Cycle Oregon, Final Thoughts

Some dear friends I used to work with believe that I have been abducted and brainwashed by a freak “health & fitness” cult. They came to this conclusion about 16 months ago when I was training for a triathlon. I would do things like “go to the gym” after work instead of going to happy hour and spend whole days on the weekend engaged in some sort of athletic endeavor or other. I would also eat “healthy” food and “balanced” meals.

I used to think their viewpoint was merely amusing, but after having spent a whole week with bicycle freaks, I’m starting to see their point about the brainwashing. I found myself thinking fond thoughts of lycra and spandex – even on dudes – and the hideous jerseys cyclists consider fashionable attire started to look pretty sweet. Even the diaper butt shorts and awkward walk with cleats started to seem “normal.” And I’ve already commented on the terrible example crazy bicyclists set when it comes to injuries and whether or not to rest. If the ride had been any longer I don’t know if there would have been any saving me!

A last lingering thought – one of the best things about Cycle Oregon was that I was outside the entire time. I don’t know if I’ve ever been outside for a whole week straight. I’ve gone camping a lot, but not for a whole week. I’ve spent more than a week at the cabin, which is sort of like camping and does involve being outside a great deal, but we still have the shelter of the cabin (lack of electricity, running water and other such amenities not-withstanding.) And in both those cases one often drives somewhere on occasion or stops in at a store or lodge or something. Not on Cycle Oregon though! It was Friday (Day 6) and it was cold and raining and a bit on the miserable side. Lunch that day was at a community center (all the others were at parks along the way) and they actually served it inside and there was a large hall where people could sit and eat. Part of me welcomed the warmth but standing inside and feeling the stuffy, non-moving air I realized I hadn’t been inside anything of any sort for days! Meals were served in open-air tents, we biked outside all day, then hung around camp all evening and then slept in tents all night. It was absolutely lovely. Getting back to “civilization” I actually started to feel a bit batty at all the time I had to stay inside (to sleep, to cook, to run errands, to visit the chiropractor, to do laundry and other such chores.) And I still feel a bit batty about it. I went so far as to bring my book-binding and massage table outside!

Finally, no more Cycle Oregon posts and Wayward Princess can start on new adventures!

Day 7, Finished!: Vernonia → Astoria

The final day of the ride began with mist so thick I couldn’t wear my glasses. I generally try to wear my sunglasses all the time to protect my precious eyeballs from, not only the sun but wind, bugs, dust, flying bits of gravel and other such dangers. However, it was decidedly much safer to go san-glasses as when I had them on it they would get so steamy and streaky from my body heat and the mist, respectively, that everything would be dark and mottled. After lunch, in the small town appropriately named Mist, things cleared up and we had a lovely ride along the Nehalem (sp?) River to the mouth of the Columbia in Astoria. The transition from woodsy timber beachy coastal was quite lovely and there were oodles of lovely vistas along the way.

I have to admit, however petty this may be, that one of the highlights for me had to be the brief subjugation of male macho-ness I was able to affect. Remember how I’ve been riding in the Sierras all summer? Well, that makes me exceptionally strong on the uphill when compared to my ability on the flats. As a result, quite often people will pass me on the flats or the very base of a hill only to have me cruise right by them on the uphill (I mentioned this before but it is critical information for this little vignette.)

So, there we were just approaching a hill when this guy passes me. He kept looking back and I realized he was with a group of 4 or 5 and in taking the lead of the pace line he’d rather dropped everyone so there was me sort of caught up in the middle of this group. Just as the hill starts to get serious (the point where I start passing people) another guy in his group rides up to me and says something along the lines of, “Hey, let’s go real fast and pass this guy up here, okay?” The point being that I was a “girl”, complete with streamers on my bike, and that would “embarrass” his macho friend. As I was already about to do what he suggested I went ahead and did it, but I was a trifle bit irked at being a pawn in their rather sexist-macho display. On the flat the same guy who’d spoken to me said something along the lines of, “Hey thanks, that was great,” and then the pace line proceeded to move along.

After a minute or so I realized that though they’d pulled ahead of me, we were really going at the same pace and since there was a pretty stiff head wind I crept up and tacked on to the back of their line without them really realizing it (I know, not great etiquette, forgive me.) After a mile or two there was another hill and just after hitting it their line fell apart and they all started to slow down. It was with immense satisfaction that I very forcefully passed them all amid many comments of surprise from the macho-boys. I continued with a faster pace all the way up (even though it rather winded me!) and they weren’t even anywhere close when I reached the top. The downside is that they then had to then assert their macho-ness and so picked the pace up on the flats. Where I’d snuck on before, there really wasn’t a chance of it now and I was left to battle the wind without the benefit of a pace line. It was most definitely worth it though!.

Another highlight that must be mentioned was the final final climb of the ride. After 420 or so miles of riding we ended with a 1.6 mile, 700 foot climb to the base of the Astoria Column – an old lighthouse that looks out over the surrounding ocean, river and gorgeousness. It is quite the breathtaking culmination of a kick-ass journey across the state. Breathtaking for the view and breathtaking because the grade of the climb is a killer! From there is was a mere mile or two downhill to the finish line (and VICTORY!) at the waterfront.

Day 6, The Land at Eden’s Gate: Champoeg → Vernonia

Generally we tried to force ourselves to take it somewhat easy so as not to over do it, get injured and so on, but I just couldn’t help myself that morning. I was so excited to be riding my bike and for my knee to be working that I got a bit carried away for the first part of the day’s ride and not even the light rain we started off in could dampen my spirits. We were averaging about 15 or 16 mph when usually we tried to keep it more around an average of 12 or 13 mph. I also found myself barreling down the hills at 30+ mph when I usually am a super chicken and get nervous at 25 mph. I think my top speed that morning was 34 or 35 mph.

It was also fairly gorgeous in the Willamette Valley. I was a little bit surprised at how breath taking it was. I was expecting it to be nice, but it is the area I grew up in and whenever I’m in OR that’s where I am so I thought it wouldn’t startle me. But it really was gorgeous – mist and rain and cold and all – and I can understand why Louis & Clark referred to it as “The Land at Eden’s Gate.” The photo here really doesn't even come close to doing it justice.

Despite the excitement at being back on my bike and the beauty of it, I do have to admit that the portion of the ride after lunch was not exactly super fantastic. It was cold and raining – raining rather a lot – and I really wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have enough warm clothes so I was cold and stiff and when it was really raining there was a direct river of water streaming off my front tire or the back of my jacket (or something) directly into my left shoe. It wasn’t just wet in there, or soggy. It was absolutely flooded. And to top it off my dad was having hamstring trouble. I had to go faster than he could go – otherwise I would have frozen – but then I would have to stop to wait. Huddled under an awning at a rest stop I was literally shivering. The hot shower when we finally got to camp in the timber town of Vernonia was exceptional.

Day 5, Rax to the Max: Layover in Champoeg Park

When I was little my mom would get home from work and sit on the couch and say, "I need to relax." I clearly didn't quite get what she was saying and would sit myself on the couch with my arms out stretched and say, "I need to rax. I need to rax."

And rax is what I did on Day 5. I did a bit of laundry in a bucket, I did a bit of knitting. I might have done a bit of reading. I ate - a lot. And basically just spoke kind words to my knee with the hope that by Day 6 it would be feeling peppy.

Since there isn't much to recount from Day 5 I think now is the time to discuss food. In general I like food and eat a lot. Couple that pre-existing predilection with hours of intense biking and you have Brooke eating a ton. Supposedly you burn something between 400 and 600 calories for every hour on the bike. Multiple that by 6 or so (we generally biked between 5 and 7 hours each day) and you get a sizeable number of calories burning away. Supposedly the guidelines are that people should be consuming 6,000+ calories each day on the ride and I actually believe that is about what is needed.

As a result we often found ourselves eating about three times what a normal person might eat. Breakfast wasn’t just eggs and hash browns or cereal and yogurt or oatmeal and fruit but all of that put together. My standard breakfast was ~3 eggs, hash browns or potatoes with cheese or whatever other option they had, oatmeal with raisins, cereal, milk, yogurt, a spot of fruit perhaps and some orange juice. This would be around 6:30 or 7:00 and by 10:30 or 11:00, despite a Luna Bar along the way, I would be starving for lunch. The other meals tended to be rather similar – an unseemly amount of food being packed away by one and all. It was great!

Day 4, Battles: Rooster Rock → Champoeg Park

A fierce battle raged within me on this day. My knee hurt. I woke up and it hurt even before I got on the bike, but I decided to give it a try. The ride started with a few miles of a flat warm-up and then made a serious climb (close to 1,000 ft) from the river up to the Vista House for a gorgeous view of the Columbia River below. And my knee felt okay. Not great, but it didn’t seem to be getting worse, so I was feeling optimistic. The knee stayed about the same for the first 22 miles of the ride that day, but after the second water stop it started to seriously hurt. By the time we got to lunch at mile 32 I was peddling with only one leg, going exceptionally slow and was exceedingly grumpy. I also wasn’t concentrating on my actual riding and came fairly close to eating pavement a few times.

For the rational mind this is a very clear-cut situation. Don’t keep riding you idiot! I wasn’t even really able to ride, I was doing further damage to my knee and I wasn’t enjoying myself. Additionally, if I was going to miss some part of the ride, this would be a good section to miss as it had more traffic and was right around where I grew up and where my dad still lives so it isn’t like I’d never have a chance to ride those areas. Also, by cutting the day short I would have the rest of that day to rest and the whole next day as Day 5 was our layover/rest day.

However, for the reptilian brain the choice is not so clear. She is driven by irrational competition (in a situation where there is NO competition as it isn’t a race of any sort) and a desire to NEVER SAY DIE! To make matters worse, the other riders were absolutely horrible influences. First off, anyone who does a 425-mile, challenging bike ride as their “vacation” is a bit skewed from the get-go. All around me people’s bodies were failing. People were tapped and bandaged and hobbling and still planning on continuing on. I didn’t want to give up and be weaker than all these other people! I also really did want to do the “whole” ride and see what was going to be in the rest of the ride that day.

In the end I managed to subdue the reptile within and with some degree of lingering shame got a ride back to camp on the sag wagon. It didn’t help matters that all the others on the sag wagon were simply people who pansy-ed out on the day. They were “tired” or just wanted to get back to camp. Several were perpetual “saggers” who didn’t even plan on being able to do the whole ride and just take the sag wagon from lunch every day.

Limping around camp that night I knew I did the right thing AND there was BIKE RODEO to lift my spirits. Bike Rodeo is a battle of another feather. Imagine crazy bike mechanics doing barrel races (on bikes) and lasso-ing each other with the inner tubes of bike tires. There was also jousting where one person rides/drives the bike while another stands on the back with a joust and tries to knock over the other team. My favorite “event” was probably the one where they all race around crashing into one another trying to knock each other over. The only rule is that you have to keep your feet on the pedals and the last one remaining wins. The bike limbo was also pretty cool. The limbo stick got way lower than the handle bars yet the mechanics were able to do some tricky counterbalancing and make it under.

Day 3, Sturdy Girl: The Dalles → Rooster Rock

Day 3 dawned and we were all looking forward to a lovely ride along the Columbia River. The old scenic highway, with only a smattering of traffic, winds its way along with a great climb up to a point called Rowena Crest. It’s a fairly tough climb, but I felt really great and the Sturdy Girl within me had awakened. Along with the help of my streamers I was able to just barrel up the mountain passing all sorts of people. Having trained in the Sierras all summer – and being on the smaller side so having less weight to pull along – I tend to be stronger in the uphill than anything else. Of course, all those people I pass on the way up breeze by me on the downhill ‘cause I’m rather a chicken and go slow, but still, it is very satisfying to feel like the climb up is so easy.

Following Rowena Crest we cruised down for a few miles and then hit a wide, no-cars at all, bike path that took us along gorgeous vistas before depositing us back on the old scenic highway where we had a lovely tour of notable waterfalls along the Columbia. Compared to the few bits of riding on the freeway (yes the actual dirty, noisy, scary freeway) these roads were quite lovely.

The one mar on the day was that a lil’ knee issue seemed to be developing and by the time we were riding the last few miles into camp I was having a bit of trouble riding. However, I took my bike to the lovely professional fitters with the Bike Gallery and we changed some stuff around (raised the seat, moved it forward, raised the handle bars, gave them a different angle, tweaked some things with my cleats) and I was ready to proceed on a bike that wouldn’t cause problems like that.

Day 2, Teamwork: Condon → The Dalles

I woke up surprisingly perky on Day 2. At first I seemed rather on the stiff side but after getting up and moving around a little bit found that it was really only my adductors (upper inner thighs) that were sore.

Day 2, in comparison to Day 1, seemed like it was going to be a piece of cake. 70 miles and “mostly downhill” was what all the organizers and other riders kept saying. And yes, while there was a significant amount of downhill, there was still a good deal of uphill. More than 3,000 feet of uphill in fact. And then there was the bit toward the end where we were on the flat, but heading down the Columbia Gorge into winds of 20ish mph. And the bit at the very end where we climbed 700ish feet up to camp. The climb was worth it as we had a gorgeous view, but I have to say I wasn't really mentally prepared for the challenges that day presented.

The first night one of the organizers was talking about safety on the road and really urging people away from pace lines. What is a pace line you might ask? His definition of a pace line was, “A great way to get hurt.” A pace line is a string of people working together. The person at the front is breaking the wind for the others and also creating a draft that helps pull those behind along. When you have a nice little group of people you all take turns leading and all get turns drafting and it makes your life much much easier. The trick is that you have to be right on the back wheel of the person in front of you otherwise you don’t the benefit. And if that person makes a sudden move or doesn’t warn you of something in the road… You can very easily get hurt. It is often a particularly bad idea to form a pace line with people you don’t know as you aren’t familiar with their riding styles and don’t necessarily know how to communicate with each other.

Despite these sage warnings, Day 2 demanded some impromptu teamwork. During one of the rather massive climbs – over 1,000 feet in 6 or so miles – my dad and I found ourselves going at the same pace as a woman just in front of us. She would be out front of us for a little while, then we would find ourselves passing her, and then she would pass us and so on. We weren’t working together at first, but after a while made a little pace line without even really talking about it as there really wasn’t enough oxygen to spare for small talk. Once we reached the summit and were going a bit easier we chatted a bit and rode together the rest of the way into lunch another ten or so miles (and another hill) away.

Later, when struggling against the wind despite a lovely flat grade I noted someone drafting off me as my dad and I switched lead back and forth. Now, etiquette is such that you don’t just bum a ride off someone. You should let a group know you’ve tacked on behind them and, more importantly, you should take your turn leading. Eventually the two guys behind us came forward and took the lead. Unfortunately our line faltered a bit when the guy leading made a signal he couldn’t lead anymore and my dad didn’t understand that was what he was doing and as the guy tried to slow down to hook onto the back my dad kept slowing down so there became a big break between him and the new leader. And then on top of that the guy who took the lead was a bit over zealous and picked the pace up significantly so the three of us fell even farther behind and then soon after we got all straightened out again the new leader had to pull off to the side of the road for some reason and our brief relationship thus ended. But it was great while it lasted.

Day 1, Masochism: Boardman --> Condon

Masochism. That is the word that kept running through my mind as we wound our way up and down through the wheat fields of Eastern Oregon.


We rode 80 miles and climbed 6100 feet. Many on the ride became intimately familiar with "puncture weed." I don't even know what it is for sure but it looks a bit like dried out brush or grass except that it is riddled with sturdy, sharp thorns and will tear your leg, clothing and yes, bike tires apart. At rest stops, lunch and other such pauses people often strew their bikes about the side of the road and in "grass" and many - many many - people got flat tires this way. And if that weren't enough, the day ended with a 12 ish mile climb into Condon.

The signs announcing we had made it were most welcome. I have to admit I was feeling pretty tired and sure that everyone else on the ride was "better" than me because it took us close to ten hours - between taking a long lunch, stopping at rest stops, stopping to stretch and just going plain SLOW on the hills - to get into camp. I felt much better after finding out that 200ish people didn't finish that day's ride and had to take the Sag Wagon in. (The Sag Wagon is a large van that picks up people who get injured, have mechanical failure that can't be fixed on the road or just plain give up.)

Despite the cold that night - in the 30's - I slept very, very well!

Cycle Oregon, my favorite

Where to start???? Cycle Oregon was such a great time! It was beautiful, fun, exciting, interesting, challenging and rather on the bizarre side. Most of all fun though.

I don't even know how to put it all into words. I think, for now, as I'm EXHAUSTED, that I'll just give a few highlights and try to add photos and more details in the next few days. Forgive the haphazard, rambling nature of this post.

First off, my dad and I both finished - whoo hoo! A full week, 425 miles, Boardman to Condon to the Dalles to Rooster Rock to Champoeg to Vernonia to Astoria, with tons of towns and sites along the way. It is actually a bit surreal to reflect on where all we biked and how friggin' far that is. I developed a little knee issue around Day 3 and had to stop in the middle of Day 4 but Day 5 was a rest day and by Day 6 I was back on the bike (with a seat adjustment and a taped knee) and I finished the ride feeling really strong (just ask the macho boys I left in the dust on a hill toward the end of Day 7.) My dad developed a bit of a hamstring issue but would pause periodically to do some strange rolling and streching moves - one which I liken to a move our dog Pearl performs when she's found something really juicy to roll in - and had to slow it down a bit but also finished feeling good.

My favorite part of the ride: With a huge adventure like this it is tempting to say, "Oh I couldn't possibly pick a favorite!" In some ways that is true, there were a number of pieces, events, places that stick out as "favorites" but right now it feels pretty clear to me that my "favorite" of the ride was the morning of Day 2, riding out of Condon. Condon is a small town of 800ish in the high plateau wheat country of Eastern, Oregon. We slept on their golf course. The night had been very cold - in the 30's - and it wasn't a whole lot warmer when we got on the road around 7:30. We did some easy climbing out of Condon and found ourselves at the top of vast rolling hills of golden wheat with sun streaming in from the east. The sky was perfectly clear in a way you only get with crisp, dewey mornings and all around in the distance you could see the mountains. Hood, Jefferson, Adams, St. Helens and more. It was so clear and clean and fresh and distinctly different from the lush, green, forresty, rainy Willamette Valley to the west that is the image people often have of Oregon. It was also a good deal of downhill stretching out in front of me! Which after Day 1 and its 80-miles, 6100ft elevation gain, ending with a 12+mile climb was a very welcome sight!

Okay, I'll end there tonight and will regal you (is that the right word?) with tales of Sturdy Girls, the Bike Rodeo, the crazy cult of bicycling, climbing the Astoria Column, and other such highlights.

Wild Animals

It's a wild, wild place up here in Oregon. Allllll sorts of animal encounters. Lovely for the most part, but occasionally sinister.

Our last day at the cabin my dad and I went for a short little ride before finishing packing, cleaning and departing. On our way up to East Lake we rounded a bend and saw up ahead a coyote crossing the road. It stopped in the middle, looked at us for a moment - as if assessing what manner of creature we were on our bikes - and then loped across the road and up into the woods to our right. I've never seen a coyote before and it was rather on the large side, even for a coyote, but I wasn't scared. It was more just... lovely.

That same day, as we were just about ready to leave the cabin, a pine martin was spotted running around out front the cabin. Again, a creature I've never seen before. They make me think of a cross between a fox, a ferret and a gopher. They are actually very cute, in a sorta goofy way, but are also extremely vicious, so I stayed inside to watch it.

Then there were also the frogs, fish, deer and so on. Lovely critters in their own ways, but not quite as exciting as the predators noted above.

Even in the domesticated greater-Portland-area critters abound. If I were to tell you about a spider and a bat, which would you consider the sinister creature? People have very strong emotions about each but they are both actually "good" creatures that eat up lots of bugs. I, however, defy this rational and can't stand spiders. A touch of irritating girliness, but an aspect of my character never-the-less.

I was about to go to sleep earlier this week and as I turned on the bedside lamp I encountered the dastardly creature hovering in a web in the corner right above the lamp. The spiders in this neck of the woods tend to be rather large with brownish tones, and of a particularly malevolent aspect. I stared at it for quite a while trying to assess the situation. There was no way that it could stay where it was. Sure it looked stationary at the time, but there weren't that many bugs about the room and if it WERE to move in the middle of the night it seems more than probable that any movement would be directed toward the warm, blood-filled being sleeping just a few feet away. And even if it didn't, knowing it was right next to me would drive me to distraction and there would be no way for me to sleep.

So it had to go.

But in getting rid of it I couldn't allow even the possibility that it might come close to touching me in some way. And I also couldn't kill it. This definitely rules out swatting it. Not only would that be killing it, but in the swatting process it might drop down to safety somewhere I can't reach or - even worse - somehow land on a foot or arm or hand or something. So I looked at it some more.

After ten or twenty minutes of hedging around trying to figure out what to do, coming up with a plan, discarding it, coming up with another plan, discarding it, leaving the room, coming back, leaving, sitting on the bed looking at the spider and so on I was ready for action. I took a long spear-like thingy made up of rolled up newspaper and sorta poked the edge of the web from a safe distance to see what would happen. I then used it to fan a breeze on the spider to see what would happen. These were both parts of further "assessment" to see if the spider was alive and what sort of reflexes and reactions it had. A bit more of this prodding of the edge of the web lead to the spider running up to where its egg sac was (ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh - spiders nesting in my bedroom) attached to the wall. Perfect. The time was now ripe to trap the sider, and its icky spawn, beneath a see-through plastic cup. A tall, thick one, to insulate me from the spider and its spider-ness. I took a deep breath here and then slid a thick piece of cardboard between the cup and the wall. I then marched downstairs and outside and sorta flung the whole contraption away from me. I relaize this meant the abandonment of the cup and cardboard outside, but I was willing to do that (and I did retrieve them in the morning.)

At last I could go to sleep. My adrenaline was going and my skin was still rather crawling from the ordeal, but I was able to go to sleep at last.

What about the bat you mentioned before??

Ah yes, the bat-ling. I have no trouble with bats - I think they are sorta cute and interesting. Not that I would like to have one as a pet or anything, but they are fun little things. I got home late-ish Wednesday night and discovered a bat upstairs. I guess this has been a problem before, bats in the belfy - so to speak. This one was very tame, however. It was curled up for a little nappy, hanging inverted from the ceiling. Lovely as it was, though, it had to go. And we employed a similar catching method to that used with the spider (which has its origins in how I trap moths.) Taking the waste basket from the bathroom my dad crept up on the bat and trapped it against the wall. Then, after sliding a flattened shirt box between the waste basket and the wall, we were able to carry it outside. The bat was somewhat disoriented, however and after the garbage bin was placed outside it didn't flutter away immediately. (How would you respond if someone trapped you in a plastic container while you were sleeping then hurled you outside?) Our black cat, Kokanee, however was much more vigigilant - and hiding in the darkness. As we went back inside she stalked up to the bin and nearly got herself a bat sandwhich but my dad stopped her and tossed the bat off the deck into the darkness. Hopefully the little guy recovered.

Never a dull moment here in the wilds of Oregon territory.

The Utlimate Sturdy Girl

Our week up at the cabin started off with a bang. Or a crash rather...

The good news was that nothing was broken. But then they took some more X-rays and concluded that there was indeed a compressed hairline fracture in the pelvis and while we already greatly suspected Marsha's cycling would be put on hold for a while, this pretty much confirmed that Cycle Oregon would be out for her.

It really sucks. She'd worked so hard for months and we were at the very end (like 3 miles from the car) of our last long training ride before starting to taper down in anticipation for the event. We'd spent the day touring various lakes in central Oregon, we'd ridden through icy rain and wind, practiced drafting and overall had collectively kicked some ass on the road. 60-something miles under our belt we turned onto a slightly rougher road to head back to the car. My dad was thinking, "Hmm... this road is sorta rough, we should probably slow it down a bit." I was thinking, "Hmm... we are at the end of a pretty long ride, we should probably cool it down these last few miles." We were all, however, tired, not really thinking and focused on getting back to the car and so were going along rather quickly. Then my dad, who was in the lead, hit a fairly sizeable pothole (perhaps not to a car, but for people on lite little road bikes) and was barely able to get through it. Unfortunately, because we were drafting off each other and therefore riding right behind each other's back wheels, he wasn't able to warn Marsha who was already somewhat unbalanced due to favoring a left elbow. She hit the hole, fell off the right and skidded around and along. Being right behind her I had a fairly frightening view of the fall and am utterly astonished that I didn't crash myself. It seems to defy the laws of physics that her crash right in front of me wouldn't catch me up. However, I emerged unscathed, leapt off my bike and ran back to her. Some kind passerbyers stopped and gave us a blanket, some iced-tea, gave my dad a ride back to our car and helped slow and divert traffic around Marsha, who was, after all, splayed out on a back road highway.

To summarize: Marsha has a lacerated elbow (the doctor in the ER suggested we check the road or the inside of her clothes for chunks of missing flesh), six stiches in that elbow, a contusion along her right hip that looks like a bruise the size of a melon with road rash streaming out behind it so it has a bit of a flaming meteor look about it, a big gap in the flesh of her right ankle, abraisons and bruises alllll over the right side of her body (shoulder, chest, legs, arms), bruises along the inside of her left leg, some cracked or deeply bruised ribs and a fractured pelvis.

The good news is that we ended up back at the cabin for the week. The long ride back to Portland seemed rather torturous and the thinking was she could rest better at the cabin than at home. The one sticking point was getting to the bathroom. Up at the cabin the "bathroom" is the outhouse about 20 yards from the cabin. But we got a camping potty and put it right next to the bed so it worked out rather well.

Marsha, however, is QUITE the sturdy girl. With all that is going on she is healing up pretty well on a flesh-level (I got no idea what's going on with the bones), is fairly ambulatory on the crutches, seems to be getting better each day and through it all - even in the hospital where they systematically tortured her with needles and moving her in painful ways - has been cheerful and positive.

For any of those, like our favorite neighbor up at the cabin, who want to tease her with nicknames like "Crash" or claims like, "It seems you can't be a very good rider, keep fallin' off like that!" I would like you to consider the following: She started riding for the first time in years just a few months ago, broke her elbow two months back but kept at it, had just ridden 60+ miles in the mountains and was barreling down the road going 20+ mph. How many of YOU would have faired any better?

p.s. I have some lovely photos from before the crash but technology and I are in a bit of a tiff so you'll just have to wait. My appologies.