Bicycles, Bikes, and Portland

Most people know that Portland is bicycle crazy, but after spending almost a week here it has been confirmed.

We were lucky enough to be able to choose from about 30 bikes Mike and Dara's basement and cruise around the city for the week.

All of our daily errands and activities were done by bike. We got to experience rush hour in the bicycle lanes, riding in the rain and getting soaking wet, making it obvious we weren't from Portland. All the local Portlanders were well equipped with their head to toe rain gear. We also visited numerous bicycle shops because our friends either work in them or own them, which was cool.

Last night we went to the dedication of the Community Cycling Center, a local non-profit bike shop that serves numerous functions.  It is a regular bike shop that teaches bicycle mechanics and work skills to local youth, and also refurbishes donated bikes to sell or give to the local community.  The event was packed with people and the shop was extremely neat and clean.  The people who work there obviously take great pride in their workplace and the mission of the Community Cycling Center.

Tonight we are going to the Slingshot Bar for our friend Reggie's 40th birthday party.  He is also another cyclist.  I used to race downhill bikes with him in North Carolina.  Now he owns Lucky 13 Bikes here in Portland.  Tomorrow we are going to Opal Creek with Kate and Josh and then we will reluctantly leave our very comfortable digs here in Portland to further explore.  We can't get too comfortable with our nice bed, shower, good friends, and family or else we will never find a new place to live.

Back at Mount Hood

Well Mt Hood has gotten more than 3' of new snow this week and today is the first time the blue sky decided to make an appearance. What a perfect time to come back to enjoy all the new snow.
Misa had lots of work to catch up on so I needed to give her some time to work so I guess I will have to spend my day in the fresh snow.

Had a great day and night yesterday. Got to visit Michael at his bike shop, most high-end bike shop I have ever seen. Cycle Path seems to be the place for the uber-cyclists in Portland. I think the bikes started around $3,000 and went up from there. Also got to visit Dara at her work and saw her corner office!!
The night brought us over to Kate and Josh's house where we met a bunch of really cool people and got fed some great food. It was really fun despite the fact that it rained most of the day.

Powell's Books, Portland

I think I became a little bit smarter the moment I walked in the door and if not, at least the used books smelled like the Cranbury Bookworm

Portland!

Go see Joel at Splendid Cycles in Portland if you want an awesome cargo bike!

On Sunday afternoon, friends Dara and Michael met us in Hood River for lunch. The weather forecast called for rain in town and heavy snow on Mount Hood on Monday and Tuesday, so we ended up following them back to Portland, where we could become dry and happy house guests. After a nice day of showers, laundry, and testing cargo bikes in Portland (with Misa as the cargo!!!), we met up with Colin's cousins Kate and Emily, and Kate's fiance Josh. It was great to hang out with Kate, and cool to finally meet Josh, who has been giving us amazing recommendations via email of places to visit in the OR/WA area. It was also fun to hear about Emily's experience nannying Maddie. How strange that we all seem to be on the brink of big changes in our lives. (Or is everybody always on the brink of big changes?)

Tomorrow we may head out to see the beautiful coast of Oregon everyone has been talking about!

Closest Thing to Easter

Sunday began gray and rainy but then turned into another rare and beautiful sunny day. I had seen a Sunday satsang announced in a yoga studio pamphlet we picked up in Hood River and couldn't stop thinking about how I missed daily satsangs at the ashram, so I headed off to yoga and Colin took Tucker for a walk around town. (Satsang is a community of people who gather to discuss, meditate on, or listen to talks about truth (in this case, truth according to Advaita Vedanta)). The studio was in a small, cute historic building and even had a shower! As is often the case, the morning "flow" yoga class was packed but all the sweaty bodies scuttled out as soon as it was over. Satsang was small (only 3 other people showed up) and was led by the studio owner. Because it was Easter, he talked about how Jesus is accepted as a yogi in Vedanta and read some quotes. I have never been to a church and have never been to anything even closely related to an Easter service, but all of a sudden there I was on Easter Sunday listening to a talk about Jesus. There was nothing preachy at all about any of the discussion that followed, and as I sat there listening to people respond, I thought this was a pretty good way to get to know a part of Hood River. It's nice when we are out in the valley woods and can sit on our tailgate gazing at the city lights from our own little world, but sometimes it's nice to temporarily venture inside a community and talk to people as well.  

More trip statistics

OK,

Just ran a report on our GasBook application that we are using to track all of our MPG and fuel related items on our trip.  This may be interesting to some. 
Fuel is our top expense, followed by food.  We need to add up our food expenses to see how they compare.

So since the start of our trip on March 2, 2011 the Tundra has slurped up
393.43 gallons of 87 octane gas
it has rolled through 7249.00 miles of North America so far
Our average cost per mile is $0.22(and rising with fuel costs, this month is it up to $0.24 per mile)
The average cost per gallon that we have paid is $3.65
Our average fuel cost per day is $32.04
The total fuel economy is 16.64, with a high of 18.749 and a low of 12.729
The most we paid per gallon was $4.65 in Death Valley,  the least expensive was well under $3 in Mexico
Our total fuel cost for the past 53 days is $1435.57

I was a little bit lazy about keeping track of our gas expenses in Mexico, something about converting pesos to dollars and then converting liters to gallons and then the additional figuring after that scared me away from calculating it.

More Mount Hood Pictures

These are low quality and poorly shot from my cellphone, but the mountain was so cool that I still wanted to share.  It was a great ascent up the mountain.  I left my crampons, ice axes, and all my climbing gear in Jersey as I didn't expect to get into any mountains that required that type of gear.  So I couldn't make it all the way to the summit.  After about 2 hours of climbing with my skins on, it got too slippery to be able to make forward progress and attached my snowboard to my pack and started to boot up the mountain. Since it was such a beautiful day there were a bunch of other people climbing up the mountain, some with lots of mountaineering equipment and some with ski's on their packs.  I made it about 3/4's of the way to the summit when it started to get too icy to proceed without crampons.  The surface got too hard to be able to kick steps and the footing was like walking on ice cubes.  It got steep enough that a fall was a definite possibility but would have had some serious consequences.  I found a place where I could stamp out a small platform to be able to sit down and put on my snowboard.  I started the descent and it was so icy going down the first chute that I thought I might be in trouble.  I headed a bit west and the snow got remarkably better.  It went from straight-up frozen ice cubes on a steep slope to great soft powder interspersed with sections of ice cubes.  After a few hours of climbing the descent was very short in time, but long in distance.  Next time I want to go back with the proper gear and go to the top and then head back down on the snowboard. 

Now we are back in Hood River where Misa is getting her yoga fix and we are also escaping a large storm that is hitting the mountain for the next few days.  The forecast is for up to 3 feet of new snow.  This would be great if we had an inside place to stay, but it makes it a bit more difficult to handle when you are dealing with sleeping, eating, and living out of the back of the truck.  It is times like this that we wish we still had the truck camper or a four wheel drive van to come home to each day.  Something where we could cook inside of and stand up inside of.  Oh well, sometimes everything is a compromise. 
We will probably wait out the storm and then head back up the mountain so that Misa can work on mastering her snowboard skills a bit more.

Heading up Mount Hood on splitboard

Wishing I hadn't left my crampons and mountaineering axe at home.
Misa is taking a snowboard lesson right now!

Mount hood

Just found a great deal. $99 season pass for Timberline ski area on Mount Hood for the remainder of the season. So guess where we will be spending the next few days? The lifts are open until late May!! This is the first time I have ridden a lift with my snowboard since Hokkaido, Japan. Misa is going to sign up for a 2 day lesson for her first time either skiing or snowboarding. Sweet!!

Sun! (believe it or not)

We woke up yesterday morning to glistening frost. The sun was shining in Sisters, Oregon. On our drive back into town from our camp spot, we heard the local radio weatherman say, "Don't be alarmed by that big orange ball in the sky... It's supposed to be there."

Sisters, Oregon

The view from just outside downtown Sisters

We spent the past few days in and around Sisters, Oregon. It is a cute little town that has had a growth spurt in the past decade, as evidenced by all of the cookie-cutter developments that skirt the small downtown. We can see why people would want to live here. Right in the mountains, Sisters offers tons of recreational opportunities, all accessible right from downtown.  But for our taste, it is a little touristy and too dry. The other side of the mountains, however, is very different.

A waterfall on our way to the hot springs

One rainy day, we drove to the Willamette National Forest on the other side of the mountains. Gone were the sage, bunch grass, and junipers. The forest there was wet, lush, and absolutely beautiful. Pretty green moss covered everything, dripping from every branch. Maybe that's because it rains more often than not there. We thought it might be nice to spend a rainy day in a hot spring pool, where it wouldn't really matter if you were getting wet or not. The first one was flooded with icy cold river water, but the second one was still nice and hot. Every natural hot spring we've visited so far seems to be primarily visited by older men. Some are nice, some are ... well, a little weird.


It may seem as though we are enjoying a luxury life of nothing but hot springs and avocados. But I assure you this isn't true. Sometimes we look for jobs. Sometimes we look for property for sale. And other busy times, we hone our ponderosa pine cone baseball skills.

Colin, as you can tell, has been taking his ponderosa pine cone baseball very seriously.

Some interesting food facts on our trip

So far we have traveled around 6,500 to 7,000 miles on our trip and we have been through some pretty productive farmland. We have seen prices vary wildly.  Here are some examples:


Avocados in Mexico cost us about $0.10 each. We should have eaten more while we were there.

In the central valley of California we stocked up on avocados again at 8 for $2.00, a deal until we realized only 5 were tasty and the other 3 had a very funky taste.

Here in Oregon, they are $2 each.

Almonds:  In the central valley of California, they were being sold for a dollar a pound.  At the Whole Foods in Bend, Oregon, they were being sold for $8.50 a pound.  We should have bought 20lbs in California.

Other interesting food facts:   We got our Mexican limes (the small ones) that we bought in Albuquerque confiscated at an agricultural checkpoint between Arizona and California.  When I handed them to the guard for disposal, he commented, "Those are the good one too."  Yes, I am sure they were.  We ended up buying another bunch of them while in Mexico.  Nobody seemed to care when we brought them from Mexico into California.

Bend, Oregon

The most Patagonia Down Sweaters per capita anywhere in the world. It must be a required uniform to live here.

Bend, Orgeon

We have had a great time in Bend, Oregon so far.  I don't think either of us would consider moving here because it is awfully city-like, but it sure is nice.

We pulled into the area from Crater Lake National Park.  We first started off with a drive through La Pine and Sun River.  Misa wanted to check out Sun River because we saw that it hosts lots of triathlons throughout the year.  It turns out that this town was just one big development, so it immediately got crossed off our list.  We camped out in Deschutes National Forest the first night.

On our first full day here, we went to downtown Bend.  It is a very vibrant outdoorsy town which looks like it is getting built up very quickly.  We turned off our forest service road and started seeing development after development.  It has all the chain stores you would ever need as well as a plethora of coffee shops and yoga studios.  It is pretty apparent why Bend was named the most overpriced real estate market in the country a few years ago.  It is probably a great place to live or raise a family if you are into the outdoors and don't mind small-city living.  The population is around 80,000 people, a lot larger than we are looking for.
We were needing a shower so we started asking around.  We found a gem in the city in the form of McMenamins Old St. Francis School.  This unique place in the city was the site of an old Catholic school.  They have a small hotel, a few bars, a restaurant, a brewpub, a theatre, and a Turkish bath.  We decided to check it out.  The entry fee for the Turkish bath was a mere $5 per person and they required you to shower first!! Perfect.  The bath and the showers were ok (could have been hotter), but the feeling of cleanliness was perfect.  We ended up eating at the restaurant and having some good beer as well so it was a nice evening.

The following day we went for a hike in the desert Badlands of Bend. It is crazy to go from snow to hot, sunny desert in only a 40 minute drive!

Today we went up to Mount Bachelor and I did a few splitboard runs in the 60mph winds.  Everytime I got above treeline I felt like I was getting sandblasted by the snow.  It was really good to get out on my snowboard though.

We are going to spend a few more days in this area, we plan to check out Sisters, Oregon and go to a folk festival dance night there on Saturday night.  Tomorrow we are going to explore some hot springs in the national forest.

While we haven't found any towns that we would seriously consider moving to, I think we are headed in the right direction.  We both agree that the high desert isn't for us, so if we settle down in the northwest we will have to be on the wet side.  But it is definitely nice to know that there is a variety of landscape right around the corner.

Entering Oregon (April 7th's post)

Shortly after our stop at Mt. Shasta, we arrived in Ashland, Oregon, a cute college town nestled between national forest land and filled with used bookstores, coffee shops, and local art galleries. It is also the home to a renown Shakespeare festival. Unfortunately, due to a large transient population here (we encountered them protesting downtown), there is no camping in the national forest around Ashland! A few long trips down winding roads led to us dead ends, and we spent our first night in a truck stop in Talent, OR, just north of Ashland. We spent the following sunny day doing laundry, enjoying the cherry blossom lined trails, and studying maps of Oregon.

It turns out that although the park rangers in Ashland are cold and unwelcoming, the rest of the people in Ashland are super friendly. After taking a yoga class in a neat house/yoga studio (with real wood floors and a wood stove to heat the room!), we were invited to stay in the studio parking lot. The teacher of the class is about our age and lives in the room above the studio. He was able to give us great recommendations about places to visit and even invited us to a shore house for the weekend! Unfortunately we declined because traveling to the coast would have put us 6 hours further away from Bend, our next destination. And then, the next morning, Oregon gave us a taste of its weather. We woke up to a light dusting of snow and gray skies. It proceeded to hail/sleet/snow/rain on and off throughout the day. Brrr!

A frozen yoga mat!

We continued north to Jacksonville, a small old mining town, and spent the day exploring trails through a lush, mossy forest, and visiting a farmers' market (not much there yet). We ended up in a secluded camping site near Applegate Lake. Oregon is earning high scores in our book so far (although Colin is unsatisfied with the amount of snow most towns seem to get in the winter). Onward we go!

Precipitating Oregon

Crater Lake National Park was declared by Colin to be the prettiest place we've visited yet on our trip. Unfortunately it was cold (sub-30 in the a.m.) and snowing and windy! But even without the views that the pamphlets promised us, the lake was eerily pretty. There was some incredible snow on the ground and we made it out for a short cross-country ski on the lake's rim path.

Yikes!

But it never seems to stop "spitting" in Oregon. There is always some sort of precipitation trying to make the inside of our truck soggy!

Our National Forests

 

Why is it that we find scraps of toilet paper and bullets at most of our campsites in the national forests?  Do we Americans have nothing better to do than shoot our guns and go to the bathroom? 

Stopping for lunch at Mt. Shasta

Although California has its pretty areas, we started getting antsy to explore Oregon and Washington. So we bee-lined it up Rt. 5, stopping for lunch at the base of Mt. Shasta, where Tucker enjoyed a nice snow lounge and we enjoyed a nice snowball fight.

Majestic and crowded Yosemite

We headed into Yosemite National Park on a Friday night. More specifically, the first weekend the campgrounds reopened after winter, and the last weekend the ski area was open. Unfortunately it was a little crowded. Nevertheless, I was extremely happy to be back in the magically beautiful Yosemite. I wish, however, that Colin could have had the relatively people-less experience I had two years ago when I visited in early spring.

A happy skier!

We camped in Wawona our first night and headed to Badger Pass for some cross-country skiing in the morning. Considering it was our second real xc-ski in the woods, I think it went pretty well! We went on an out-and-back trail that brought us to a gorgeous view of the valley, which was Colin's first glimpse of the mighty rocks. We spent our second day hiking/scrambling around the valley, trying to avoid the Sunday crowds of boy scouts and high school outdoor trips. We ended our day by journeying to the base of El Capitan and getting some incredible views of melting snow getting whipped off the top of the rock by wind. Yosemite is a very beautiful place indeed.

Stretching at the half-way point

Sequoia National Park, friends, and short sleeve skiing

We had a great few days here.

On Wednesday we left the Owens River Valley to loop around the southern Sierras and started to drive up the western side.  We started out looking for some hot springs along the Kern River.  We found the hot springs, but it appears that the spring snow melt has washed away the soaking pools.  All we found were some extremely hot water seeping out of the ground and the remnants of some concrete pools that no longer hold any water.  The Kern River was incredibly beautiful and it was so nice to see green grass and lush flowers for the first time in weeks.

We followed the Kern River to the end of the Kern River Valley, which opened up into Bakersfield (a town seemingly owned by K. Hovnanian, a housing developer).  As soon as we left the federally protected lands, we ran into housing development after housing development.  All the remaining farmland had large for sale signs on it, most likely destined for more cookie cutter housing.  We both said at the same point "looks just like Jersey."  We did some required shopping (remember we are shopping our way across the country) and beat it out of there as soon as possible.

We headed north with Sequoia National Park as our destination.  We were fighting the setting sun to find a place to sleep for the night but were on the losing end of the battle.  We stopped for dinner alongside a citrus farm.

After this we continued toward the park.  Since the park doesn't technically allow dogs we couldn't stay in the park with Tucker. We did a few laps around the town of Three Rivers looking for a place to stay. Usually we try to find a camping spot before it gets dark because it is much easier to see our options in the daylight. But this night, tired and fed up with not finding anything in the dark, we eventually asked the Comfort Inn if we could park in their lot for the night.  This wouldn't normally be our first choice but we were willing to take what we could get.

In the morning we met up with our friend Christa, who is a California native, a fellow Northwestern alumna, a fellow Princetonian, and a recently relocated Californian, and her friend Wendy for a morning hike.  They also brought along Christa's new dog, Tuffy.  Since dogs aren't allowed on any trails in the park we had to stick to auto roads.  Luckily since it is so early in the tourist season we were able to have a great walk on a closed dirt road.  We walked all morning and headed back to a picnic area for lunch.

After lunch we headed higher up in the park to check out some of the parks namesakes, the Sequoias.  The pictures don't do these trees justice.  It is hard to comprehend just how massive they are.  We were happy to find copious amounts of snow so that we could explore the forest with our cross-country skis.  Taking advantage of another closed road, we set off in about 6 feet of snow on our skis with Tucker.  Unfortunately they don't make skis for dogs and Tucker was having a tough time keeping up with us because he could not stay on top of the snow.  It was an incredible workout for him, especially at 12 years old.  So after 45 minutes we turned around and let Tucker sleep off his workout in the car.  We went back out on our skis for another few hours until almost dark.  What a nice treat to be able to be on the snow in our shirt-sleeves!

Skiing in a tank top!

The snow was even deeper further into the park.

Sequoia was the prettiest place we have been so far, full of greenery, waterfalls, steep mountains, large trees, wild flowers, and snow.

East side of the Sierras

Greetings from the valley where Los Angeles gets 45% of their water!

We are now about 250 miles from Los Angeles, high up in the mountains.  Each small valley has a river that leads into an aqueduct that is then funneled into the Los Angeles water system.  At one point this was a very fertile valley, but now Los Angeles is taking more water out of the valley than is recreated, leading to long term desertification.

We are in the shadows of the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney.

After leaving Death Valley, we headed up the Owens River Valley to find a place to camp and some mountain fun. We started off with a visit to Manzanar, a World War II Japanese Relocation Camp.  It was quite an educational experience to say the least.   Unfortunately none of the original buildings remain (they were taken apart and sold for lumber soon after the war ended), but the foundations are there and recently two barracks and a mess hall were reconstructed and turned into exhibits. There is also a great interpretative center that has lots of information, exhibits, and a movie.

After experiencing the hot sun of Death Valley, we were looking for slightly cooler temperatures.  So we headed to higher elevation and comfort on a dirt Forest Service road that went into the mountains.  As the road petered out and turned into a hiking trail, we found a somewhat level camping spot about 1/2 mile from the snow line.

On our first morning here we headed up into the mountains together.  We started hiking up the trail with the intention of Misa turning around when the snow got deep, while I continued up to do some splitboarding (backcountry snowboarding).  After about one hour of hiking, when Misa started to posthole up to her hip in the deep snow, she turned around to head back to the truck and do some work.  I kept going up with my eye on some steep chutes a few thousand feet up.  It is such a weird feeling for us easterners to experience 60-degree weather, yet be amidst tons of snow!  I headed up for another hour or two, but somehow the chutes I was aiming for never got that much closer, while the effort required to maintain uphill progress got much harder.  The altitude (9,000 ft+) with extremely wet and clumpy snow was taking its toll on me.  The snow was sticking to my skis on both the skin side (skins attach to the bottom of the ski  to allow you to ski uphill, sliding in one direction and gripping in the other) as well as the top of the ski.  I think at one point each ski weighed about 30lbs.  After wallowing for a bit more and trying to force myself to take 100 steps between each rest break, I decided to turn around.  My downhill section of the trip was over way too soon but had one great cliff drop and a few good turns, and soon enough I was back at the snow line.  I hiked back to the truck to find Misa in the back of the truck working on her computer.

We finished out the day with scrambling on some rocks and Misa did some sunset yoga.
Not a bad day at all.