Portland to Sandy, Oregon. Thursday, May 9, 2024.
It’s always fun to find quirky place names. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico; Nameless, Tennessee; Old Dime Box, Texas—I have only read about those. At least these guys have embraced their name with a sense of humor.
Otherwise, today was anything but. Reluctant to leave one of the coolest cities in the country, and one of the last cities I would see for a while, I savored the pretty Portland waterfront
had a brunch of Lost Eggs at trendy Café Broder, as recommended by my daughter Hope,
and succeeded in my pilgrimage to the second of two famous Portland bike gear manufacturers. I had to pass on Chris King Cycles yesterday, but Showers Pass makes, in my opinion, the best rain gear for cycling. https://showerspass.com I’ve been using their stuff for years, and it kept me from being miserable over those last rainy days on this trip. Evan showed me around their factory and flagship store, and let me trade in my waterproof gloves, five years old, for the latest model that was touch screen friendly.
I’ve been to Portland before with the family, and hit all the touristy spots, today I just exulted in the city that has the reputation of being the most bike friendly in the country. Sure, there are bike paths everywhere, and many accommodations that make bicycling more pleasant. But the feeling is deeper than that, and hard to articulate, or capture in photos—it’s a culture. You can’t find a street that doesn’t have something on it to promote cycling, and the proof is in the pudding, there are cyclists everywhere. You get a hint of what it must be like to bicycle in Amsterdam, or Copenhagen. The wave of the future, I hope.
Portland is lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, and highpoints to bag before I sleep. Except for the headwind, it was a blue bird day, which meant I couldn’t escape the image of Mt. Hood, looming ever larger over the otherwise dreamy Springwater Corridor bike path, trash-talking me, egging me on.
Hood is by far the easiest of the quintet of highpoints that require a guide—Denali, Rainier, Granite Peak, and Gannet Peak being the others, all of which I’ve done. It’s over 3000 feet lower than Rainier. It’s the only one that can be done as a day hike, and a patient of mine, two years older, has climbed it over 50 times. But it still looms large in my imagination, and my sense of dread. I have failed on it before, as I will elaborate in tomorrow’s post. It’s the only one I’m going to try to climb from sea to summit in a single trip, necessitating, as I’ll describe, a comical series of steps that reminds me of nothing so much as an old man using a walker. Stay tuned. As for today, I climbed the first 1,000 of its 11,249 feet. Miles to go before I sleep.
Distance 27 miles, 565 total. Time 7 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,107 feet
©️ 2024 Scott Luria
The Ends of the Earth 