John’s Ramblings

Jim Carson had turned me on to the concept of going to Pendleton Oregon over Memorial Day weekend to participate in the Century Ride of the Centuries cycling event. It’s billed as “3 days of support for your cycling addiction”, which roughly translates into 3 days of bicycling through the farms, ranches, and Blue Mountain foothills around Pendleton. “Century Ride” refers to the length of some of the rides (100 miles or kilometers), and “Centuries” refers to many of the farms we’d be riding past or through that had been in the same families for over 100 years. Feeling a strong urge to see some new territory from the seat of my bike, I signed up for Terri and I to attend this year’s version.

Friday

Friday was our travel day. Terri and I both managed to get the day off so that we could drive to Pendleton with adequate time to attend the pre-ride reception, briefing and registration, scheduled for 5 PM. We loaded the car in the morning and made it out of the driveway by 11:30 AM, 30 minutes behind my imaginary start time but well within tolerance for our schedule. I made a gross miscalculation of routes, however, and we headed south to Portland then east to Pendleton. This ended up being a gazillion more miles than the I-90 to I-82 to I-84 version, but allowed us to use the oft-neglected high-speed option on my windshield wipers as we rolled through band after band of heavy showers. Outside of Portland the weather cleared for a bit, before turning torrential again just before we reached Pendleton at roughly 6 PM.

We picked up our packets, and slipped into the standing-room-only briefing shortly after it began. The man in the Crocodile hat is Chuck, the Director for this year’s event. CROC is the acronym for the event, and the crocodile theme was repeated in the rest stops, t-shirts, cycling socks, and apparently headwear. The briefing reviewed the routes, warnings about road construction sites, pit bulls, and the occasional cattle grate. Not being familiar with the area much of this discussion went right over our heads. We did spend some time furrowing our brows over the ride profiles that were being displayed at the bottom of the projection screen. Eastern Oregon is not as flat as it seems by car, apparently. We had a small sampling of the heavy hors d’oeuvres, and excused ourselves to check into our hotel. We stayed at the Wildhorse Casino and Hotel, a sponsor of the event and the start/end point for the rides. After smuggling our bicycles into our room, we had dinner in the casino restaurant, and went to bed.

Saturday

The skies were solid overcast, and the wind was blowing strong out of the west. This meant that the first half of my day was likely to be spent riding into a 15-20 mph headwind. There were 25, 60, and 100 mile options for day 1. The maps and cue sheets were in full color, and the route was very well marked with color-coded Dan Henrys. Rough pavement and potholes were likewise marked with big orange X’s, and some of the roads had large blinking reader boards announcing cyclists on the roadway. There had obviously been a lot of time spent by the volunteers to make sure no one got lost and to minimize accidents.
Terri had spent a very draining couple of weeks at work, and was unsure how much distance she was game for. Fortunately, all three routes started out the same, so we rode together for the first 15 miles of slightly rolling ranch land southeast of Pendleton. The group was only about 200 riders in total, so you actually didn’t run into many other riders except at the rest stops.
The first rest stop was at the Safeway store in Pendleton. Terri made the decision to just do the 25 mile loop, and save her energies for the ride the following day. She headed back east to the resort while I turned head-on into the wind and headed up the Umatilla River on my own.

For the next 16 miles, I wound my way up the scenic Umatilla River valley on gently rolling roads. Traffic was extremely light, and the few cars and pickups (nothing larger) gave the riders a wide berth, and waved. We’re not in Seattle anymore, Toto.

The headwind was more of a challenge than any of the terrain. Still, I arrived relatively unscathed at the first rest stop, at mile 34. Many of the stops actually had themes, and the first stop was Hawaii. The volunteers were in grass skirts, and Don Ho was playing in the background. A hot baked potato was the sensible choice here, but as I’d find out over 3 days the Pendleton riders like their sweets, and there was a large selection of brownies and cookies at every stop. This stop was also the designated turnaround point for the metric century (61 miles), which was an out-and-back on the same road. I felt good enough that I decided to ride on and try the 100 mile version, thinking that the terrain wasn’t all that bad and I’d eventually turn out of the headwind.

Silly me. The turning point didn’t come until after the town of Echo, about 15 miles ahead. The route then turned north for a few miles, then east across wheat fields. Because the land was far more open than in the funnel of the river canyon, the benefit of the tailwind was far less than I had hoped for. Then the rolling started in earnest. These rollers just kept coming and coming for the next 12 miles, never giving you back as much on the downhill as you gave them on the up. By the time I hit the Wild West rest stop at mile 59, I was completely out of gas. In my weakened state, I succumbed to the giant platter of brownies, ate about 147 of them, and washed them down with a gallon of Gatorade. I then stretched out on a hay bale and contemplated the remaining 40 miles of rollers. The barmaid at the rest stop tipped me off to the bail-out option at mile 68, which would drop me down to the city center of Pendleton. Tired but with a much more realistic goal ahead of me, I rolled on to my appointed junction, hung a hard right at mile 68, and finished the last 5 miles with a screaming 2 mile descent into town. I pulled out my cell phone, called Terri and offered to buy her a beer if she’d drive into town, and I stretched out on a bench in front of the museum, waiting for the cavalry. Total mileage for the day was about 75.

Beer, shower, nap, and I was hungry enough to eat one of the horses we had passed in the morning. The CROC group came through with a banquet of lasagne, salmon fettucine, chicken breasts with a mixed rice whatever, fruit, salad, and brownies that I was unable to face after my afternoon binge. We sat with Rod and Lee, a couple from our area who had also made this trip. The entertainment was native american singing, with traditional dances performed by a local family dance group called “Generations”. The adults did the singing and drumming, and the children did the dances. It was an entertaining end to the day.

Sunday

The day was cold and rain was threatening as we started out on day 2. There were two routes of 46 or 25 miles, both ending at the Bar M Ranch east of Pendleton. We opted for the 25 mile version. The first 10 miles or so of this ride are ROLLING hills. These rollers were almost too big to call rollers, and we were very glad that we hadn’t decided to do a longer ride by the time we got to the rest stop at mile 12.

The rains started in earnest at that point, and we had a soggy 12 mile trek up to the Bar M Ranch and the end to the day’s ride. It was beautiful scenery, but not very visible through rain-spattered glasses. While most riders were either lodging or camping at the Bar M, we had booked late enough that there were no rooms, and we had opted to not do the camping thing, so after dinner and festivities we were bused back to the Wildhorse Resort and our king-sized bed.

Monday

Terri decided that she was going to opt-out of the Monday ride, as it would have ended with the same huge rollers that had beaten us up at the beginning of Sunday’s ride. So we skipped the bus ride and drove our car the 45 minutes up to the Bar M Ranch to drop me off, and to collect Terri’s bike. She headed back to the Resort to languish a bit longer before check-out, and I hooked up with Rod and his wife Lee to tackle the final day’s ride.

There were two options on routes, the 25 miler that retraced my previous day’s ride, and then the super size which tacked on another 25 miles with a climb up Cabbage Hill. The sun was finally shining, and after having made it through the rolling hills in fine form, we made the left turn uphill to do the longer ride. The climb was long, about 10 miles at a consistent 4% grade. This was my first climb of that length, but I found the grade to my liking and I was able to spin my way up with only a moderate amount of pain and self doubt.

The views on this climb were pretty spectacular, and the summit was at the top of a hill prominent enough to be the resting place of microwave, cell phone, and radio transmitting towers for the valley. The turnaround point was another 1.5 miles past the summit however (that would be downhill). We would have gladly just turned around at the top to avoid another climb to get home, but I was out of water so we rode to the designated spot at the Deadman’s Pass Rest Area. A short break and refill later, and we did our next-to-the-last climb of the day before a beautiful 10 mile descent to the valley. One last one-mile climb to the resort, and the weekend was done. 52 miles and approximately 7,000 feet of climbing on the day.

The drive home was fairly uneventful, opting for the shorter route to Ellensburg, then over I-90. There was a lot of stop-and-go between Ellensburg and Easton due to the holiday traffic, but we managed to get home before 10 PM, even with a dinner stop.

I would recommend this event to anyone without hesitation. The volunteers did a superb job of planning and hosting.

All my pictures from this weekend can be found here.

154 miles for the weekend, 1,494 YTD.

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