My first YouTube video!

Here it is, folks: my first YouTube video! I'm celebrating the release of my new novel, Tyler's Law, which has been quite some time in the making...

Monday, February 2, 2009

Hm, not much is new, really. We won some money in the Durkee Valley Football Pool. We had the Ravens...

Book 2, Tyler's Law, has gone to the printer, so I should have the first copy in my hot little hand in a few more days...

Saturday, I took a snowshoe trip to the top of the ridge across the creek from the house. There's a gate up there that was left open last fall and needed to be closed; I was pretty sure from looking at the ridge from the other side of the canyon that there was no way to get the four-wheeler up there, so I decided to walk. I've been getting entirely too fat anyway, and it would be good exercise...

Once I got to the gate, it was of course under the snow; I found out that a snowshoe makes a fair to middling snow shovel. The gate is now closed. On the way up, I saw one coyote, way too far away to try to shoot, and on the way back down I saw a bunch of deer. It was a very pleasant day, and a very pleasant walk, about three miles round trip...

Regarding hiking up the ridge on snowshoes: this winter, at D&B's "customer appreciation sale", I bought a set, top and bottom, of DuoFold polypro active base layer. It's supposed to wick moisture, and I'm here to tell you, it works! I did quite a bit of sweating, but when I got home, my outer layer was damp, but the base layer was dry! I was impressed...

The creek keeps on running by...

It's been a busy month, actually, what with Christmas, and moving Brett to Corvalis, that sort of thing. At least one exciting thing has happened, though. I have a shot at having my first novel, Complications, which was printed by AuthorHouse in 2006, placed with a tradtional-type publisher! It all started back in December (I may have written some of the before; if I have, please bear with me). Early in 2008, I place Complications with an agency that claims that they will push POD books (print-on-demand, like mine) to traditional publishers, the kind who will pay the author to print the book, instead of the other way around...

So anyway, I got an e-mail in early December from the agent who was handling my book, telling me that a new publisher had contacted them, looking for authors, but the publisher wanted the author to fill out a questionnaire about him- or herself, and the book in question. So I went to the publisher's website and filled out the form, which had spaces for title, author, a synopsis, etc. The page said that I would be contacted in a week or ten days...

Imagine my surprise when, three days later, I got an e-mail requesting the whole manuscript! I nearly fell out of my chair! This e-mail stated that I would be contacted in a week or ten days, as the review process took that long...

Once again, imagine my surprise when I got another e-mail, again only three days later, saying that they like the manuscript, but it needed some work. Having read back through some of it while waiting for them to contact me, I had to agree. It was kind of on the crude side, stylistically. So I contacted the lady who helped me work on Book 2, and she was more than happy to help me out; I printed out the manuscript and took it to her...

January 10, 2009, dawned cold, and if I recall correctly, snowy. That was the day I started rewriting, based on her copyedit. I took Monday the 12th off from work, figuring, no prob, have the rewrite done by then. Yeah, right! The manuscript really needed work...

I worked on it all day Saturday, spending roughly eight hours in front of my computer. On Sunday, I figured on getting in a whole bunch of hours, but it was not to be. About 9 AM, my lovely wife called to tell me that she'd had an accident, and needed to go to the emergency room. X-rays revealed a broken ankle...

Long story short, I ended up taking the rest of the week off, hoping to have the manuscript done by the self-imposed deadline of January 15th, and I almost made it: I got it e-mailed off late in the day on January 16th, immediately after a celebratory drink of some pretty Kentucky bourbon. So now we wait. It's supposed to take about three to four weeks for the reviewer to decide whether or not my manuscript is up to "contemporary professional standards", to quote Harry Chapin in his song, "Mister Tanner"...





We did run away from home the weekend before this last one for a couple of days. We spent Friday night at Wildhorse Casino in Pendleton, and managed to come out a few bucks ahead playing penny slots. From there we went up to the Tri-Cities, and spent money and Saturday night there. Dinner at Red Lobster was great; I had something called "Island Citrus-Rum Shrimp and Scallops". It's part of their new Fire-Grilled Menu, and all I can say is, WOW! Then Sunday I spent several hours and probably too much money in Barnes & Noble, which is one of my favorite stores on the planet, before we headed for home...

On the way home, the closer we got to Pendleton, the nastier the weather got. It was snowing hard and the freeway was slick coming up the hill out of the town, and the Toyota 4-Runner in front of Jennifer and its U-Haul trailer did a three-sixty in the middle of a bridge and came to a stop jackknifed in the right lane. After those of us who were following him the closest got by, he straightened it out and sat there for who knows how long. Probably had to clean out his pants once he got his blood pressure back down...

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

Wow, I can't believe that it's been a month since I last posted. How time flies when one is having fun, ya know?

Hmm, where to start...

I guess the biggest news, for me at least, is that the first week of December, I got an e-mail from... No, let me back up a bit. About a year or so ago, I placed my first print-on-demand (POD) book, titled Complications, with an agency who claims that their people will pitch POD books to traditional type publishers, like Random House, etc. (Shameless self-promotion here: Complications is available in most online bookstores as well as at Betty's Books in Baker City. It was published under my pen name, Charlie MacNeil, if one cares to look for it on the Internet.) According to e-mails I got from the agency over the course of the next few months, they were pitchin' but nobody was catchin'. Then, in early December, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from the lady who had been doing the pitchin', saying that a relatively new publisher had contacted them, looking for authors...

The publishing company has an online questionairre they wanted the author, not the agent, to fill out, so I did. I figured, what the hey, the worst they could say was, "You're kidding, right?" Their website stated that they would contact me in a week or so, once they had time to review what I sent them. Three days later, I got an e-mail asking for the full manuscript of my book. Either they liked what they read, or they're really hard up for authors, I don't know which...

I sent them the manuscript, they read some more, said, "We like it but it needs some work", and so now the manuscript is with the lady who did the copyediting for me on Book 2. As soon as she's finished doing her thing, I'll get the rewrites done, shoot it back to the publisher, and see what comes next. I figure the worst they can say is NO, in whatever permutation strikes their fancy...

It's been snowing for about a week. All over the state, almost. We just started feeding hay to the cows the weekend before last. We haven't needed to until now, 'cause there's been plenty of grass available. Of course with a foot of snow on the ground, the grass pretty much is no longer available, hence the hay feeding. The snow is kind of pretty, at least when a person doesn't have to wade through it to do stuff. I keep planning to take some pictures, and I keep not doing it...

Last weekend we helped put on a 50th anniversary bash for some good friends of ours. It was snowing then, too. As the parking lot at the Senior Center was filling up, a new "You might be a redneck if..." thing came to mind: If you go to a Christmas party, and everybody arrives in a four wheel drive of some sort, with it locked in 4 by, you might be a redneck...

Christmas Eve is tomorrow, and I guess we're as ready as we're gonna get for Christmas to get here. Cheryl and I decided that we're not going to shop much for each other this year. Instead, we're going to try to run away from home for a few days of "Us time" some day soon, depending on the weather...

My second book is getting closer!!!

The debut of my second novel in the Deputies series, Tyler's Law, is slowly approaching. Here's what I wrote for the back cover:

Deputy Bowie Tyler is, at first glance, an unlikely hero. He doesn’t look like a lawman, and that’s just the way he likes it. He can fight and he can shoot because a man who’s “built somewhat like a punkin” had better learn to protect himself, or go to tending store. His jolly demeanor hides a core of icy steel.

Bowie’s current assignment looked relatively straightforward at first glance: bring in the elusive Bob Morton. Morton has never been caught in twenty years on the wrong side of the law, but his latest robbery may change all that. As he follows Morton’s trail, Bowie finds more and more evidence that, just as in his own case, appearances can be deceiving. The further he travels the more it seems that he may be chasing the wrong man. Before he reaches the end of this trail, Bowie Tyler will find himself in the unenviable position of having to interpret the law in his own way. He will be writing Tyler’s Law.

The cover of my first book, Complications, was created by the publisher, AuthorHouse, using a stock photo from Jackson Hole. The cover turned out great, but I wanted one of my own photos on the cover of Tyler's Law. Last winter, I took some pictures of the snow-covered hills across the river from Cheryl's mom's house, and got one that I thought would be perfect for my new book...

I have a conference call with my design team scheduled for December 12th, and we'll decide then what font to use, what size to make the book, that sort of thing. Then it'll take a couple of months to get the book all set up, then it'll go into print. Of course I'll be selling autographed copies both in person and through my website. At this point I don't know what the price will be yet...

Book 3, which is tentatively titled "Valentine's Revenge", is partly done, but I've had a major league case of writer's block for the past several months, so it is on hold. I also have the first pages written of a book that is totally different than anything I've ever written. It's a story of the end of life on Earth as we know it, as seen through the eyes of a common man...

A-hunting we will go, part the second...

So I went coyote hunting last night, never thinking about the fact that it is still deer season here. I saw some deer, including a couple of small bucks, across the canyon but I decided that if I did shoot a deer, it had to be bigger than anything I'd shot before. This wouldn't take much, but it would have to be bigger than those...

I set the Foxpro out in front of me and dialed in "The Screamin' Demon Blues" and let that play for a while. Nada. So I switched the caller to another homegrown fave, "The Dying Cottontail Swing". Nada again. The wind was coming up the canyon toward me, and it would gust up some once in a while, so I decided to bring out the big guns: Super Jack...

After about 10 minutes of that, and no coyotes, I was about to decide to pull up stakes and head for home, when something large and gray appeared out of the creekbed a hundred or so yards below me. Something large and gray with bones between its ears, bones I could see with the naked eye. I put the scope on the buck and my little heart started to pitter pat. Rapidly. It was just then that it dawned on me that I'd left my wallet home. Not just in the pickup. Home...

I watched the buck watch the hillside below me for a while, then decided to see if I could sneak out and get my wallet, hunting license, tag, knife, stone, shooting sticks, etc., all the things I normally pack with me and for some odd reason had left home. I left the Foxpro running so I could find it again and rolled up on one knee and started walking bent over around the hill. One last glance before I went out of sight told me the buck was still there...

I beat feet back to the pickup and zoomed home, got all my stuff, and tippy toed back to my seat on the hill. Of course the buck wasn't there, so I smiled at my good fortune at seeing him and settled down to wait for a coyote to show up. But five minutes later the buck strolled out of the brush and stopped broadside at about 150 yards...

Now lets keep in mind here that I was hunting coyotes, so I had my coyote rifle, a Savage .243, in my lap. One less than stupid thing I had done recently was to substitute some Federal 80 grain GameKing loads for my usual Hornady hollowpoints, just in case I did see a shootable deer. The buck was in the bushes with just his back showing so I took a shot and shot over him. Instead of running clear out of the country he trotted around the ridge another 25 yards of so and gave me another chance. I didn't miss that one...


My lovely long-suffering wife and I spent the next several hours getting him out of the canyon he was in, in pieces. This picture was taken at 11PM, which sort of explains why I look like a zombie...This by far the biggest buck I've ever killed. The rack unofficially gross scored 197 4/8's, and netted 193 3/8's...

A-hunting we will go...

So. Deer season is almost over in eastern Oregon. Clint and I both have Lookout Mountain unit deer tags. Or I should say I have a Lookout Mountain unit deer tag. Clint filled his last Saturday, on his birthday...

Opening day, which was a week ago, dawned something less than bright and cheery. In fact, it was yucky. That's a technical term for cloudy, overcast, windy, been raining off and on for several days type weather. This day was no exception. We left the pickup about 7:45 to walk down Pierce Gulch in search of the wiley muley. We did manage to see a doe and fawn before it started to rain...

Clint was trying to get over a cold. He called me on the radio and told me he really didn't want to get soaking wet and get sick again, and that we probably should bail out and go home. We had been kicking the idea around of going to Nampa to see that new western movie, Appaloosa, and the rain looked like a good excuse. I needed to go to Costco anyway. The movie was great....

The next morning we started hiking down at creek level, headed for the top of the ridge between Sisley Creek and Quartz. We hit an old ditch line that would take us quite a ways without having to do a lot of climbing. Just before we rounded the hill into the Peach Orchard Draw, a shooter buck showed up across the canyon. He really wanted to come down the hill and cross the creek to our side, but the neighbor's pickup was parked at the cattle guard, so eventually the buck stayed on his own side and went out of sight with some does and fawns...

As we climbed up the draw, we bumped a couple of does and fawns out, but nothing with horns. We split up and Clint graded around to the trough while I climbed up to check a promising pocket which turned out to be unoccupied. I stayed at that level and went around to the top of the next ridge to wait for Clint. Once we got together we climbed up to the top and stopped for a snack break...

The next draw has a trough in it too. We climbed up the old road to the top and started grading around. There were some does and fawns in the head of that draw and what turned out to be a shooter buck. Clint dropped down and got tucked in behind my shooting sticks just as the buck decided to leave for parts unknown, so Clint didn't get a shot. We followed the deer's tracks for quite a ways but never did catch up with them so we decided to head back to the pickup and go get some lunch...

Clint had class the next day, so I went up in the timber by myself. I didn't see much for deer, but I did see lots of bear poop, and the bunch of elk that my niece's husband saw during archery season. The bull he missed was still with them. He's a pretty bugger. His horns aren't super tall, but really wide. I might have gotten a picture if I had remembered that I had a camera with me...

On the way back to the bike I was playing with the timer on the camera I finally remembered that I had in my pocket and snapped a picture of some sort of strange creature packing binoculars and a huge pistola...

So last Saturday was Clint's birthday. The wind was howling, and it was cold, but we were going hunting anyway. He was supposed to be there 7ish and finally made it at 7:30ish. By the time I got organized and we got going, we got to the top of the ridge where we'd seen the buck last weekend about 8ish. My plan was to walk the downwind side of the ridge where the sun would be shining, figuring the deer would be where it was warm. That's where I'd be if I was a deer. Of course my past record doesn't really indicate that I know how deer think, although I have helped Clint fill 4 tags out of the five he's drawn over the years...

We parked the bikes at the top of the ridge in a frigid hurricane and beat feet down the side of the ridge far enough to get out of the wind. The first pocket we glassed had a couple of does, a fawn, and a spike buck with horns about four inches long lounging around in it. There was no way I was going to pack something that tiny out of that hole, even though it would have been a relatively easy pack. I figured that if we were gonna have to haul it up, it might as well have some size to it...

The next pocket looked empty at first glance. I was looking uphill and was just about to take a step when Clint started going "Dad! Dad! Dad!" in a loud whisper. When I looked at him, he was pointing down into a little brush-covered bench below us. There were some deer bedded down there, then in the binoculars I found one that wasn't bedded but had its head down in the bushes browsing. Then it picked its head up...

"That one's a buck! Can you see it? Do you want the stick?" I have a two piece walking stick that I made that converts into shooting sticks that I've been carrying lately. He took the stick and braced his .308 on it, waiting for a shot. It was about 75 yards real steep downhill. The buck had moved into the brush with just his head showing and Clint wanted a body shot. Then the buck stepped out and the rifle boomed. Even with my fingers in my ears I could hear the bullet smack, and the deer went part way down and stayed there for a minute, then started to walk, very slowly...

My philosophy, which I've taught Clint, is that if you hit it and it doesn't go down, you shoot until it stops moving. His second shot was with the buck moving straight away down the hill. He was trying to shoot it in the neck instead of the butt and he just barely missed to one side. Third shot clipped a horn, and the last shot broke the buck's neck. The Good Lord was looking out for us, because the buck went down on the last place he could go down before he started rolling to the bottom of a very deep canyon...

Clint with his deer...

It's a nice fat three point, estimated live weight 175 pounds. We found his first bullet under the hide just behind the left front leg. He was shooting some of my handloads, which are super accurate out of Clin'ts .308, and they pack quite a wallop. The cool part of this whole thing was that I was able to get the bike to where we only had to pack the buck about 50 yards. I left Clint to gut it and climbed back up and got the bike, we tied the buck on the front rack, and away we went...

This is the Japanese packhorse with the deer on the front rack. It's Susan's bike, and she was nice enough to have the rear trunk stuffed with bungie cords. Of course Clint had to give it a bath once we got the deer skinned. There were a few red streaks here and there that showed up really well against the yellow of the bike...



Clint seemed to think this was a pretty good birthday present...

Cycle Oregon 2008, part the last...

At last we come to the closing days of this epic adventure. And the bike trip is almost over too. After the layover in Halfway to rest and recuperate from the grueling week up to that point (insert smiley here) it was time to saddle up for the trip to Wallowa Lake. Everyone in the mighty metropolis knew it would be a grueling day, but it was a choice of ride your bike or declare wussdom for all the world to see and go home. With the monetary investment involved going home was not an option so it was time to "go big" as the saying goes...

The first ten miles or so were a piece of cake. It was all downhill, following Pine Creek on its way to the Snake River. And even the first miles after we left the main highway weren't bad. We were climbing, winding our way up into the fragrant forest of pines and other evergreens, but it was shaded for the most part and still on the cool side. And the pavement was pretty decent, too...

It was eighteen miles of climbing to the first summit, but it kind of went in stairsteps, so one had a bit of a break once in a while. What I found entertaining as I got closer to the top was one gentleman I passed (yes, I do occasionally find someone I can pass) who was looking at the map and told me, "We're almost to the top. Only 2oo more feet of climbing." What he didn't say, or possibly didn't know, was that it would take nearly four miles more of pedaling to climb that 200 feet...

About a half mile below the top of this particular climb I decided it was time for a snack break, having cached a banana in my handlebar bag earlier. Unfortunately for my statistics for the day, I managed to bump a button on my bike computer which put it in "Set" mode, so that when I did finally make it to the top and got to swoop down to lunch, my speed was never recorded. At lunch I finally figured out how to get the silly thing back in normal mode, but that descent was never recorded...

After lunch was the continuation of the downhill that took us to lunch, but after only a mile or two we got the thrill and privilege of starting the second long climb of the day, the climb to Salt Creek Summit. This climb is ten miles of up. No stairsteps, no relief, just up. Needless to say, it took a while to get to the top. The cool part about that climb was the food at the rest stop at the top. Peaches! Really juicy, sweet peaches! And watermelon! And Oreos! Life was definitely good...

Zoom! Downhill again, then a left turn, then Curses! Another climb! But this one was very much short compared to the others, and was soon conquered, then it was mostly downhill into Joseph. In Joseph ET phoned home, because I figured that there would be no cell service at the lake. Cheryl was glad to hear that I survived the day. I did manage to take a picture across the lake of the CO community...


At the lake I found our camp, got my tent set up, and went to find the troops, who were, naturally enough, in the beer garden. Dinner was devoured shortly then it was time for the bike rodeo. There was a big buck wandering around snitching food from unattended plates and investigating the stage while we were waiting for announcements and the bike rodeo. Once again, I pulled a stupid and left my camera in my tent with my backpack, so no pictures of the buck...

The next day I decided to ride the "layover loop" to Enterprise. It was really nice weather, nice pavement, good lunch, and just an all-around good day on a bike. For some reason, I started taking pictures of barns along the way. They were neat looking, so maybe that was the reason. Here's one of them...
The lunch stop at Enterprise was very comfy, green grass to sit on, live music, that sort of thing. A group of enterprising (pun intended) young people who looked to be about nine or ten had a bike wash going, but I was, once again, photographically incompetent and didn't get a picture of them. I did, however, get a picture of the general hubbub...


Wallowa Lake is a beautiful lake so I couldn't help but stop for a photo op on my way back to camp...


When I got back to the lake, Mike, Todd, and Craig flagged me down at the bridge over the inlet stream. "You gotta see this!" There were salmon all over the place, heading upstream to spawn. The little red things in the picture with the arrows pointing at them are fish. Really. Trust me on this one...

That night's dinner was salmon. How appropriate, eh? I for one do not consider salmon to be one of my favorite dishes so I suggested to my campmates that we go to town for steak. A piece of medium rare beef seemed to me like just the thing to end the week on, so we all hopped the shuttle into Joseph to the Stubborn Mule. Let me say that I heartily endorse the Stubborn Mule as a place for dinner...

The next day was the grand finale. We began with what was essentially a downhill free for all, in which I found myself averaging 18 mph. Which proves that it was indeed downhill. Lunch was in Wallowa and even at 10 in the morning, pulled pork makes for good eats. The "lunch" line was long, but the food was worth the wait...

Minam Summit was the only big climb for today. Hearsay has it that Minam Summit is 5 1/2 miles, and I won't argue. By this time it was getting toasty out, so I was glad I had my Camelbak. I just geared down and settled in spinning. One of the interesting points for me was a lady I passed just after her front tire blew. Loudly. Going uphill! I've heard of tires blowing on downhills due to excessive braking, but uphill? Unheard of!

From the top, it's possible to see quite a ways, and I did remember to take a picture from there...


My brother and sister in law, who live just outside Island City, met me at the finish line. So did people with chocolate milk and some really yummy cookies. We met up with Cheryl at long-term parking and found my bag. It was time to head home, with a stop at Susan's for a shower and Subway in La Grande for food...

So another Cycle Oregon has come and gone. This year's ride has been described as "a vacation instead of a death march". It was much easier than last year, which is good, because I was much less prepared than last year. The weather was great, the food was good, the company was fantastic, overall it was a great ride. And once again I want to thank Mike, Todd, Craig, Larry, Colleen, and Jerry for letting me tag along and be part of their group, even though I'm "the fat kid from down the block who wants to play and can't always keep up". You guys are the greatest...

Cycle Oregon 2008, part the third: Halfway

The proverbial writer's block sets in at the most unexpected times, or it does to me anyway. That's why it's been so long since my last post. Just when one thinks that one will accomplish great works of literature, suddenly the mind goes blank and the creative juices dry up until the writer's brain is as barren of words as the Sahara Desert is of ferns and mosses. So to speak...

Then, just when you least expect it, a veritable torrent of words forms in the brain, all clamoring to get out...

So now, at last, the saga of this year's Cycle Oregon continues...

I won't comment on the weather from here on out except to say that it was beautiful the whole week. Anyone who is so meteorologically inclined can probably look up that week on the National Weather Service website and find out daily temps, etc...

The ride from Baker to Halfway was relatively uneventful, for me at least. There was a police traffic stoppage at the bottom of Flagstaff Hill outside of Baker, because, as rumor had it later, someone tangled wheels with someone else at the top of the hill and tried to make an impression on a passing RV. Didn't hurt the RV at all, and I heard that the cyclist was mainly just scuffed up. Apparently his guardian angel had a hand on his jersey collar...

The traffic stoppage made for some very nice, traffic-free riding for quite a while, which was nice, considering that the Richland Highway is the only means of getting from Baker to that part of the world and is generally on the busy side...

The first rest stop held a couple of photo ops. The first was a really well done rendition of the classic T-bucket street rod...

The second was the presence of Billy Bear. The story of Billy has been told elsewhere, so let us just suffice to say that Billy was once an alcoholic bruin and is now on the wagon. And occasionally on the blue rooms...

The ride down the Powder River to Richland was a lark, punctuated by one relatively short climb just when the day was starting to heat up. There is a nice wide turnout at the top of that hill where Dance Hall Road takes off and goes around the hill which made for a dandy "stop and catch my breath" place. From there it was a really nice flight down to lunch...

At this point I would like to interject a brief discourse on the Cycle Oregon food. Apparently there are those in the cycling world who feel that since they paid their money that the food should be catered strictly to their tastes and to purgatory with anyone else. Consequently there has been a good bit of bitching about the food on the Cycle Oregon Forum in the aftermath of what I consider to be a great vacation. I personally wasn't one of the prima donna's doing the bitching. I like the food on Cycle Oregon, except for the Friday salmon, but I don't care for salmon anyway. Lunch at Richland was a chicken salad wrap with mayo, which I found to be delicious. "Too much mayo before a climb" lamented some later. To which I say, "Get over it! They're doing the best they can!"

Rant mode off...

After lunch was the climb up Halfway Hill. This is a relentless climb which I am not ashamed to say occasioned a couple of rest stops, er, photo ops before the top.

The view from the curve at the top of the first big climb up Halfway Hill is great. You can see Richland, and part of Oxbow Reservoir (arrow in the picture) and a long ways across the hills. But then you get back on your bike, and start spinning again. Then came the glorious flight to the bottom. I would have gladly paid one of the sag drivers to take me back to the top so I could make that trip again...

I had decided ahead of time that the layover day in Halfway would be a true layover day. No biking, just working on my beached whale imitation. The rest of the gang decided to ride to lunch, which was downhill going and uphill coming back, except for Mike, who bravely got together with a bunch of the other guys from Boise for a hammerfest all the way to Hells Canyon Dam and back. Mike is a true road animal, but when he got back he looked thoroughly toasted. He was muttering something about headwinds and climbs...

Made me glad I didn't go. Instead I did some laundry and just generally goofed off all day. After all, I was on vacation...

This was my impromptu clothesline...

And on an entirely unrelated-to-cycling note, there was an Elvis sighting in the beer garden...

Cycle Oregon 2008, part the second...

Day 2 dawned bright and sunny once again, and a trifle chilly. This was the day of the first actual climb of CO 2008, the trip up Catherine Creek on the way towards Medical Springs, which is the gateway to Pondosa and the Eagle Creek drainage. Or at least that's the way my family thinks of it. Whenever we go to Eagle Creek, we go past Pondosa and through the microdot metropolis of Medical Springs. Pondosa is the site of a former saw mill...

The first miles of the route followed Catherine Creek. It was mildly uphill and extremely scenic. Unfortunately this was one of those days on which I forgot that there was a camera hanging from the hip belt of my Camelbak, otherwise I'm sure I could have gotten some very cool pictures...

Somewhere along the way I was passed by Matt and Susan from Corvallis. When I said "Hello" to Susan, she decided to slow her pace enough to ride alongside of me for a while so we could visit, which we did to the first rest stop, after which she vanished into the crowd. Thanks for making the miles go a little faster, Susan...

The actual climb up to what I believe is called Catherine Creek Summit is only about 2 1/2 miles, but for somebody whose mileage has not included a lot of hills this summer, it was the first true challenge of the day. And of course I was over-dressed for such activity. About a mile up, I decided that even if I encountered frost bite on the way down the hill to Medical Springs, I had to shed some clothes. It was either that or expire in a puddle and puff of smoke, similar to what happened to the wicked witch in the The Wizard of Oz, leaving a perfectly good bike to lay and decay alongside the road. "I'm melting..." Besides, as everyone is so fond of saying, "This is a ride, not a race"...

On the road once more, I had finally struck a comfortable cadence and was making my way steadily up the road, punctuated by numerous calls of "On your left" and even more numerous passers whose first indication that they were passing me was the swish and click of tires and derailleurs (sp?). But we won't go there...

Then about a half mile from the top of the hill disaster struck, in a manner of speaking. My lovely wife claims that I can't pass up a rest area when we're traveling. I had of course availed myself of the blue rooms at the last rest stop, but I had also consumed a rather large container of fruit juice at the rest stop in addition to the big cup of coffee I took back to camp with me after breakfast. And of course gaspingly slurping from my Camelbak as I pedaled. As I was chugging slowly up the road, it occurred to me that yonder pine tree looked exceedingly thirsty and that it was my duty to do what I could to assuage that condition. In other words, I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to pee, and that big tree looked like the perfect place. Unfortunately stopping totally ruined my cadence so I just kind of thrashed my way on up to the top of the hill after this impromptu rest stop...

The flight down into Medical Springs was much shorter time-wise than the climb to the summit, but it was a great deal more fun. I think my top speed for that stretch was somewhere in the vicinity of 40 miles per hour. I pedaled across the valley, up another short hill, across the north end of Keating Valley, then slogged my way to the top of the ridge that separates it from Baker Valley. From there it was a swooping flight to the valley floor and an easy pedal to the lunch stop...

At the lunch stop I ran into Kathy Orr, who works for the Baker City Herald newspaper. After the usual "How long have you been doing this? I didn't know you did this!" conversation she told me to "Come find me before you leave. I want to take some pictures of you." Which I did, and one of the pictures ended up on the back page of the Herald and proves once again that even homely folks can get their picture in the paper if you know the right people...

The rest of the trip into Baker was relatively uneventful, except for the "clunk clunk" of my tires crossing the expansion cracks in the frontage road for about five miles, which gets somewhat uncomfortable after while and are the reason I rarely ride that stretch of road if I can keep from it...

Highway 30 led to Hughes Lane which led to the Leo Adler Parkway which led to my only flat tire of the whole trip. I was bopping along on the Parkway, having a grand old time, when my front tire suddenly went "Pfft!" and the air that had been holding me up departed for parts unknown. The ensuing squirming of my front wheel quickly brought back Brett Fleming's crash avoidance lecture the night before in Union and I managed to stop safely. I could see the camp just across the mint field beside me so I decided that if I was going to fix a tire, I was going to do it comfortably, so I hoisted my bike up onto the back tire and strolled into camp, on the Parkway trying to look nonchalant...

That afternoon there were no shower lines! This was undoubtedly due to the majority of riders having taken the long option. I'd just ridden that route the previous Monday, so I didn't go that way...

At this point I have to mention one of the baggage handlers, aka high school kids, who went above and beyond the call of duty. When I first got to the BHS sports complex, this kid about five feet tall, with glasses, asked me if I wanted help finding my bag. I told him my rider number, and we gave things a cursory onceover. My bag didn't just reach out and grab either one of us, so I told him I would go find where my traveling companions were camped and come back. His reply was that he would keep looking...

When I got back to the baggage area he immediately came up to me and told me he'd found my bag and would I like him to deliver it for me. Thinking that was an excellent suggestion I pointed him toward our area and went and got my bike. Now remember, this bag is huge. Really huge. I think I probably could have stuffed him inside and zipped it up and he would have been perfectly comfortable. And he had about 1/4 of a mile to go with it, which he did, no complaints. When we got where we were going, I handed him some dollars and said, "Give this to your coach." Then I handed him a few more and said, "Pocket this. You went above and beyond." His smile was more than worth the few bucks it cost me...

That night was the movie Blazing Saddles on the big screen after announcements, and the next day was the trek to Halfway...