Oregon bike touring

It's hard to catch up when I miss a day of updating here, but I will try. I may do it in two installations -- one for yesterday and one for today.

A rather mixed bag for our first day of the tour. OK, we did not actually do any of the tour. Well, we toured a bit, but not as part of the planned route, and not with our touring group.

Let me start with the pouring, cold rain we awoke to. So, it was pouring rain and cold in the morning with a promise of sun and good weather in the afternoon. No brainer -- we wanted to ride in the sunny good weather. Susan found the Salem Bike Club (our destination for the day) listing on line and saw there was a ride scheduled for 1:30. Perfect. We talked with members of our group who decided to follow the original plan and determined we would meet up at the end of the day at our motel.

When in doubt - shop. Susan had also found some good sales at Eddie Bauer, and lo! There was an outlet right close by, and on the way to Salem. We shopped (and bought things we could not live without), drove on to check in at our motel, and took off for the ride start. We arrived half an hour early, met our leader, signed the waiver, got our map and cue sheet and I took a test spin in the parking lot. No gears! Susan worked on and nearly got it fixed -- cable had pulled totally out of the gear box on the rear - but we ended up going to a bike shop and missing out on riding with the group.

Found some interesting bike racks in town. One was in front of a quilting shop.

Finally my bike was fixed, the sun was shining, and we had a map and cue sheet! We did the ride on our own and had a grand day. First we toured around town for a brief time. Last week I was at the capital building in Olympia, Washington; this week we rode around the capital building in Salem, Oregon.

With the help of Susan and her GPS skills, we found our way out of town and onto the Fairview Loop ride we had garnered from Jakie the ride leader. Bucolic country side with farm animals, Christmas tree farms, vineyards, and wide open spaces.

And fine dining in Turner before heading to our home for the night.

We began our cycling adventure at 3:00 p.m. which is quite late to begin a thirty mile ride, and we were good and tired when we finished.