Sing that to the tune you all know.

I arrived yesterday afternoon (that would be the missing day 36!) and headed to my next Warm Showers host, Bob. Another jackpot of a host. Bob ran a bicycle wholesale biz in Portland, OR before moving here and has a wealth of bicycle and touring knowledge. After a filling dinner of Pasta Primavera and exchanging touring stories, I hit the sack early to catch up on some non-Amtrak-seat sleep.

In the morning, I joined Bob on a ride with his senior cycling group, the Coffee Cranks. I can only hope to be as fit as this group as I age. We rode to a nice little cafe where I had a bagel with egg & veggies and of course a large cup of coffee. Bob’s been having some back/shoulder issues, so he cut his ride short, but Wes, Dale, and Herb invited me to continue with them and took me on a great path ride on the Sacramento River trail, and I ended up with 28 miles on that ride. Great group who couldn’t have been nicer. Herb even led me back to Bob’s as he lives in the same neighborhood. Tooling around the park and a little shopping trip added 12 more miles for a total of 40.

I’m going to catch the late train to Portland, OR on Tuesday and will get into Portland in the afternoon on Wednesday. While there are fires there, too, nothing is at the scale of the Mosquito fire which is still causing problems in the Reno/Tahoe area.

I manage a rides site for CentreBike at https://rides.centrebike.org. It’s built around the Ride With GPS mapping tool which I’m using extensively on this trip. Their headquarters is in Portland and I’m going to connect with my rep Alex while I’m there. Still working on a place to stay and what I’m going to be doing from there, but basically it will involve riding down the Oregon and CA coasts to LA.

I just passed 1,500 cycling miles and 1,800 train miles. Going to Portland is going to add to that imbalance, but I’m hoping by the end of the trip to have more cycling miles than train. However, ‘member the watch phrase of this ride: No rules! (or at least none that can’t be jimmied).

Me & the Coffee Cranks
Me & the Coffee Cranks, Herb, Dale, & Bob (Wes joined later)