Rides – Enginerve : Bikes

Larch Mountain Opens Again

Multnomah County will reopen the upper section of Larch Mountain Road on Tuesday, May 27th at 2 pm.

Larch Mountain Road is the highest road in Multnomah County’s jurisdiction, reaching an altitude of 4,055 feet. Each winter, the county closes public access to recreation areas off upper Larch Mountain Road by closing a snow gate near milepost 10. Opening the road for recreational users occurs when snow levels decline. Reopening the gate provides vehicle access all the way to the view parking lot at milepost 14.5 and the walking trail to Sherrard Point.

The road offers spectacular cycling. For adventurous and technically skilled mountain bikers, this road also provides access to the Larch Mountain mountain biking trail.

Giant Angry Birds Illustration by Baltimore Biker

Randonneuring

Hard to explain. They NYTimes has an article which says

What seems to separate randonneurs from bike-path cruisers is as much mental fortitude as physical stamina. “It’s a whole different spirit,” Ms. Pineda later explained. “The kind of people who do these kinds of things are always in a good mood.”

In a short post this Spring, VeloOrange says this on randonneuring:

Randonneuring is centered around endurance cycling – riding comparatively long distances. The events are timed, and in order to qualify, a rider has to prove that they completed the ride (brevet) within the time allotted. Riders are seriously interested in qualifying, because the rides are preliminaries to a Grand Randonée, and this year Paris-Brest-Paris overshadows all others. Americans seeking to participate in a 1200k ride like PBP will need to complete a 200k, 300k, 400k, and 600k brevet within the time limits.

And the LazyRando tells one how to navigate a Brevet, the starting distance.

Now, next year all I have to do is join and get going!

Portland Area Recreational Ride Maps

From PBOT, The Portland Bureau of Transportation:

The Portland area has lots of great places to ride. These maps help you to find the roads most suitable for your riding style & preferences.

Average daily traffic volume is shown, as well as roads with shoulders, type of road surface (paved or not), campgrounds, and major climbs. If you have comments or corrections for any of the maps, please let us know as we strive to provide the best, most accurate information for cyclists.

Winter Cycling & Icebike

I just found the website Icebike and I am reminded that others bike through worse winters than I do. I think I like the “Why” page the best of all. In any event, I don’t ride much on the ice, but a lot in the cold and a lot in the rain and after so many years of doing it, I don’t really mind. I do wish I could keep the bike cleaner with less effort and I am pondering setting up a bike stand outside near a hose to wash off my rims to save them, otherwise I enjoy being out there and find it only takes me a little longer to dress and dry off than during the year. Outdoors and winter, great fun!

Summer 2010: Rode Across the US

This summer I haven’t posted as I was out riding across the TransAmerica, TransAm, #acatransam! The trail took me from Yorktown, VA to Portland, OR. See the trip, with notes and pix on Google Maps or TrackMyTour.

I am decompressing at present and haven’t even cleaned or performed maintenance on my Rivendell Atlantis: Home 4,143 miles, 0 flats, original tires! It was a sweet bike to take on the road and saved me!

Sauvie Island Ride and iPhone Shakeout

My iPhone shakeout continues to prepare for my cross country TransAm ride later this year.

I was able to upload a waypoint to TrackMyTour.com. And this morning, on Danielle’s advice, I did download MS Windows Live Photo Gallery and stitched together my first panorama. I am learning to overlap all the images as it was a glorious view of all the local mountains and I didn’t connect the entire set, so only these two of Mt. St. Helen’s and Mt. Adams from the edge of the Bridge to cross the Columbia to Sauvie Island.

I was unable to get my pictures to upload to Posterous, I intend to use Posterous as a WebSite as well as distribution tool to everything else. What I hadn’t done well was learn to synchronize my contacts from Google. I didn’t realize one does it manually from Google to iTunes each time, so my contacts were behind. I tried texting Posterous which has worked in the past, but the message left but never arrived.

Still learning the ins and outs of the iPhone after all this time, it lost track of my computer, so I reauthorized that again, and then 16 of my Apps were out of date, but according to iTunes, but not the iPhone itself which said “All Apps were up-to-date”. I trust this will not give me further complications this summer. I am not going to be tethered for 90 days.