatic to spot the outskirts of Dallas. We stopped at the first establishment we reached, a Taco Bell, and never did a quasi-chicken cheese quesadilla taste so good. We got coffee from the nearby mini-mart and waited for the cavalry to arrive.

On the drive home, again safe and warm and with sensation returning to our outer extremities, we laughed and told stories of the most ridiculous parts of the day. We were satisfied that we picked the right group of peers to get lost in the January woods with. Nobody panicked or set upon one another or withdrew into pain and resentment. We talked things over, figured the best course of action, and remained positive. You can get closer to relatively new acquaintances by getting lost in the woods with them a time or two than you ever will to the buddy you meet for a beer on a weekly basis.

Our group did not get to meet up for the post-ride beer, sadly. We were all exhausted and eager to get into our own comfort zones. Mine started with a cold tallboy of Pabst while taking the hottest shower that my tingling flesh could endure.

Mileage: 47.6
Elevation: 2,795

Punchy.