For new readers, a bit about what this blog is about: my company (Automattic) holds its annual meetup in Utah again this year, and some time last spring I made it my goal to get there on two wheels. This is my first post about that trip — though it may include various other personal ramblings too. To wit:
There was a general kerfuffle recently when the author Jonathan Franzen revealed that his one-time desire to have a child had been more or less destroyed by none other than his editor, and that Franzen now says he allowed himself to be convinced that as a gifted writer, raising a kid was not the best use of his energies. Many people judged this revelation to be either egotistical (fair point) or just plain wrong (why can’t people raising children produce great art too — I certainly know of some who do!) But I think I get where he’s coming from . Of course I’m no artist. That said, I do believe that all humans — regardless of whether Oprah has promoted one of their novels — are given the ability to radically engage the world around us, and if children are not in the picture, that somehow becomes more possible, though clearly at a cost. The act of breaking away from daily life which in my case right now means riding my bike a long way, or at other times has meant going to live in the woods for a couple years, or flying half-way around the world to live in India for a while — these sorts of things are occasions and opportunities to throw oneself open to experience, to other people, to transformation: in short, adventure. So while I totally cop to shirking my genetic duty to the species and missing out on the sacred experience that is having children (though I guess not being attracted to women had some sway on all that) I find joy and opportunity in this other, different kind of doing: I get to ride my bike 950 miles over four mountain ranges! Hell ya!
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I had intended on starting out quite early this morning to leave Portland, Oregon, mile zero of my trip. However some combination of that city’s excellent beer, a wonderful conversation with my friend Leah and a certain amount of difficulty getting to sleep the night before meant that I didn’t really get going until about 9:30am. Not that it mattered really since my day’s ride was relatively short (just under 60 miles as compared to a trip average of about 77) and I thought it wise to ease into the rhythm and exertions of what I was about to do over the next two weeks. After all this is not a race — if one could even in theory have a race with oneself.
Portland said goodbye in its slacker fist-bump sort of way. Everywhere I looked as I pedaled away from the downtown area there were locals relaxing, doing nothing … slowly. Sidewalk brunch places overflowed. Hipsters on 80s bicycles lolled this way and that. Traversing the Willamette river on the stupendous new bike bridge (a structure opened just this summer which accommodates all modes of transport except cars) I was funneled into one of Portland’s many cycle paths — segregated superhighways which circulate bikes around town in a way that actually works for the people who use them. You can get nearly anywhere on a bike path in Portland and its suburbs — including out of town, as it turns out.
At Boring, Oregon (seemingly well-named) it was time to leave the trail and join US 26, my probable road-home for the next four days. In exurban Portland, 26 is a messy six lane highway passing through the town of Sandy and thence up into the forests around Mount Hood and up its broad flanks. I’d be spending the night at the ski-town of Government Camp (incidentally the site for most of the exterior shots in Kubrick’s the Shining — gulp.) But as I approached the base of the mountain, the close-in forest kept me wondering when the real climbing for the day would start — my route promised over 5,000 feet of climbing on the day, and I was sure I’d done less than 1,500.
I needn’t have worried. The tilt started just after the village of Rhododendron, where I’d stopped for break and chatted with a couple of young women running the local cafe. “Yah there’s a hill,” one of them said, laughing. “It’s not too bad though. Just steady.” That sounded okay. “Whenever I see a bike up there though I think they’re crazy.” That sounded decidedly worse. During the climb, along with mile markers (which I passed with excruciating slowness) there were also altitude indicators. 1500 feet. 2000 feet. 2500 feet. Then the signage vanished at the beginning of a 10-mile blast/construction zone, and so I found myself trying to guess how far and high I’d climbed. Cars whizzed by. I sweated. The road’s broad shoulder was there for me to chug slowly up, except when it was occupied by construction vehicles and I had to be inventive, making runs uphill timed to pauses in traffic. Then all of a sudden Mount Hood at its most naked reared up ahead of me around a bend, much much larger than I’d last seen it before the trees encroached.
I turned my brain off and made it to the top.