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.