As fall quickly approaches (tomorrow), I have been trying to get in as much riding as possible. What has taken up most of my free time as of late is mountain biking. I’ve spent most of September’s weekend mornings driving to locations to mountain bike; places like Macdonald Research Forest and Shellburg Falls, for instance. I’ve also spent considerable time doing shorter hour long rides with my dog at local parks like Keizer Rapids and Minto Brown.
Not one of the better trails at Shellburg Falls. What’s that sign say?
Ohhhh… That’s why.
Shellburg Falls probably has my favorite trails for riding. It even links up with Silver Falls if you’re up for a decently long uphill ride.
And in case you were wondering, yes; 3 inch knard tires can get flats. I got two on this particular ride.
Minto Brown with the dog and Trish bringing up the rear.
Keizer Rapids. A Sunday morning bike and swim.
But outside of mountain biking, I’ve gotten in a couple fun road rides, two of which are worth documenting. A couple weekends ago I participated in the Peach of a Century and then this past weekend rode the Crater Lake Loop. Both trips were memorable for different reasons which will unfold through the picture blog that follows:
A Peach of a Century (65 Miles)
The ride. Trish and I decided to take the tandem on this ride. We opted for the metric century, which is only 65 miles, but that is by far the longest ride we’ve ever done on this ride, and it did great (as did we, in case you were wondering).
We couldn’t have asked for better weather. Sunny and mid-70s.
People were drafting Trish and me most of the day, partly because tandems are fast and great for drafting, but once we found another tandem couple, we left everyone in the dust and took turns drafting with these guys for about 10 miles. They had a belt drive Co-Motion tandem; fancy.
Morning selfie.
Afternoon selfie.
A post-ride picture. The ride ends with a delicious piece of pie, which I should have documented for the purpose of best representing this wonderful ride, but unfortunately I scarfed it down before considering immortalizing the pie with a pic. Whoops.
Crater Lake East Rim Ride (35 Miles)
Morning preparations. We did this ride with two of our friends from Salem: Darren and Audra.
Trish getting everything ready to go. We stayed in a beautiful little cabin the night before and really enjoyed it. We’ll probably make this a yearly excursion because it was so fun.
The group before heading out for the day.
The first five or six miles brought us to the lodge at Crater Lake. Darren and Audra had never been to Crater Lake, so of course their initial reactions to the abnormally blue and glass-like water were priceless.
I couldn’t resist a glamor shot.
Did I mention Audra is four months pregnant? Well, Audra’s four months pregnant, and absolutely killed this ride.
The start of the East Rim Drive. This is the section cut off to all vehicles.
On the East Rim Drive, the road wasn’t always the nicest, but at least there weren’t any cars.
Although I skewed the stats a bit by riding up the bigger ascents and then riding back down to the group and riding back up with them, overall my GPS said I rode almost 38 miles and climbed over 4,500 feet. That’s a lot of climbing for 38 measly miles.