Out of Oregon, or The Mammoth Leg

Oregon is a little strange about their roadways.  The speed limits are asinine and the state trooper’s predilection of preying on out of state drivers is legendary.  Add in the fact that the basic fines for speeding are in the hundreds of dollars and you get the feeling that Oregon does not want your business.  What do you expect from a state full of people who aren’t trusted to pump their own gas.

 

The first thing I noticed about Oregon was that they couldn’t care less about the fires in California.  Up and down the length of California there were firefighter camps and warnings about campfires and fireworks, both of which were illegal when I rode through.  Just on the other side of the border in Oregon was of all things, Firework Stands.  Not ten miles from a forest fire camp Oregon was happily selling fireworks.  Two months later, we all saw how well that worked out.

I found my bread and butter on Highway 199 and was ready to crush the road through the pass.  As I am leaning into a turn at a respectable speed, I see a “Motorcyclists Use Caution” road sign.  I think “Hey, fair enough.”  And then I hit the grooved asphalt on the turn at 65mph. 

I can just imagine the conversation.

“You know, we have too many motorcyclists enjoying our mountainous terrain.”

“Yeah, those bastards are always speeding and taking turns too fast.”

“I’ve got a great idea:  How about we groove the corners and remove the traction when they need it the most!”

“That’s brilliant!  We will do it on every turn that could potentially be fun in the entire state!”

If there is anything out there in the universe that determines true karmic justice – I’m talking to you, Jeebus-Hari Krishna-Buddha-Vishnu-Moonbeam – please, please give whoever decided to groove the turns on mountain highways a highly uncomfortable venereal disease.  I don’t want them to get HIV or anything like that, but I want it to feel like they are pissing razor blades.

While I didn’t wreck, the entire experience was borderline terrifying.  I stopped for the evening in Grant’s Pass, Oregon.  While looking over my bike for the evening, I had a couple of older guys pull into the lot near me.  They were both riding big double bagger Harleys.  I headed over to shoot the breeze for a minute and checked out their bikes.  The difference between my bike and theirs couldn’t have been more stark.  I was on a 16 year old base model BMW and probably the best feature on the bike were the Pelican Boxes I had installed myself. 

Cupholders, man.  Just what a motorcycle needs.

Their Harley’s were tip top and had ALL the extras.  Stereo, Cruise Control, Control Panel, CB Scanner, Bluetooth and Cupholders.  Cupholders, I tell you.  Honestly, I can do without pretty much all of that, but the Cupholder was pretty cool.  They had Big Gulps in the damn things.  At this stage in my life, I can’t fathom paying that amount of money and not getting a car.  Motorcycles are supposed to be the inexpensive option, you know?  At the same time, I was proud of them getting out on the road. 

More than once, I was asked where I was going, what I was doing.  When I described the trip, the most frequent response I got was “I wish I could do something like that.”  Either they don’t have the time or they felt that they were too old.  I am here to say:  If you have always wanted to do a motorcycle trip, just do it!  If you think you are too old, that’s what those massive double bagger land yachts are for!  If you don’t have time, do weekend trips!  Get out on the road!

I got up way too early and got ready to leave Grant’s Pass.  The plan was to ride to Bend and see how I was doing and potentially continue on from there.  I fired up the crappy coffee maker in the hotel room and ended up with 4 cups of bad, watery coffee.  Pretty much the opposite of Caroline’s black tar coffee.  FYI – when on a long distance motorcycle trip, too much liquid is worse than not enough caffeine.  I drank a cup of my brown tinged water and got on my way.

Tastes worse than it looks

 

The route was going to be fun – cut just north of Crater Lake and then ride along the Little Deschutes River up to Bend.  I circumvented Crater Lake because the bike is carbureted.  The pass into Crater Lake is close to 10,000 feet elevation and going from sea level to 10,000 feet and back down is asking for trouble.  I did not want to have to do a field strip and adjustment because my curiosity got the best of me.  The pass north of Crater Lake was just under 7000 feet and I didn’t have a problem but past performance is no guarantee of future success.

I am going to take a brief moment to discuss Oregon Signage and Drivers.  I hit Gold Hill just outside of Grant’s Pass and was trying to follow the signs to Crater Lake.  Crater Lake is kind of a big deal, you know?  There is a sign pointing to Crater Lake about 100 feet before a 4 way intersection.  And no signage at the intersection.  You have a 50/50 chance of picking the correct route.  This was a reoccurring theme throughout the Northwest.  The mindset is “If you are here, you know where you are.”  Wrong.  I am on the back of a motorcycle and need clear, direct signs. 

Diff'rent Strokes, Diff'rent Folks

Oregon Drivers are schizophrenic.  They would consistently slowdown 10-15 mph below the speed limit any time that the road became the tiniest bit curvy.  As soon as it straightened out, they would speed up to 10 mph over the speed limit.  The first time this happened in a passing lane, the car tried to cut me off as I was passing.  I may have kicked his fender just a bit as we merged.  I was furious.  Dude goes fifteen mph below the speed limit for ten miles, and then speeds up and tries to run me off the road when I pass.  I couldn’t believe it and it turns out, he is an accurate cross section of the Oregon Driver demographic.  Guys like him are the reason why Oregon drivers are not allowed to pump their own gas.

While I was being tortured by the population of Oregon, I didn’t stop to take very many pictures.  I was short on caffeine, frustrated and the bike was still running a little funky.  The ride along the Little Deschutes was beautiful, but you will just have to trust me on it.

I arrived in Bend at 1pm and stopped for tacos.  While I was there, I ordered all the parts I needed to repair the bike once I hit Idaho.  Did you know that on the mainland you can order parts, have them shipped Priority Mail and they show up like 3 days later?  It was a completely different experience than what I am used to on the islands.  Here, I order parts, pay an equal amount of money for shipping, some parts show up five days later, some show up eight days later, some are backordered, some never show, and eventually the bike has been disassembled for three weeks before all the parts are on island and at that point, all I want to do is light the bike on fire and throw it off the Pali.  That is an actual thing, you know.  Lighting vehicles on fire and throwing them off the Pali.

I was in Bend and Caldwell, Idaho was only about 250 miles away.  I had ridden about 275 miles already and was feeling good.  It didn’t make sense to find a place to stay when I had 8 hours of daylight left to ride.  Never mind the fact that I had already ridden for about six hours.  I pounded the first Red Bull of the day and headed east from Bend on Highway 20. 

Not Deer.

I had a major misconception going into this ride.  I assumed (that’s a bad preface, isn’t it!) that if a town is in a nationally published atlas, it will have basic services.  This was proven false multiple times, the first was in Central Oregon.  There is nothing between Bend and Burns.  I slowed down at Brothers and Hampton (both towns are in my Rand McNally 2016 US Road Atlas) and both towns had dried up and blown away.  There were no services for 110 miles east of Bend.  I stopped in Riley for gas at 118 miles on the tank and stopped again in Burns 30 miles later out of pure paranoia. 

Central Oregon is borderline wasteland.  It is arid, high desert and has never been claimed through modern irrigation techniques like Eastern Oregon has.  I blew through at seventy miles per hour and didn’t miss much.  East of Burns is a different story.  The high desert continues up through the Stinkingwater Pass but beyond that the highway runs along the Malheur River.  I was very fortunate and had a brand new, ungrooved (bastards) fresh asphalt highway with No One else on the road.  I passed one semi-truck and it was the only vehicle in my lane for seventy plus miles.  That stretch of highway from Burns to Vale redeemed Oregon for me. 

Dustan Bristol, I don't know how you do it

It was late afternoon and I had multiple warnings about deer – I saw no deer.  Quite a few “slow elk” as they are called in my family, but no deer.  I was almost disappointed but at the same time, the damn things love to run out in front of motorcycles so it was probably for the best.  Look through the Boise, ID Craigslist Motorcycle Listings sometime and every time you see a great deal on a bike they hit a deer out on Warm Springs. 

Highway 20 has some great names.  There is the aforementioned Stinkingwater Pass followed by the Drinkwater Pass.  While on a motorcycle trip, you spend a lot of time in your own head.  I came up with all sorts of fantastical reasons for the names.  Turns out that the Harney Basin is volcanic in nature, like most of Eastern Oregon and Southern Idaho and Harney Lake is Alkaline-Saline in nature.  In other words, the water is bad.  You cross the Drinkwater Pass and you reach the Malheur River which is potable.  Boring, but it makes sense.

As I went through Vale the terrain turned from pasture to farmland.  And in came the bugs.  I had no bug issues all the way to Vale and then the good times were over.  I was pasted with bugs for the next 2000 miles. 

I grew up in Caldwell, Idaho and had been through Vale, Nyssa and the surrounding towns.  I remembered none of it.  Fortunately there were just enough signs for me to not get completely lost.  It would be a little embarrassing to get lost in what was essentially my backyard.  There were just enough signs pointing to Boise that I knew what direction to go. 

I rolled into my Dad’s place just after 8pm.  I had been on the bike over twelve hours and clocked 533 miles.  As I parked in front of the shop, I took a few minutes to remove gloves, helmet and my backpack.  I wasn’t savoring the moment so much as doing everything I could not to fall off the bike in front of the neighbors.  They would never let me live it down.  My knee and back were pretty much shot at that point.

A real shop! Not a parking stall!

When I managed to heave myself off the bike I still had work to do.  Fortunately I had plenty of nervous energy left from my third Red Bull.  I got the bike up on the center stand, pulled all the body panels off and peeled away all the chunks and strips of foil.  I got the field strip done and made sure that I was in good shape to begin the repairs the following day.

The final tally for this leg of the trip from San Diego, California to Caldwell, Idaho was 1883 miles in five days.  The overwhelming majority of the rid had been on State Highways and I had ridden the length of California from South to North and the width of Oregon from West to East.