Don and Kelly Yoder, at peace along the Santiam River in the Oregon Cascades
Earlier in these posts I mentioned Donovan and Kelly Yoder. Don had assisted me when I had taught a community ed college class in bicycle touring and had met his wife, who was on her first tour. While I was crossing into Oregon they were celebrating their 31st anniversary, Donovan and Kelly will figure prominently in the next segment of this blog.
As dusk approaches my attention focuses on finding a spot to sleep. Given that in some respects I’m attempting to relive my more carefree past, my preference is to avoid motel rooms unless one serves a specific need – be that need for recovery from an injury, or access to continuous outside communication, for example. Otherwise my preference is to find a private spot to spread out ground sheet, mattress pad and sleeping pad and simply let sleep be sleep.
While riding into Albany something had not felt right in the rear wheel of my bike, and I figured that I would likely need the services of a bike shop. Indeed, I removed the rear wheel and sprocket cluster, and something felt unnaturally loose, beyond what I carried tools to repair. The mechanic at Peak Sports in Corvallis (the OSU college town near Albany, where I had lived in 1977) removed the freehub from the rear wheel and it fell off on the workbench; it had broken in half. The shop had a matching replacement in stock, and I left $50 lighter and seriously grateful that this failure had occurred in a college town with a professional shop rather than on a remote mountain trail. And to add a little bit of serendipitous magic, this was the same shop in which I had been once employed as a mechanic back then.
The repair went quickly and I was finally on the road crossing the central Willamette Valley on rural back roads. Following an exceptionally good meal at a Thai restaurant in tiny Lebanon, Oregon, I headed into the foothills of the Cascades, through Sweet Home and up the valley of the Santiam River. In short order as I began to climb I settled into an easy pedaling rhythm, a smooth flow of traffic noise and river sounds, and a smooth steady pace. With each mile upriver the forest got deeper and lusher, until it was a cathedral of every shade of green.
This was my first day primarily devoted to riding and I found myself settling into a sense of flow, with the machine, the road, the natural beauty. One realization quite surprised me: as I was climbing at a steady pace, I had the sense that given the current state of my physical conditioning, I feel just as strong as when I was in equivalent condition forty years ago; that is, that forty years of aging hasn’t in itself diminished my abilities. I hope that this isn’t a transitory delusion; I’ll report later whether this sense of youthful strength persists when we reach the real mountains.
I rode sixty miles today, ending at Donovan and Kelly’s family cabin deep in the forest. The cabin was built in the 1930s, with walls of solid Douglas fir logs set vertically, an approach I have never seen, and completely original to the solid wood days when it was first built.
Donovan, Kelly and I spent one day at the cabin and the river, as they had planned, swapping our stories of life and travels and raising kids. I came to realize how much we had influenced each other’s lives, back when we were 30+ years younger.
And in the morning we’ll head out on our bike tour across Oregon. The next blog post will have to wait until we’re next in wi-fi or cell range.
Below are three photos to accompany today’s post. The first is of Don and Kelly’s cabin, one of few views that could be photographed in the deep woods. The second is of the Santiam River, taken from the same spot. And the third is of two crazy cyclists ready to head out on Sunday morning, starting our trip.
