Saturday, August 15, 2009

Day 61: Mitchell, OR to Redmond, OR

Today started with some awesome muffins, but since we hadn't had dinner the night before our first priority, once again, was to find some breakfast. We packed the muffins for later and went across the street to a saloon.

Food was awesome. We also noticed a sign up for the local school - Mitchell School District #55. People apparently have to travel so far to get to the school that the school is actually a boarding school, with room for twenty boarders. That's pretty impressive for a guy who works at a school with 141,000 kids.

Across the street from the saloon there may or may not have been a man with a bear as a pet. Apparently he'd raised it from a cub, when it had been abandoned. We didn't take time to find out though.

Mitchell had a certain appeal though. It wasn't much of a town, but everything around it was beautiful, and the town seemed to have some spirit. We went back to the hotel to get our stuff together, finally getting a chance to talk with the owner of the hotel.

For perhaps the first time all trip today started with a downhill. Not much of one, and it was of course followed with a long, hot uphill, but we'll take what we can get. One fortunate thing for us is that our only climb was going to be in the morning. Once we were over it we'd be back into relatively populated west-central Oregon.

At the base of the climb the terrain was hilly and dry. Back in Mitchell, some 5 miles earlier and 400 feet higher up, it'd been kind of chilly, and we were wearing our jackets.

Now that we were climbing, we rapidly stopped and stripped off all our cold weather gear. I was amazed at how rapidly the temperature changed.

This climb, perhaps because it was still daylight, was pretty awesome. About 6 miles into the climb, we were passed by a classic car parade.

Midway up the climb, the terrain switched to forest, which was a nice change.

Toward the top of the climb, Steve, who we'd met in Dayville the day before, passed us.

He was moving a lot faster than we were.

Finally, we crossed Ochoco pass, and were able to start racing down hill. Well, kind of. Something didn't feel right to me, which was frustrating. After hours of struggling up a hill you want to treasure those few minutes going downhill. It almost felt like the brake was on. We pulled over at a little rest stop.

What we really wanted was a place to drop off some trash and get some water, but all we found were bathrooms. As we were studying the ACA maps, trying to determine how far it was to the next gas station, another touring cyclist pulled up. This cyclist was named Ben. He'd just finished University, and was spending his summer touring the country. We took off a little before him.

Of course, he passed us in no time at all, in large part due to our weird problem with the back tire that kept slowing us down.

This downhill wasn't nearly as much fun as we'd hoped. It wasn't even that long. But we did keep leapfrogging Ben, who had quite a few tire problems, flatting at least twice. Each time though, he never seemed to need any help, so we just kept riding on.

At mile 38, we reached Ochoco Reservoir.

Two miles later was the State Park. Right across from it was a gas station where we were able to stop and have lots to drink (and maybe eat ice cream). We stayed there longer than we should have, partly waiting to see if Ben was going to make it. But we ran out of time, and couldn't wait any longer.

A few miles later, we came to Prineville. For some reason, I got really silly, and started reading out PRINEville in a really shrill voice every time I saw a sign that said the town's name. In Prineville we stopped at McDonalds and considered our options.

I hadn't been sure how long it was going to take us to climb the Ochoco pass, and we'd originally wanted to spend a night in Sisters, so I'd researched some hotels in both Prineville and Redmond. Since it was only early afternoon, we decided to ride on. Of course, that meant we had two other options. We could either follow OR-126 or OR-370. 126 looked more direct, but 370 looked lot it had a lot less traffic. Since 370 was recommended by the ACA we, for once, took the more scenic route.

We rode around a low, long plateau for about a dozen miles.

While we were riding along flat farmland Ben caught up. Apparently he'd had more tire problems than expected even after he saw us and ended up having to wait for someone to drive in to Prineville and pick up some tubes for him. Friendly strangers are awesome.

Ben had some other tricks to show us. Apparently he sometimes took advantage of his British accent and stood outside grocery stores as it was getting dark. People would strike up conversation with him and the next thing he knew he was following them home to a meal and a bed. Unfortunately, we are rather short British Accents.

Before we got to US-97 we ran into Steve, who'd been camping on and off with Ben for a few days. Tonight Ben wanted to be on his own. We left him at what we thought was public land, where he was going to try some stealth camping. We left him with a card and our phone number, in case the camping didn't work out and he wanted to share a hotel room with us.

For once, we arrived in Redmond before the sun was down. We tried a couple of hotels in town, looking for one that had the most magical of all things - laundry. No luck. We ended up riding out to a Motel 6 outside of town, and arriving as it got dark. So much for getting in early enough to walk around a bit. There was quite a line at the desk of the Motel 6, but the staff was incredibly friendly and we chatted with a lot of fun people in the lobby. Dinner was at an awesome Mexican place across the street. It was almost celebratory and I was in great spirits. Jillian's parents were in Oregon - we'd no longer need to worry about getting stranded. If we had another night where we might get in at 3am, we'd be able to call for a rescue. Provided, of course, that we weren't stuck in an area without any cell reception like we'd been last night.

Back at the hotel, I was still in a silly mood and hulu-hooped with bike tires.

I wasn't very good at it.

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