Mountain Home Meander
Chehalem Mtn Loop Ride Report

Ready for adventure!

After a few chilly, rainy days it was nice to wake up to a warm day for the Mountain Home Meander II bike ride. Having been to Tom and Cheryl's house several times before we should have known the way but even with a map we ended up driving a few extra miles and arrived late. Thank goodness everyone was still there munching on tiger milk bars, juice and bagels. We stuffed a few in our back pockets, and tried to get everyone together for our traditional pre ride photo. Everyone had alredy left by the time we set about getting The Blueberry off the van. We like to ride sweep anyway.

We mounted up and took off up hill. Soon we huffed and puffed past "The Metamorphosis, From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary." We are not sure what was extraordinary about it or even what it was, but it has a fairly big sign announcing its presence. We see the oddest things on these rides. Once we even saw a "Free Bike Dump."

The views were spectacular. As we came to the top of the hill and Gibbs Pioneer Cemetery we could see the whole valley below, how nice for the pioneers buried there. The valley was a lush kelly green, punctuated with farms, and then lined on the edges by hills covered with evergreen trees. After leaving the buried pioneers to their view we started down the hill when the fastest dog ever came at us from the side. It looked like Wile E Coyote, and we felt as if we were the road runner doing at least 30 mph. He was closing fast, but the Acme rocket he was using ran out of steam and we were saved!

We have wonderful news. For the first time in a long time we did not get lost on the ride. In fact, we came upon a group of riders merging in from a side street. We rode up alongside them to ask where they had been. Dale and Steve, who shall remain nameless, took a right turn at the first stop sign and ended up doing a bunch more hills. They got more than their money's worth on this ride because after finding hwy 99, which was not supposed to be on this ride, they had to come back over the hills to get back on the route.


We were gloating over this when we caught up with Rich and Gale on a beautiful dark blue Cannondale Tandem. We forgot to ask them the name of their tandem and did not even offer to name it for them. We must be slipping. They told us they are training to walk the Portland Marathon and bought the tandem to do some cross training. They have found out that they like biking better than walking and were lamenting that tomorrow they had to walk instead of ride. This year they are doing Cycle Oregon, Summit to Surf, and a few other rides. Next year they plan to do all the rides and give up walking altogether. They promised us that they would show up for our Raspberry Rendezvous Ride. They were very nice so we are hoping to see them on some Blueberry rides for sure.

Louie was beginning to go through coffee withdrawal symptoms so we took off at a good clip to find the Forest Hills Golf Course. Blooming Fern Road was right up (I do mean up) ahead so I think he took off so he could show the new kids on the block how us old tandemists ride hills. They met back up with us at the Forest Hills Golf Course Café where the beer is cold and the coffee is hot. They decided to go on while we had our coffee and my favorite ride food, french fries.

Back on the road we kept seeing signs for the Peachy Pig farm. They come highly recommended for tandemists seeking weaner pigs. They even have prunes, walnuts, filberts and a brown horse for sale for $350 or Best Offer. We had trouble resisting stopping to see the weaner pigs, but we were trying our hardest to be serious about the ride so we passed them up.

Soon, we came across one of our favorite places, the Tile Flat Treasures Farm Museum. There you can see the largest collection of farm antiques in a realistic setting. At the Museum they have a wide variety of farm animals, peacocks, goats, cows, chickens and donkeys. We discovered that donkeys like peanut butter crackers.

Forty miles into the ride, lying in the middle of the road was a broom. We passed it, but Louie could not resist. He said, "We are riding sweep aren't we!" "Well, yes." I said. Next thing I know he did a U-turn, went back, and picked up that broom. He attached it to the back of the bike. Now we truly were riding sweep! At least this was not as bad as the parachute like wheel cover for Broncos that we carried for twenty miles on the Monster Cookie ride. Al and Pat came upon us on their way home and asked us what we were doing with the broom that they had also seen in the road. Louie said, "We are riding sweep." They chuckled as they said, "There is only 5 miles left in the ride, but the fun is just beginning", and pointed up. Oh well, we like to climb and the ride was almost done so we did not mind climbing back up to Tom and Cheryl's home.

When we arrived with the broom, Rich and Gayle could not resist snapping a picture of the broom sticking out the back of The Blueberry. Cheryl could not believe we actually picked it up.

We finished up the ride with 51 miles and 2150 ft of climbing on our altimeter. There were 16 riders on this ride. We would like to thank all the people who showed up for the ride, Dale, Bill M, Richard, Scott, Pat, Al, Mike, Bill B, Rich, Gale, Jack, Duane, and especially Tom and Cheryl for leading such a nice ride. We had a great time!