Covered Bridges 400k Ride Report

Covered Bridges 400k Ride Report
5/21/2007
Eric Ahlvin

A crew of dedicated Corvallis based Randonneurs has coalesced this year. Jon Beilby, Dan Youngberg, Dave Kamp, Bill Boggess and I put the Covered Bridges 400k (250 miles) on our ride schedules. For Dave, Bill, Jon and I it was a PBP qualifier. Dave and Bill are the PBP anciens (veterans) of the group and Jon is the animating spirit. For Dan, randonneuring is a new form of cycling adventure, and the 250 miles would be the longest one day ride of his life. Assuming we could finish in one day…

I drove to Dan’s house in North Albany on Friday after dinner, to carpool up to Newberg. Dan’s house is only a half mile off the route, so we decided to scout the route from that point up to Newberg. According to my projections, this would be the portion of the route we’d be doing after dark. As we rolled north, the rain started falling. It started out as a drizzle, then increased to actual rain. The weather was projected to be dry Friday and Sunday with 30% chance of showers on Saturday. Dan commented that the rain showing up early was a good sign, perhaps the weather was “getting it out of its’ system”. 250 miles in the rain wasn’t very appealing.

When we arrived in Newberg, we found our motel and then gave Jon a call. He was in Fred Meyer’s, acquiring supplies to make a mudflap for his fenders. It was a friendly gesture towards his fellow riders. On a rainy ride, the people without mudflaps kick up a rooster tail of spray and road grime. They’re relegated to the back of the pack, and aren’t allowed to do their fair share of work at the front of the line. Peer pressure is pretty effective with bicyclists, and everyone wants to do their fair share.

We were looking for a place to get a beer before bedtime, and Jon advised us there wasn’t a convenient smoke-free venue in Newberg. We’re from Corvallis and the strict smoking ordnance makes the smoke-free bars and taverns in that town enjoyable to non-smokers. We settled for a quart of Arrogant Bastard Ale that we consumed in our room to help us sleep. To be safe from oversleeping we set double redundant (3) alarm clocks.

All three alarms worked, and Dan and I quickly got up and ready. We were pleased to see that the rain had stopped during the night and that the roads were dry. We signed in and met Jon at the start. Soon Bill Boggess arrived from Corvallis. We met Case from Corvallis who was planning to do the 200k. Dave Kamp was also planning on driving up from Corvallis the morning of the ride, but he was cutting it close. As the departure time got close, we kept wondering “where’s Dave?” At 6:00 AM the group departed, and we called Dave on his cell phone. No answer, leave a message on voice mail. We waited about 10 minutes and were just heading out when Dave called back. He had overslept and was still a half hour south. We told him “bonne route” and kept rolling.

Everyone else was 10 minutes ahead of our group, so we got to see and chat with many people we don’t often see on a ride as we caught up and passed them. We were planning a long day so we kept an expeditious but not too strenuous pace. The first 20 miles we had plenty of time to chat and take pictures as we worked our way up through the stream of Randonneurs. Eventually we caught Dave “ready to ride” Rowe. Dave has ridden the last few Brevets with the Corvallis crowd and fits our group and pace. The route to our first stop in Silverton was flat to rolling. In Silverton we stopped at the farmer’s market in the park to use the restrooms. Dan was disappointed there was no food available at the market, just plants. From Silverton to Cole School Road it was a high plateau, with occasional rollers.

Cole School Road is one of my favorites because it has two rollers in close succession, just like a roller coaster. We were approaching it from the south, so we’d have a net elevation gain, which takes some of the fun out of the rollers. The series starts with a short uphill to a false flat to the edge of a steep valley. On the downhill into the valley I hit 41mph at the bottom, then there was a flat section that bled off some speed. I ended up in one of my lowest gears, standing, by the top of the other side of the valley. Looking down at the next valley, I could see another rider disappearing below the horizon. The downhill gets steeper so that it is actually a convex curve and you can’t see the bottom from the top. The rider reappeared and started climbing up the other side and I resolved to try to catch him before he got to the top. I set a new maximum speed pedaling down the hill and then pushed the momentum up the hill. I was gaining on the other rider, as he bogged down and stood up. The uphill was very steep, and as my momentum bled off I downshifted as rapidly as I could while keeping pedaling, not applying too much force to the pedals. My randonneuring bike has bar-end shifters, so I had to stop shifting when I needed to stand up, shift my grip on the handlebars and apply maximum force. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet reached my lowest cog (a 34) and was still in the 25. I was standing on the pedals and gradually caught the other rider just before the top of the hill. He’d gotten off and was walking, but he had a great excuse, he was on a fixed gear with about a 15 tooth cog.

A few miles after Cole School road we came to our first covered bridge, Shimanek. There wasn’t a secret control on the route, but we had to write down when each covered bridge was built. At this point we were in familiar territory because the Mid Valley Bicycle Club puts on a Covered Bridge Century that many of the Corvallians have ridden or helped in. This helped quite a bit because there were a couple of spots in this section where even the locals had to work to figure out the directions.

The Covered Bridge Café in Scio at 58 miles into the ride was the first official control. The town was starting to get crowded as people came to town for the parade associated with the Lamb Festival. There was a queue in the Café that slowed our progress so much we decided not to test their food. It looked good, but we went to the grocery next door and got typical bicycle food. After a long stop we rolled out just as other riders were starting to show up. We had some animated discussions about the next few turns on the route sheet, but followed Dan’s interpretation and made it to the Gilkey, Hoffman and Larwood covered bridges. We’ve ridden in the area many times, but were on some roads we never ride. It’s easy to get in a rut once you know the “best” way between two points, but the alternatives on the official route were just as nice as the ways we “usually” go.

At Lacomb I was running out of food and quickly grabbed three mini pecan pies at the store. They work great as bike food for me, 400 quick calories each for $.79. They’re not packaged as nicely as a Clif Bar, but with a little dexterity they can be consumed while riding. They’re only found at convenience stores, and I only eat them while riding.

Heading south on Bellinger scale road we encountered a couple of rollers. They split the group a little bit and Beilby saw Nate in front of us and chased after him. We were coming downhill, building for the next uphill. I was a hundred yards behind Jon and fifty yards ahead of Dave, Bill and Dan. At the bottom of the hill, I looked back in my mirror and saw that a considerable gap had opened up and some riders were standing by the side of the road. I decided to go back instead of chasing Jon and Nate, and after I turned I could see that Dave and Dan were standing and Bill was lying in the gravel by the side of the road. When I rolled up, Dan was standing over Bill, talking to him. We told him not to move and Dan checked for feeling in his extremities and that his eyes were tracking. He was OK, and didn’t really want to move. He seemed to be just taking stock of the situation from his spot in the gravel. Dan explained that Bill was second in a paceline of three and had hit a large piece of bark in the road. He’d swerved once, and then lost control and went head over heels when he went into the gravel shoulder. He’d fallen at about 20 to 25 mph onto the gravel shoulder and his helmet had taken the impact. Dave reassembled Bill’s bike as we tried to assess whether he would be able to go on, or we should call for a ride. Dan asked Bill what his wife’s name was, and Bill couldn’t remember. We asked if he knew our names and he knew one of the three. At that point, the decision about continuing became very clear and I called 911. Luckily there was at least marginal cell coverage and we were able to get a paramedic and an ambulance within about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, we searched Bill’s bike bag for ID and found the brevet card, some money, a credit card, but no driver’s license. We did find plenty of food, which we reluctantly left in his bag. A nice older man in a pickup had stopped to help, and we gave him Bill’s bike to keep until he could come back for it, and exchanged addresses and phone numbers. When the paramedics arrived, they pretty much repeated what Dan had done and then packed Bill into the ambulance for a ride to the Lebanon hospital.

It was a pretty quiet group of three riders that remounted and resumed the ride. We chatted somberly about what had happened as we rolled south. The mood finally brightened when somebody said “we should have taken his fig newtons, he won’t need them for a while”. I figured Jon would just ride on to the next control, assuming we were just behind him. Then he’d give a little time for a mechanical or a flat tire, and then he’d get worried and give us a call. As we rolled along I calculated distances, speeds and times and estimated when he would call. Sure enough, he called about when I estimated and we gave him the news about Bill. We’d lost forty five minutes, but Jon agreed to wait at the control in Sweet Home for us.

Sweet Home was the 100 mile point. Not even half way. We had a quick bite and got our brevet cards signed and continued south. We got the construction date off the Crawfordsville bridge and headed into the first (and only) sustained climb of the day on Brush Creek Road. After the summit, we headed down into the Mohawk valley and found the Earnest Covered Bridge at the half way point of the ride, 125 miles. Continuing down the Mohawk valley we refueled at the control at the Mohawk Post Store. The very friendly proprietor directed us to all the items we wanted and quickly got us on our way. We followed the Mackenzie River downstream and back to the Willamette Valley at Coburg. We felt like we were really half way home and back on familiar roads but the head-cross wind wasn’t very welcoming. We just had to put our heads down and fight the wind across and up the valley to the next control at Harrisburg.

From Harrisburg, we were truly on our home territory and we rode the 30 miles up to Albany without even putting a foot down. A real spirit lifter was the words of encouragement my wife and sons had chalked on Peoria Road. As we rolled toward Albany we discussed fast dining options and finally settled on the Subway in North Albany. It would be an efficient stop because we would also put on our night riding gear. We got sandwiches and inhaled them. Dan’s wife showed up to say hi and take some pictures and then it was time to get back on the road. The cross headwind decreased as we headed north, but we naturally slowed down in the dark. The familiar roads and our scouting trip the previous day made it easy to stay on course all the way up to Independence. In Independence the convenience store had just closed but the tavern on Main Street was really jumping. Rather than join the crowd in our lycra and reflective clothing we settled for ATM receipts to prove we were there and got back on the bikes. We’d passed the 200 mile point and were on the home stretch. We rolled through Salem about midnight and continued on toward Newberg. The stretch north of Salem was very quiet, with not many cars out at 1 am. We rolled into the finish at 1:45. Some pizza and food at the finish was very welcome.

The next morning the rain was back. We’d ridden in the only dry window of the weekend. We met Dave Kamp for breakfast and heard about his long, mostly solo ride. I called Bill and found that he was back home and up and around, so we made arrangements to return his truck and let him know where his bike could be found.

Except for the excitement with Bill, it was a good ride. 400 km is “the real deal” as Dave says, and definitely tested our endurance.