Category: Bicycle

The Road to Roy

Tualatin Valley Quilt Barn Cemetery Data Center Bicycle Tour

A Tualatin Valley bicycle tour including Roy, quilt blocks, nuts, grass, data, berries, and a cemetery.

Headed north out of Hillsboro on Glencoe Road and the first stop was the Coussens barn for a stretch and gander.
I’d seen this barn decor on a previous lap and learned it is part of the Tualatin Valley Quilt Barn Trail.
Travel Oregon has a Video.
They’re called quilt blocks. Spotted three more before the end of the loop.
Westside Quilter’s Guild map: The Quilt Barn Trail of Oregon’s Washington County
Glencoe Road.
45.56267912769301, -123.00148121724139

Take the lane.
Quiet rural two lane. Low traffic. No shoulder to speak of, packed gravel occasionally.
Wren Road.
45.562512558297826, -123.00923192337619

U-Pick Blueberries.
Wren Road.

The road to Roy.
Road to Ruin is a half mile further on.
NW Cornelius Schefflin Road. Busier and faster than Wren Road but with a good sized shoulder.
45.56509857255572, -123.05225540615638
Disused commercial nursery.
Looked like a good place for a camp-out or a rave, maybe a fyre festival. Or how about a Burning Something? Whatever happens should include plenty of taco trucks.
Roy Road. Quieter than Wren Road. Very low traffic. Good to very good surface.
45.57524026190394, -123.05786428290953
“
Put the
squeeze
on a cow
Eat
dairy
products
“
Roy Road.

Roy has a handful of housing and a catholic monopoly.
I continued east along NW Harrington Road sins intact smelling the roses when necessary.
45.59530030953294, -123.0799819355438

Made it through Roy unconverted. Blueberries. Harrington Road.

Looking for a rest stop. These steps along the road beckoned.
No big sign or announcement, if you blinked you missed it. But on a bike you find stuff like the Historic Harrison Cemetery.
Most of the original markers had toppled, the pieces placed on the ground next to the former bases. Others had been I assumed lost to time and replaced with aluminum plaques. Many of the inhabitants were young, children, 20’s, but there were a few older people as well, 70’s. Two were “lost in a flood 8 DEC 1857”.
Oregon State Parks Historic Cemeteries Program
NW Dersham Road.
45.602324102357564, -123.04031438297123
Airstrip for Flyaways remote control airplane club.
Adjacent to the cemetery. No action today.
Rode over for a closer look and there was this guy in a late model SUV with the windows all rolled up and I could very clearly hear Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds belting it out so I just turned around and left him to it.
45.60348862639077, -123.04252602789195
Aw nuts.
Another barn quilt block.
Grass.
Your data is safe & secure.
Hillsboro.
NE Starr Boulevard.
45.55916955175943, -122.93637810267816

Cannon Beach Low Tide Candy Run

Another minus tide. This time it’s a Saturday on one of the hottest days of the year. Beach communities are begging people to stay away so of course we and the rest of Portland Metro pack our debris and truck over the coast ranges to pay them a visit. Got a head start on the crowds and arrived CB at 8:12 AM. Pedaled up to the tide-pools ogled the anemone starfish barnacles crabs mussels flotsam jetsam etc. Lots more people today but with 3x the beach area available everyone easily distanced. Enjoyed a picnic in the park afterwards then a stroll into town over the bridge to Bruce’s for a taffy reload. Home by noon. Good time.

Gales Creek

June 18, 2021

Back to the Gales Creek Trail. Last time was a winter slog turned back at a too deep too fast creek crossing. This time the trail has been immaculately maintained, the slides were fixed, down trees cleared. The fresh bear poop was a nice touch. Rode from Gales Creek Campground up to Bell Camp trailhead. Light traffic on a early weekday. Good.

Minus Tide Fatbike Ride

May 28, 2021

Another minus tide ride at Cannon Beach. Timing aligned with a day off and a 9 AM, -1.7 foot tide. Crowd was light. Rain through the coast range on the Sunset Highway yielded clearing skies at the intersection with US 101. Nice ride up the coast and out onto the otherwise inundated wave plane. Tunnels were revealed along with the multitudes of starfish and anenomi. Not much flotsam & jetsum. Two buzzards were getting a head start on a fresh seal carcass. Post ride de regueur visit to Bruce’s Candy Kitchen in downtown Cannon Beach to restock the taffy stash.

Neawanna Creek Fatbike

January 23

Drove over the hills to the beach yesterday. Where US 26 intersects 101, on the left coast the best coast, we usually turn south a little ways to Cannon Beach but today we turned north to investigate Gearhart, beach town little bit north of Seaside.
Seaside has the large hotels and attractions and fancy main drag and a flavor similar to Crescent City, just below the surface a dark underbelly of dinge.
Keep going north past the franchises and “treasure” shops and there is Gearhart with almost no commercial activity. Upper scale second or third or fourth vacation homes for the Portland “elite” I hear.
There’s a post office, bakery, cafe, and a Mcmenamins on a golf course swarming with unmasked scurrilous heathens. Much quieter than Cannon Beach; more spread out and roomy. Plentiful parking and easy beach access with acres of dunes to meander with a straight shot north to the mouth of the Columbia and south to the mouth of the Neawanna.

Inner mouth of the Neawanna Creek near the tonsils.

Tossed in the fat BOB prototype modeled after the Coast Kid’s design. Swing arm is a sturdy brace of perforated angle steel with a kite buggy wheel hanging off the back end on a 20mm bolt. Tire is run near flat the carcass providing enough support for the lunch box. Maybe with use as flexibility increases it may need a few more PSI but for now it spreads out and floats nice across the top of the sand. Makes a good platform to haul treats and layers and collecting the flotsam and jetsam.

Making way…on a grand day seeing the new sights on the tide flats with the fat bikes.

Creative Juice

oh you shoulda seen it man settin on the couch Friday morning pissin rain forecast says all damn day and i say to her i am going ridin and she says yer nutz be home fer dinner I says Okey dokey and off I go and it rains and rains and rains and i get to the trailhead and i says what the heck am i doin this for then realize that i need to do it to keep the juices flowin so off we go me and the bike and I am soaked within half mile of the car and i say to self, self just get to the next spot then the next spot then the next spot keep going keep goin an hour an a half later get to the overlook and there’s little white snowflecks amongst the rain drops and it’s stickin’ on the ground and i says to myself Geez Im kindof gettin cold out here so turn tail and blast it back to the car mud sprayin and flyin and deer dartin and no one else in the forest far as i can tell but me and it is a fine time to have to one’s self and it made me realize a larger fender would make the overall experience less bad.

Logs

This log out on the trail it’s been there awhile and I thought I’d take a whing at it last weekend with the trusty 6 inch folding saw feeling saucy with a couple light limbing successes under the belt but that log overwhelmed the chicken wings holding onto the Corona so we left.

This weekend we engage that log if it’s still there with advanced hardware. Yes, the chainsaw was considered, briefly, then calmer heads prevailed and here we are…

Bestville

…Bestville, around the corner from Sawyers Bar, was platted by George Best as a result of his being, some say forcibly, removed one night from the Sawyers Bar Community Hall during one of the notorious methanol fueled hoe-down blow outs that would draw all form and type of folk from miles up and down river and occur most nights except Thursdays when the hall was reserved for the DAR meetings which themselves typically ended in a blood curdling brawl after minimally polite discussions of lineage turned to heavy allegations recriminations and insults of heritage and provenance.

The she said she saids resulted in multiple layers of blood teeth vomit spouting forth from the combatants/historians. Scraps of skin and assorted articles of clothing were then found amongst the leaf litter on the rough hewn porch Friday mornings. This exfoliated layercake of gore and grime was tended to by the chinese labor who maintained a sleeping porch out behind the building before the schoolchildren arrived for their lessons. While the Hall was being scrubbed and shoveled birds tidied their nests with the hanks of womanly hair strewn about the property caught on the briars and brambles the long trailing tresses gleaming in their beaks like spider’s silk as they stole back and forth through the morning sunlight.

But I digress…George’s expulsion was due to a specific interaction with an even-toed ungulate on christmas eve 1877, after which spectacle no one in the very clique-ish community cared to see or hear from George again so he dragged himself out of sight around the corner and the aptly named Bestville rose, didn’t last long by modern standards, and fell to ruin melting back into the trees as locales tended to in those days of the rabid mining era where sustainability had not entered the lexicon and standards were low but by god they were there and intimacy with ungulates was one of those lines that shouldn’t be crossed and such behavior was met with swift and definitive judgement as George discovered.

There were many lines then as there are today and they twist, turn, bisect, interlace and it’s a strange and tangled dance but pay close attention because you don’t want to find yourself over the line and end your days like George wiggling through the riffles along the banks of the North Fork Salmon River, a whimpering crank clawing at the gravel making godawful mewling noises like a cranked out wino getting kicked loose from the hind teat of a three legged diseased dachsund.