Ride Day 8, Oakridge Day 2

Posted by Charles Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:25:00 GMT

Our original plan was to use yesterday, Wednesday, as a rest day of sorts, so we would be plenty fresh for a long ride on Thursday. The long ride of choice was the Alpine Trail, just outside of Oakridge in Westfir, also known as the venue for the Cascade Cream Puff . After the prior day’s dubiously restful nature, we had a lot of trouble getting ourselves motivated and out the door early enough to load our Camelbaks with a days rations and hit the trail in time to catch the shuttled riders leaving the Trailhead Cafe at 10:00, so we slept in, and it was good. Real good, and easy to tacitly rationalize at this point in our trip, so instead we grumbled. Or at least I did, all the way up the hill in the shuttle van. It seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good ride day with just one short shuttle that would have us back in town by 1:00, especially now that we were so well rested.

Once up on the top of the hill, the decision was quickly made to repeat some version of a ride done by at Bill and Berry earlier in the week, before Sean and I got into Oakridge. We began the descent down the Alpine Trail as usual, but a third or so down our contingent of three, Bill, Sean, and myself, veered right onto the Tire Mountain Trail, and one ridge over. Tire Mountain was Bill’s highlight of the week, and this group enjoyed it enough to contemplate the Winberry Divide over lunch. The decision was made to drop into Winberry, and watch history repeat itself. Again we had a good enough time to bump over one more ridge and trail, and hit the Eugene Crest Trail on our way back down to lake level and town. This popped us out on the North shore of Lookout Point Lake, about a dozen or so mile downstream from town, so we hopped on the North Shore Road and burned on toward home.

Our total ride time was just shy of 7 hours, after about 37 miles, and we rolled back into the Trailhead like locusts. Lemonades, water, and coffee were all consumed at a disturbingly frantic pace. After showers and a quick change, a similar trail of waste was left at Mazatlan, the Mexican restaurant up the street.

Our plan tomorrow is pretty loose at this point, but includes the possibility of a couple different rides in the Bend area, or possibly not riding at all. We’ll have a better handle on our viable options when we try to walk to breakfast in the morning.