The ride up Highway 58 yesterday wasn’t bad at all. I had a nice tailwind for most of it, and the shoulder was just big enough to put me out of the direct path of most semis. I ran out of water after filling up at Oakridge, but since it wasn’t very hot out, I didn’t mind. So by the time I got to my turn off point on road NFD 5897, I decided to just keep on going and hope there was a water faucet at a campsite or just fill up at a river or lake. 11 miles farther up the road, over 6,000 feet, I still hadn’t filled up water and the road turned right, up a steep 4×4 road. My speed went down to about 4 miles an hour as my tires skidded out on the sand/dirt road. A sign said “Lake something 8 miles” (I can’t remember the name). Lakes are usually down hill, so I assumed the dirt road eventually turned down hill. And it did. But the road got worse, full of boulders and ruts, and much steeper. If the road didn’t end up where I wanted (a paved road), or if it dead ended, I’d have to push my bike back up the 8 miles because there’s no way my 23mm tires had enough traction to get me back up.
No crashing and amazingly no flat tires, and after an hour I was down the dirt road and back into the paved world. I got some directions from some guy in a truck, then some water from some fishermen. A little while later I filled up at a campsite store, feeling good. A while later, I was faced with another 11 miles of gravel where road construction had torn up the road surface. I got a ride in a pickup truck for 3 miles of it from one of the road workers, then cruised the rest of it, imagining racing Paris roubaix as I always do when I ride on gravel. A few more miles afterwards and a couple sprints and I was in Sunriver, another 120 mile day. Not that hard actually. Although the next day I was tired.
KENNETT PETERSON 