Yesterday, Sunday I set off on a ride, a ride which I thought was going to be normal. Team Beer, Ironclad and myself wearing Yakima kit, met up front of the PSU library, the destination : Multnomah Falls 75mile round trip. Sounds like a nice ride init ? - read on...
Multnomah Falls - on a nice day! 36miles east of PortlandWhile we were meeting at the library- we recruited some PSU riders, so the group was pretty big. We all rolled out on the beginning of a nice day. Temps were reasonable (42f /6 celcius), it looked dry, as we got further out of the city center the wind started picking up, by the time we were on the historic highway the winds were well over 20mph and I would say gusting to 40mph, this makes a 10mile gradual uphill climb up to Crown point pretty difficult with all the energy being sucked from you resulting in a slower net speed. In fairly minimal riding gear the high winds only served to reduce body temperature and energy. As we got to Crown Point, the highest point of the ride, the winds were so bad, I was actually scared of being blown off my bike, several times on the decent, you would enter a corner, hit a wall of wind that would slow you from 30 to about 15mph!
Crown Point, note this was taken on a nice day, not the thundermomma day that we were there.After bombing the decent from Crown Point we got to the Falls, admittedly a bit cold. Stopping for a few mins, warming up and headed back towards Portland. A nice climb ahead of us, which George from Team Beer absolutely destroyed, we regrouped at the top of the climb, to the West all we could see was darkness - dark dark rain clouds.
By now the temps had dropped a tad and yes a sea of rain awaited us, sure enough in the next few minutes it started raining heavy, this combined with a low temp made the rain heavy and cold. Dressed for a dryish day, 30 miles to home.. no fenders very very wet and cold...
a nice view from Crown Point, i'm sure someone has a shitty view, like the one we saw.At this point in the ride, I found my mind drifting off, maybe it was trying to lock out the numbness that my body was going through, it was sort of strange and scary, in the kind of "am I going to get pneumonia" scary.
75miles later Team Beer, Yakima and Ironclad rolled into Portland. Well done chaps. Epic.
I later got word from the PSU guys that they got back ok, they had a few flats and eventually got a car ride home from Troutdale.
3 comments:
Fuck yeah. Sounds like fun in that SnM kind of a way. The mtb race looked to be the same weather but it cleared for the race like some kind of sign from god. The gorge looked horrible when we drove through though. Nice work.
D-bag
I think it was when I was being blown up hill while descending towards Multnomah Fall that I said to myself, " I'm content descending at 5mph, as long as it means not being blown into oncoming traffic ".
A very comical ride
Danny, who was the PSU guy? that worked with me on the hill climb, then blew up. I wanted to let him know that we were close to having George beat with a little more digging and working together....almost. george gawd bless him..
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