In Autumn 2018 I completed my first 100 mile day on a bicycle. Due to increased efforts to complete the OC&E Woods Line Trail and fitness goals, I had been rolling 100 mile weeks for a while. A navigation error one day resulted in a 65 mile day on Fatbike. I knew it was time. Autumn wasn’t creeping along. It was running.
After that day I was trying to figure out what to do next as a fitness and spiritual goal. It became apparent that a realistic goal would be to ride 300 miles in six of seven days. I kept riding my road bike all winter and we had a splendid Spring for Mountain Biking. By Summer I was in good shape from daily rides, but not training formally yet for this scary 300 mile ride. Scary for my weak old ass.
Over the Winter I spent a lot of time pouring over maps and collecting information about several possibilities to execute this plan. It would save a lot of time and energy to just do six 50 mile rides right from home. It is 126 miles to a place in Nevada Southeast of Lakeview, Oregon called “Andy’s Place”. It is an abandoned ranch. With some jigs and jogs it would be easy to make that a compelling destination. I felt no real calling to that plan. Circumnavigating Mt. Shasta from home was another possibility. It wouldn’t be hard to make that a 300 mile loop.
By mid-June I was starting my big ramp up to performance week. I was riding 150 miles a week by the week before the Solstice. Then my neck was getting clunky. The big ride was looking questionable. The target start date was July 16th. On June 16th it was announced that my start date might get pushed back a week by unrelated new conditions of reality, and my hopes were beginning to dwindle.
By a strange sequence of events it became clear to me that I should go soon or I might be another year older before it could happen. On June 21 I left with three bikes, a comfortable mattress, a family sized tent and my drum set.
Several hours later, descending into Prineville, the Blues were not far away.
I knew that the supported trips seem to comb that country for it’s lack of traffic and interesting geography. It is a powerful landscape to experience on a bicycle. The Blue Mountains are a huge area, and actually multiple ranges. I chose Fairview Pass as my base camp area. With numerous rides that all end in a climb from this location, it seemed as good as any. I didn’t camp at the developed campground–although I would. It was very nice, and free of charge. It had a pit toilet, and a nice spring–flowing with serious volume.
I chose a nearby spur to road 24, there was a fire ring and space to set up a camp. An occasional logging truck would roll by on the main forest road 1/4 mile away during the day, but I never heard another car at night in five nights of camping. Maybe people camping down at Bull Prairie to the North of my camp could hear my faint drums in the air high above them. Nothing to block the beats all the way to Canada.
The logging was all over those ridges above Spray and Kimberly. The overgrown pennaceous fingering waves of regrowth. Barbules of spindly crowded careless tinder. Now it is all getting thinned sparse and clean for cows and fires.
I got to survey a bit of the operations from the fire lookout at Tamarack Mountain. I didn’t stay long. Fire Lookout people like their job for solitude. I think if I could commit to drawing comics all day I could dig that job. Nothing like a lonely high perch to draw out my cynicism for social construct. For now I am too kinetic to stay indoors all day. It is a disability really.
With my camp set up and drums played a bit the Solstice sun was still a couple of hours from set. To stretch out I went out on fat bike for a primer. Five miles. 295 to go for the week. Rockin’ out to streaming House Music on a ridgeline road.
Back at camp I had no 4G, but I had maps to examine for my first ride in the morning. The radio held NPR kind of and a Bend alt rock station sort of. It depended on the orientation of my van. My GPS said 4,465 feet elevation. Just 200′ lower than the nearby Fairview Pass on Road 207. I was starting to get a bit of the feeling I came for.
Unknown.
