Weblog: Portland Cycle Tour: Portland
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Last night Greg, the night manager at the hostel, let me borrow a cycling map of the Columbia River Gorge to the east of Portland, so today I cycled a part of it. I put my bike on Portland's light rail system, known as MAX (made me glad I chose to ride the wedgie, despite the sore ass, arms, and neck) to Gresham, an outlying suburb. From there I cycled to Troutdale and took the Historic Columbia River Highway to Multnomah Falls, along the way stopping for some breathtaking views, beautiful forest, and seeing some other nice waterfalls, in addition to enjoying for once being on a quiet, meandering road.
Rather than returning by the same route, which is quite steep going west, I took I-84 back. The first five miles or so just flew by. There was hardly any traffic on the freeway, it had very recently been paved so the pavement was immaculitely smooth, and I had a tailwind that propelled me along at 23mph. After that the wind reversed and the pavement quality declined (though still good). From Troutdale I cycled the bike route along Marine Drive until it intersected I-205, then took the bike path that followed the I-205/MAX corridor south and back to the hostel. Along Marine Drive, I went for a quick swim with all my clothes on at Blue Lake to cool off. I saw some 40 Mile Loop signs, which I had been looking for yesterday. I would have liked to cycle the whole loop, but I also wanted to get back to the hostel.
I'm glad I got back to the hostel fairly early, because when I arrived there was a guy sitting at the table using his laptop (the hostel provides free WiFi internet access through Personal Telco). It turns out that he wasn't a guest, but that he and his wife run a nearby "3/4s way house". We got into a good conversation and he invited me to dinner. He also does film making and digital editing, so it's nice to have a contact who knows about this stuff. After dinner, he went to spend the evening with his wife and I went to Portland Coffee House with a woman who was staying there. Definitely the strangest coffee shop I've ever been in, it feels like you're just walking into somebody's house, and they just happen to be selling coffee. They also provide free Internet access (SSH even). Everyone was hanging out in the backyard, where someone was giving free guital lessons.
Weather was sunny and very hot (around 34 degrees).
Distance: 95.17km today,
829.39km total;
Average Speed: 20.1km/h;
Time: 04:42:58
Posted
on
Tue, 2 Sep 2020
at
Portland,
OR,
US
(altitude 49m)
(map/google earth)
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