It'll surely get said a lot, but man what a route. What a beautiful route! Starting off at the Grand Lodge again, which shows signs of becoming a rather popular starting point, the riders just kept accumulating - I think Susan said the final count was 50? Nice-sized group, regardless. Spent some time chatting around to several people before looking around a big truck as we started to move into position to leave, as realized that there was a whole other huge group that the truck had blocked my view of!
Heading out of Forest Grove things moved along at a decent clip, but not so fast that I got shelled out - as much as my tendency is to want to drop off the back early, and just do the whole brevet on my own, I've learned that taking that pull out of town is good warm-up - and of course, good company.
Things started to string out a bit once we crossed 26 on Timber Rd, and started into the bits of climbing - not too heavy on the climbing, but you gotta get up to Vernonia somehow... It can't have been that bad, cause I rolled into Anderson Park in about 3 hours, which is perfectly reasonable time for me for 60km. I'd been perfectly happy with the pastoral landscapes of the valley, but moving up into the trees and mountain foothills, and getting our first glimpses of the Nehalem River, which we'd be spending most of the day with, was fien by me! Having driven to Vernonia the Tuesday prior to the brevet, I can say I was happy to find the Banks-Vernonia bike path, as although riding on 47 may be perfectly safe (though I hear rumor of one brevet rider discovering otherwise!), people do drive pretty fast. Susan and Michael had quite a spread set up in the park, with hot coffee and plenty of food - practically a century feed point or something there! I'm not used to anything more than a bare-bones control, so it was a pleasant surprise. Sat a while there, and then headed out again for Birkenfeld...
Vernonia - Birkenfeld was mostly pretty flat, being as we were already up, and our route now mostly entailed following the Nehalem around. Again, though, beautiful country, though now we were starting to see remnants of earlier thundershowers that must surely have landed on the faster riders, and we even got a good bit of small hail ourselves, as well as some light showers, but nothing major. Popped into the little offshoot info control at Fishhawk Lake, saw no ospreys, and borrowed a pen to wirte my answer from a rider whose name I forget, but who had an interesting Rensch/Schultz style beam frame, with an S&S coupling - if you're out there, remind me of your name, cause I was curious who built the frame. Stopped to take pictures of skunk cabbage, and then it was just a short jaunt back out to 202, and up the road to the Birkenfeld store, where Michael had set up camp. Had more bits of snack there, and then moved on down the road again...
More serious rain clouds were starting to loom on the horizon now, but still they mostly seemed to be isolated clouds rather than a full storm or anything, so I wasnt really worried about that too much. The was still leftover hail at the side of the road in places, from earlier in the morning. Kept moving along at a pretty good clip, as it was really only a short distance back to Vernonia and the next control, but rain started to move in. I pulled into a carport to change into my rain jacket, about 2 miles outside Vernonia, and took a look at the sky, realized the the cloud would pass within 10 minutes, and just decided to stay dry. Good thing, too, cause it was really coming down! The sun came out again, I went back to the road, and ran into Michael running an impromptu control just on the outskirts of town. Stopped after that, had some coffee, and then headed on out...
Now for me, here is where we get to the highlight of the route. The Banks-Vernonia bike path starts out mostly looking like this:
Paved path, but lots of leaf and needle litter, with an ocassional cable across the road to stop cars and whatnot from using it. Its shaded from the sun and most of the rain, and well, there's no cars on it. Pretty pleasant, overall, and fairly fast riding. But just past the Beaver Creek trailhead, things change...
The path goes to gravel, then doubletrack, then singletrack. It rises higher than the road does, but keeps a steady but reasonable gradient, and its typically fairly packed gravel or dirt, except for a few loamy, muddy spots - I was plowing along pushing 51x20 (nice thing about running 2x6 gearing - crossing over just ain't as cross-over-y, so I can go big-big without the chainline being that bad) - and yes, Susan, these pictures were taken while riding :) It was all very much in the spirit of the spring Classics, if you ask me. As you approach the Tophill trailhead and the intersection with 47, theres a sign warning of a steep descent, and telling you to dismount and walk your bike. I, of course, did neither...
Except to take this picture, halfway down. Not counting that dismount for photography purposes, I was pleased to clean the entire section. Great stuff! Looking back, I'm now tempted to ride the rest of the Banks-Vernonia bike path one of these days!
From there, it was under the trestle and into a few miles of fast downhill in the rain, which would've been a good brake test if I'd actually needed to use them at all. Good top gear cruising, all the way down. Hopped onto 26, rode til the Dairy Queen, stopped for an ice cream, and discovered that the zipper on the chest pocket of my rain jacket was stuck. With my cue sheet inside! Argh. Spent about five minutes wrestling with that, finally got it open, and headed off down the road, all fairly flat until you make the right onto Cedar Canyon Road, which is lightly rolling, but its getting into the section of the day where upslopes seem bigger than they are. Stopped for the info control at Killin Road, and lacking my pen (which had gone missing earlier), I took pictures of the checkpoint answers and my phone. Handy things, these digital cameras.
After Cedar Canyon, there was really only one more light climb, up Stafford to Strohmeyer, and then mostly downhill around and into Verboort, with some fantastic downhill right angle turns on Strohmeyer, and then a flat ride back into the Grand Lodge, where a good chunk of the crew still was, at an ever-growing table of 12... Had dinner, talked rando stuff, and then caught a ride back into Portland with Michael.
Kudos to Susan and Michael for putting together a great route, and a pleasure to meet all of you who I did - I'll see you in 2 weeks for the Screech Owl populaire, cause I do like the night riding, and my Schmidt should be set up by then.