Blue Mountains

Our "lion lunch" outside of Baker City, OR in the tall grass, looking back at the bikes on the freeway shoulder.



Great shadows riding into Baker City, OR



Yummy, Yummy hippy lunch in Pendleton, OR



Robyn taking a photo of me taking a photo, going up Blue Mtn, OR



Blue Mtn, OR



Blue Mtn, OR



Blue Mtn, OR


Whew, where to begin???

I think the last time we wrote we were in Pendleton, about to cross the Blue Mountains to La Grande. The locals tried their hardest to freak us out about how hard it was going to be, but it turned out to be one of our best days of biking so far. It's so much more gratifying to pedal up a mountain and down the other side than it is to drop 100m, gain 110m, drop 100m, gain 110m, etc so that eventually you've gained a total of a few metres in a day while climbing all day in the sun. Grrr!!! Anyhow, back to Blue Mountain - yeah, it was great! This is park of the Oregon Trail wagon train route, so there were some historical markers and whatnot as we got up to Deadman's pass and then down into La Grande. La Grande is up on a bit of a plateau so it's cooler than Pendleton, which was really appreciated.

We found a little bike shop in La Grande where I bought some new gloves to replace the one's I'd lost in Snoqualmie and the nice mechanic straightened out the hanger on my bike. Then we camped at an RV site where they had apparently been experiencing some vandalism and there were angry signs in the bathroom saying things like, "There is no excuse for sticking plungers to the walls!" teeheehee... couldn't help but find that funny...

The ride from La Grande to Baker city wasn't very long - 45 miles or so - but it was hot, and we had several flat tires to deal with. Have I mentioned that we've been plagued by flat tires? I mean, of course flat tires are expected on a bike trip, but we've had 16 so far. SIXTEEN!!!!! It's getting kind of ridiculous. They're not pinch flats either, they're all from road shrapnel and thorns. Doesn't help that my bike tires appear to be shredding apart and have strings of rubber hanging off them and they're full of holes (yes, the actual tires, not just the inner tubes). I think the heat is getting to them. Will try to replace them in Boise, I think.

Anyhow, back the the original point of that last paragraph... I got another flat about 10 miles out of Baker City. We stopped to fix it on the side of the road and it took a little while because we hadn't been able to find the hole in the last flat that we'd fixed (about 20min prior!!) because of the wind and noise of the highway, so we had to patch that same tube and put it back in. Blah blah blah, anyway by the time Alana was pumping it back up a state trooper had pulled in behind us, saying "loads of people been calling in about two young ladies stranded on the side of the interstate with their babies". What the heck??? Just because we're female, people think that we have nothing better to pull behind our bikes than babies?? That's nuts. Besides, what terrible parents that would make us; stuffing kids into yellow rubber bags and then dragging them behind us along the interstate in 80 degree heat! Hehe. Good thing child services didn't show up before the trooper did.

Okay, this is getting a little long - I'm going to start a separate post.