Category: oregon

Twin Tunnels

This is the ride you can take anybody on. It’s an out-and-back that ends next to a couple of places to get coffee and / or ice cream. The trail is heavily used – often by people that have no idea that anybody else might also be trying to use the trail. So, stay to the right and look around before stopping and starting.

There is a viewpoint just short of 3 miles from the parking lot that is a good place to turn around with smaller children or anybody that doesn’t want to pedal up a hill.

Map

Another Winter Ride

Most of the rides from Hood River cover roads to the south (up the Hood River Valley), or to the east (including The Dalles). This ride does a little of both and covers one of the epic Gorge climbs (7 Mile Road).  Also, it never exceedes 2,000 ft in elevation, which makes it a good early season option for avoiding poor road conditions and colder temperatures. In the summer months The Dalles can get very warm and this ride is best done on a cooler day or with an early start.

This ride starts at Egg Harbor (a good place for breakfast, and you’ll need it) and ends in front of 3 Rivers Grill (a good place to sit on the deck and have a frosty cold beverage).From Hood River you work up the West Side of town The roads are light with traffic and pass through orchards and one of the town’s golf courses. You then cross the Hood River and up a short hill toward the town of Odell before crossing The Valley to the east for the ride back down East Side Road.

Now, back in Hood River, travel east on old Hwy 30. Hwy 30 from Hood River to Mosier is now a very wide bicycle trail (beware of loose dogs, unatended children and bewildered tourists – travel cautiously). From Mosier keep riding east on lightly traveled roads through more orchards, with views of Mt. Adams and the Columbia River. This portion of the trip includes a twisty 2 mile decent from Rowena Crest that is so beautiful that many car and motorcycle manufactures choose to film advertisements there.

Once in The Dalles, work your way over to 10th Street and continue east to Cherry Heights Road (near the center of town). Cherry Heights gains about 1,000 ft before the first little decent and then rolls before beginning a decent back toward the west end The Dalles and the start of the 7 Mile Road climb.Here you can turn left and tackle the 1,500 ft climb (it’s kind of a shortcut) that will then decend to Mosier. Or, you can continue another mile or so back to Hwy 30 and return to Hood River over the same route on which you came.

The climb is worth the trouble, however. There are spectacular views any time you choose to look for one and the descent will permit you to reach speeds that you have believed are myths told by comentators of bicycle races on television.

If your goal is to see it all in The Gorge, this is a good start.

Map

Driver School

The 2009 Oregon Region SCCA Driver School is now history. This was my second year as lead instructor – this time I shared the responsibility with one of my 25 Hours of Thunderhill team mates, Bruce Wilson.

Lot’s of people make the school possible. All of the turn workers, officials and instructors that show up a day early, the Stewards that make sure the paperwork stays in order, Todd the Road Race Director, who does all of the liaison work, and Karen in the Region office that personally walks everybody through the registration paperwork. Karen describes the process as like herding cats – whatever that is…

There were quite a few high points for me. There was really good progress made by everybody – most of the students had previous experience and completed the requirements necessary to compete in a Regional race. A handful of students were pretty quick and mostly needed guidance regarding their responsibilities (in addition to driving the car) while on course. There were no reported collisions this time – last year we had a couple, and most everybody always had a big smile on their face.

One student showed up in a mid-eighties vintage Renault Cup car (photo). I raced against this exact car at the beginning of my racing career. I had no idea that any of these things still ran. August, the driver, was fast, clean and consistent. In the one mostly damp session we had he was one of the fastest cars on course – that was awesome!!!

One of the Spec Miata’s that showed up was driven by a young guy that has just returned from a 15 month deployment in Iraq with a Stryker Brigade (photo). Eli is one of the nicest people you will ever meet and was quick enough to catch the attention of the Spec Miata brain trust that was working the school. It’s only right that we fastrack him toward making up an extra 15 months worth of racing experience – Eli will get lots of help on his way to becoming a front runner.

The first Regional race happens later today and many of the students will be seeing a green flag for real for the first time. Here they go again…

BT

First Rides of the Year

Since it’s February it seemed like it was time to finally take the bike off of the trainer. Riding in front of the television is cool and all, but…

Wednesday was a beautiful day, so Lara and I headed out for a quick spin. We waited for the temperature to get above 40 degrees (because there was frost on everything from the night before).

We rode east from Hood River and encountered lots of ice and frost in the shady spots. It was a ride like this last year that put me on the ground and messed up my early season riding, so we were very careful.

Saturday we ventured out on a “real ride” and rode out to Mosier and up Dry Creek Road, which turns to gravel for a few miles. The road was excellent, the weather was perfect and other than quite a lot of gravel on the paved roads it was like a normal Spring ride.

We ran into sometime riding friends Tom and Taylor on the way back from The Dalles and had a mini-group ride all the way home.

Not so bad for early February.

BT

p.s. I talked to my brother-in-law yesterday who had done the Boulevard Road Race in SoCal (1.5 hours east of San Diego) – it is the first big race of the year.

His race had gone early and ended in snow. As the Pro-1-2 field was getting ready to roll out the snow became heavy. There will probably be some good stories out of that.

Motathlon

As this is all about cars and bikes, I figure I should relate the story about the only time I know of that people used both of them in the same race.

 

For the Mazda Grand Prix of Portland last July the promoter had hatched the brilliant idea that you could do a race like a triathlon, but using race cars instead of swimming. There were some problems, though. First, that’s the kind of race I could actually win, even if it sounded kind of dicey – but, I had “retired” from car racing at the end of 2007. Second, I thought they would change their minds after they thought about it for more than a minute.

 

I was wrong, of course, and on Sunday morning we were called together for a meeting about how the race would work, and how hopefully nobody would be killed and how it was worth the risk because the winner would get $400. It did seem likely that I’d risked my life for less than that before…

 

I had, the day before, un-retired from car racing and finished 7th in the first Spec Miata race of the weekend which had taken place Saturday afternoon. I had also hatched a brilliant plan to race the Motathlon then drive up to Vancouver, Washington to race a Criterium (bicycle’s, twisty, crowded, and in reality more dicey than the Motathlon) and then return very quickly to Portland to take part in the feature race of the Mazda Grand Prix in the Miatacage.com Miata. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

How often will the chance to do a real bike race and real car race on the same day present itself, anyway?

 

There were about 10 of us dumb enough to show up on the Motathlon grid and most of us were in Spec Miatas. We drew for starting position and would do four laps of PIR in the car, about one mile on the bike and then run about 300 yards to the finish (where Playboy bunnies would be waiting for the winner – yes, those Playboy bunnies).

 

Will Schrader took off on the car leg and had gapped the field led by Bruce Wilson and Alec Osenback. My excuse for being fourth is that my plan was simply to avoid the bad things that might happen during the car part and win it from the bike. I think most of us were using nearly all of our regular safety equipment except the HANS (head and neck restraint). I had decided to do the entire race without changing or removing any gear!!!

 

Motathlon and Mazda GP Spec Miata
Motathlon and Mazda GP Spec Miata

That was Will’s biggest mistake. The time he took to switch helmets completely erased the gap he had made for himself. Bruce and Alec were banging on each other entering the “transition area” (I’m told that’s what the triathlon people call it) and frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t wreck themselves – but 400 bucks is 400 bucks and Bruce was pretty well spun up about the bunnies.

So, I hopped out of the car and was handed my bicycle by my friend (and hairdresser), Fenn Bourland, who is an experienced triathlete who uses words like “transition” and “area”. It was pretty much over, save the sweating, at that point. Alec was in the lead and I could hear the muffled obscenities as I blew by him and continued to stretch out a 45 second advantage by the time the run started. That part was pretty cool because Alec is young and all kind of spry looking and I’m kind of old… Anyway, a sprint in full race driving gear down the straightaway and the bunnies and $400 would be mine!!!