Twilight Zone: Steens Mountain ride

August 2017: The big cross-country solar eclipse is scheduled for Aug. 21, 2017.  My friend and I have been planning "doing the eclipse" for at least 13 years, and now it's almost here.  Because he needs assistance getting around, he decided to drive over 2 days from Eugene to Baker City, and arrive on Friday, Aug 18. I would meet him there, driving from Seattle and we'd have some time to hang out before the big event.

I had read an article about "Steens Mountain" - a nearly 10000 foot "peak" in southeast Oregon, with a road you can ride on a bicycle, and all I knew was "it was a great ride".   Although Baker City is still 200 miles from the start of the ride, it's 371 miles closer than Seattle.  I asked my friend if it'd be OK to do the ride on Saturday, and he said sure.

I had the alarm set for 4am, got up at 3:45, got ready, and rolled out of Baker City in the dark at 4:30 am.  As I drove south, the sky lightened, and I got a spectacular view of the setting waning crescent moon hanging above the eastern horizon with bright Venus just above it.

The road alterately went over ridges, twisting and turning in 40 mph curves, and flat straight stretches where could open it up and fly.

As I descended one of these ridge roads just south of John Day, I spotted a man shuffling along the side of the road, the same direction as I was going.  He had long hair, sweatpants, and bare feet. We were miles from any town, store, or house.  I passed him, and then thought, "What's wrong with this picture? What's he doing out here miles from anywhere, with bare feet no less?"  I turned around, and pulled up next to him "Hey, you need a lift?" "Oh that'd be great". I turned around again, and he got in.  "I'm heading to Burns, if that's OK with you", I said.  "Sure, I guess."  

He told me that he had come up from Santa Barbara, where he lived, with two friends, to see the eclipse.  They were going to photograph it and had found a great site, and left him there to save it.  "Where are they now?" "I don't know..."   He continued: "I was walking down a path, and there were teenagers on bikes with guns, although they didn't shoot them.  And I saw a momma bear feeding her cubs, and a mother moose feeding her babies. "

"I'm Geoff, what's your name?"  "I'm actually Transgender - I didn't even know that word until recently. I go by Birdie - like 'tweet tweet'.  And I'm trying to make some other changes in my life, too. I've always been left handed, but I've decided to be right handed from now on.  Hey, do you have a tissue for my nose?" "Here are some napkins."  I noticed later as he needed to put them in the trash, they had blood on them, and his face was scratched up.  "How'd your face get scratched?  Did you fall out of a car?" "Yes, that's what happened."   (I regretted giving him the suggestion , he seemed to sieze on it as reality).

"So where are your friends? Can we give them a call?"  "I don't have a phone." "I do, do you know their number?"  He didn't know.  He continued "Last night I was cleaning out my furnace, and dealing with a pile of bricks in the basement - there's a lot of work to do at my house."

We neared Burns, and after driving through the deserted town, I said "Hey, we're in Burns, how about I let you out here?" "Sure, OK..."  He was an easy to get along with guy.

As he got out and stepped on the gravel shoulder, he remarked "I have bare feet. I used to have flip flops."  "Well, perhaps but you were bare feet when I picked you up."

He shut the door and started shuffling off.  I watched him for 30 seconds as I drove away, then turned around, and parked right by the Senior Center. "Hey hang on a sec.  Lemme make a call."  911.  "911 what is your emergency?"  "I am in Burns right by the Senior Center.  I picked up a guy back on 395 coming from John Day, who is bare footed, scratched up, and lost." "OK we'll send an officer."

5 minutes later, the officer arrives, and talks with Birdie.   He gets the same story I got.  "Are you on any drugs? Marijuana? "No." "Take any medications? "  "Niacin."  "What day is it?"  "Thursday?  (it was Saturday)  Took us 3 days to drive up... Friday?"  "What year is it?"  "2017" "Who is the President?" " Donald Trump".  But he also told the officer about the furnace.  "Where IS your house?" "oh..  that's a good question!" 

The officer called for another officer to confirm all details and then said "We think that since you're scratched up, and you've been out all night, you should get checked out at the hospital.  We can commit you, or you can sign yourself in." "What's cheaper?" "Neither, but if you're indigent, they will treat you."

At this point I asked the officers if it was OK if I took off, and they were "Yeah sure, you're good. We got this."  So I shook his hand, said goodbye, and said "These fellows will take care of you."  And I drove the rest of the way to the bike ride.

What an interesting delay!  I hope his friends will look for him, and eventually make it to town!

8:30 I start up Steens Mountain - a gravel road, 30 miles long to the summit , going up almost all the time at various pitches.  There is a lot of washboarding that is hard to ride on going uphill and impossible to ride on going downhill.  There is an occasional path of flat road, and also windrows of loose gravel that are dangerous to ride in.  The ride is slow going and I'm tempted to quit or get a ride to the top many times, but eventually I get there, hours later than I had planned.  I did NOT want to ride down - difficult riding, very slow and brakes all the way, and it'd be dark before I got to the bottom - so I decided to try to hitch a ride to the bottom.  There were a few cars in the summit parking lot, and eventually a group of hikers came back to one. "Can I hitch a ride down?" "Sure."  4 people, mid 30's, 3 guys, one girl,  plus a medium dog with short salt and pepper color coat.  We pulled the wheels off the bike and fit it in the back, then 2 up front, 3 in the back, with the girl in the middle with the dog on her lap.  The dog's head was right where she could rest it on my knee, which was just fine with me.  I told them this whole story as we drove down the 30 miles of washboard gravel road.

As we neared Frenchglen where I was going to get off, I went to pet the dog and noticed her nametag for the first time.  BIRDIE.

The 300k that wasn't

In the sport of Randonneuring, cyclists ride pre-determined routes of varying length from 100k to 1200k (and even beyond) and document their ride with a Brevet Card at checkpoints, making sure to arrive at each checkpoint within the allotted time.  Documentation is usually by way of a stamp, for an organized ride, or by obtaining a store receipt for a self-ridden permanent ride.

Warning: this story contains a number of incidents of rule bending and possibly rule breaking.  The author is prepared to defend every incident, but realizes others may not agree with his reasoning.


The backstory:

In Seattle, there is an organized ride "The Chilly Hilly" that happens in January on hilly Bainbridge Island.   On this 33 mile ride there is one big hill "Baker Hill" and it's practically a loop on its own - where you start the ascent is a block away from where you end it.    A couple years ago, I decided to ride two loops of the route.  On the second loop, I thought "I've ridden Baker Hill up one way, what would it be like to ride it backwards?" and that's what I did.   I expected to have a few people holler at me "Wrong way" but what actually happened was I was seeing people I knew going the other way, and was happily hollering "Hey Leo!" or "Hi Claire".

This happy event got stuck in the back of my mind, and I subsequently wondered about riding the Northwest Classic "STP" - Seatte to Portland - backwards.  I even tried to figure out how I would do it - ride the train to Portland, stay overnight at my brother's house 20 miles away, have him drive me to the start at 5:00 AM -- it all seemed rather implausible.

Then I started randonneuring.  The STP route is one of our 300k permanent rides, and it's documented in either direction.  I could ride the route backwards and get RUSA credit for it. A plus, but  it wasn't going to happen until a friend posted a request on Facebook "Would someone be willing to drive my car to Portland and leave it there for me to return to Seattle after I finish my STP ride?"  Suddenly the plan just put itself together.  Drive down Friday, ride back on Saturday - a one day PTS ride for me!

And so it happened.  I left my van in Seattle, near Sarah's house - a couple miles from the official finish of the route.   I drove down on Friday, stayed at a motel my friend paid for, parked her car in a lot, packed all my street clothes in a pre-addressed If-it-fits-it-ships box, and got myself over to the start location, the Safeway on Lovejoy street, at 5:10 AM, just 5 minutes before the scheduled start.

I bought a sandwich and Frappucino, got my first receipt, and headed out a few minutes late at 5:25 am.  The sky in the east was getting light and the sun would be up soon.

The ride proceeded well enough, and when I got to Longview, I was looking for a Wendy's, the "official" control.  Block after block, no Wendys.  Finally I saw a Jack in the Box and had a great breakfast platter.  After all, the card said "Wendys or open" which meant some flexibility was allowed.

The second control was to be in Chehailis and as I rode the twisting and turning route, I kept an eye out for the Main street food market, but apparently rode past it.  I kept looking for a place to stop, and finally my Garmin said "next route turn 8 miles" I knew I had left Chehailis behind.   Fortunately at that moment, a man and woman sitting on the side of the road offering free water appeared.  I got some water and also asked him to put the time and initial my card.  I figured something was better than nothing.

Now, the next stop is supposed to be in Sumner, which according to the card is "34 mi / 56 Km from Seattle   or 143 mi / 230 Km "    from Portland.   I could see it being 56 miles from Seattle, but not 56 km.  Someone got their math bollixed up here.  But even more important, when I got to mile 143 on my ride, I wasn't in Sumner - I was up on the Puyallup plateau.  And I was getting really hungry.  I finally pulled into a Burger King for some real food and got a receipt.  And as I followed the route down the Puyallup hill, I realized I was never going to get to downtown Sumner.  Well, I had a receipt from somewhere "nearby" anyway.

So now I get to the rather sketchy part.  It was getting later and later, and I had work the next day, so getting to bed was becoming a real thing for me.  I estimated my arrival time at the finish to be 12:30 plus or minus a half hour.  I started to think "what if I rode to the car and then drove to QFC?" or "what if I drove to the car and just went home?".  Thing is, if I rode to the QFC, I would still have a few miles to get to the car after, vs. just riding to the car. And at the rate I was moving, a few miles seemed daunting.  When I got to the start of the Interurban trail, I did a quick check on distance to the car vs. distance to the QFC, and the car was just 3 miles closer.  I had talked with another randonneur just last week about route changes and he said with full conviction "oh it doesn't matter if you deviate from the route as long as you do the distance".  I am willing to bet others feel differently about this -- but since I was riding "STP backwards" and I didn't start from the STP start point (or end point) I was a bit less concerned about riding to the car - as long as I did the miles.  So, my odometer said 166.  I will ride up and down the trail and the road until it says 169 and then press on to the car.   You know, riding 3 miles for just distance on the same road takes way longer than you'd imagine.

I headed up the Interurban and then rather thar go up the west side of Lake Washington, I kept going on the Green River trail, heading for Ellis above Boeing field, to connect with 15th heading north (lots of UP on that road) and after more pedalling, I arrived at my car.  Now, how to document the arrival? (I had already given up going to QFC).  I took a photo of my Garmin along with part of the Seattle skyline, showing I was IN Seattle at 12:48 AM, 18:33 after my offical start time (21 hours being the final cutoff).  I found it impossible to get the light towers on Queen Anne Hill and the garmin in focus at the same time:

I figured I had pushed beyond the limits of "the rules" as far as riding perms go.  I had started within one hour of my stated start time, gotten receipts where I could along the way, but I had unilaterally modified the end point (keeping to the total distance ridden) and the only proof I had was a photo -- and my Inreach tracking:

My original goal had simply been to ride the STP backwards.  Getting RUSA credit for it was a "nice to have" but not the main point of the ride.  And the next day, I realized I had run my brevet card through the wash!  I wasn't going to go any further with it, but another rider who is very familiar with randonneuring, urged me to submit it anyway.

I figured the card and all its "discrepances" deserved a full explanation.  Whether or not to grant credit is the decision of our "permanents" people.  I gladly accept their decision.