A Summer Jaunt Through Oregon, Part 3 - White Water

We fuel up on Dr. Pepper at Fossil's general store.  Leaving town the road gets serious--twisting and climbing.  There continue to be a marked paucity of cars, but we pass a lone cyclist sweating up a winding incline, shadowed by a pace car advertising the Race Across Oregon. This guy must have been either an outlier or lost, for we see no others on bikes.*

It's not long after that, though, that Eduardo begins losing power in fourth gear.  I drop down to third--nothing. Second--still nothing but sputters, until he comes vrooming to life as I downshift to first--thank God--sustains that wee bit of power up into second, and we crawl--barely--over the top of the hill.

Even coasting down the other side, Eddie begins sputtering again, and that's the way it goes for 75 miles and nearly 2 hours all the way to Maupin, most of that on a road that looks on the map like the convoluted slime trail thrown by a conga line of drunken worms.

Eduardo's vapor lock unlocked my own primitive, deeply felt fears of auto abandonment, making every incline we faced a worry it couldn't be climbed, and we would be stranded miles from anywhere, in this heat, at an increasingly late hour of the afternoon.

My trusting and capable wife fortunately did not share in my tension. It was not until we'd finally pulled into Maupin's Oasis Resort, that I was able to relax. A tasty plate of fish and chips and a bottle of Ninkasi's Total Domination IPA worked their magic, although I had to stuff tissue in my ears to keep from hearing a leaking toilet all night.

Surprisingly well rested, the next morning I used a teacher appreciation discount to pay for nearly half the cost of getting wet and having a blast on the Deschutes' white water rapids--Wapinitia, Box Car, and Oak Springs--highlighted in the video above.

Columbia, rolling on

No problems with Duardo this morning, even on the long climbs to The Dalles for lunch. On the afternoon and early evening trip back home, below the travesty of dammed-up Celilo Falls, we followed along the mighty Columbia for a while, the two hundred year old trail of Lewis, Clark, Sacajawea and Charbonneau. Tried to remember more than just the chorus to Woody Guthrie's, "Roll On, Columbia."

It's surprising, though, how long we stayed entertained belting out, "Roll on, Columbia, roll on.  Roll on Columbia, roll on! Your power is turning our darkness to dawn, So roll on Columbia, roll on!!" plus a lot of humming, and then one more time from the top.

*Back home, through the magic of interconnectivity, I discover at that location and time the bicyclist must have been either Robert or Scott Swanson--Team Sloth--subsequently to finish second in the two person relay class of this race in which "competitors climb over 40,000 feet [!] in their 515 mile campaign to reach the finish line in Hood River," according to the website.