Six Covered Bridges Brevet - 400 KM
At dawn yesterday morning, under a cool, lowering sky, about fifty crazy randonneurs and randonneuses set off, with all our hopes delicately balanced on tiny 14 and 15 gauge stainless steel spokes, to attempt the Oregon Randonneur’s Seven Covered Bridges Brevet. We had assurances of a bright and sunny afternoon, hopes of a wonderful tailwind, and doubts about everything else.
Though Newburg, Oregon is a city of about 20,000, we were quickly outside of its sprawl and into the farmland of the Willamette Valley. (Don’t pronounce it the way I do or everyone will know you are a foreigner.) This is the country of big, green valleys and real farms. Of vineyards and loafing sheep. Of white clapboard houses and big barns. And of rivers and covered bridges.
On either side of the road there were poles. They were thick as Christmas trees on a Shelton tree farm and easily twelve feet tall. They were all in rows and connected at the tops by rope or cables, more lines ran down to the ground from which green vines climbed up. The whole outfit filled the fields with rows of green “V’s” signifying either “Peace” or “Victory” depending on the political nature of your inner randonneur. Fortunately for me, Tom Barocan was only eighteen inches away on the Mercian he has owned since the 1970’s.
“Do you know what those are?” he asked as I looked from one side of the road to the other.
I didn’t know. They looked like some sort of overgrown antenna system meant to pick up the “Ten-four, good buddy. Catch ya on the flip-flop.” of some intergalactic space trucker.
“No, do you?” I asked Tom.
“They’re hops,” Tom told me.
Tom grew up in the area and his family picked hops when he was a child. He said they rip up your hands and smell terrible. I’ve been in some breweries, so that’s the smell I imagined. Today, I couldn’t tell how they smelled because the air was full of too many farm smells all mingled together. There were smells of manure and blossoms. Of freshly turned earth and new mown hay. Of the dead compost that brings forth life. And of the life brought forth. It all smelled like springtime in farm country. Now I know that part of that smell is from hops.
I asked Tom if he had ever picked grapes a little later because the Willamette Valley is dotted with vineyards and wineries, but he said that is one crop he never picked. Winemaking was not part of the scene when Tom was growing up. Work was what they did. Wine drinking was for someone else. Tom said his grandparents farmed until they died.
Somehow in all that work, Tom found bicycles. Or, maybe, I should say a bicycle. He is one of those rare people who buys a bike and keeps it for decades. His red, Mercian, with white tracing around the lug shorelines and barber pole stripes on the seat tube, has been back to the Mercian factory once to have braze-ons added. In those bygone days, the days of my long gone orange Gitane, cable guides, water bottle cages, and down tube shifters were all mounted with tiny, engraved, chrome clamps. It’s probably a near toss-up which system is better, but I think I would vote with Tom for braze-ons. I did build one bike without cable guides on the top tube. Some old Campy clamp-on guides do the brake cable holding on that bike.
About the time that randonneurs were really starting to stretch and spread out, a woman in our group of six punctured. Three of us pulled over with her, but Tom and Bill Alsup, with whom I’ ridden some pleasant miles on the 300 K a few weeks ago, kept rolling. With her helmet and sunglasses, I didn’t see at first that the flat belonged to Peg Winczewski. Peg has a very good reputation on the Northwest Randonneuring scene. She has been at it since the 2000 season and rode three super randonneur series last year. (In case you’re wondering, she hopes on doing four this year.) I’ve heard about Peg since I started randonneuring in 2005, and we have been on several of the same brevets, but I did not met her until the night before this ride. Peg is a stronger rider than I am, especially on the flats that are my weakness, but I noticed that sometimes our finishing times weren’t all that different so I thought maybe this group would be a good place for me.
The next 240 miles showed that I was right. I rode with the same core group of people the entire brevet. That’s a first for me as I usually spend time alternately alone, with another rider, and as part of group on these brevets. I enjoyed the change with one exception that I will try to remember to mention again later when it fits into the narrative. The other members of this group were Paul Carlile. and Leslie Larson. Paul pulled us all along through most of the first part of the brevet and Leslie tried to bust our legs later on when we still had a hundred miles to go. I’ll tell you why she did that later.
We all missed a bear left on Meridian and soon found ourselves at that place where nothing on the cue sheet makes sense. So we decided to turn right assuring ourselves that this road must be SR-213. A sign soon told us that we were on SR-214 and since everyone else isn’t usually wrong, we conceded that we might be the ones who were. We made a U-turn and I got hung-up waiting for a chance to cross the road. When I got back to where everyone had turned right. I asked why the sign said we were on Huntington (or something like that) when we were supposed to be on Meridian. They said that’s just what they were discussing. We admitted we were lost and would have to backtrack until the cue sheet made more sense.
Peg opined that it was a bad sign for her to be lost so early on a brevet and Leslie and Paul, who are just starting randonneuring this season, expressed some concern. I hope I encouraged everyone by saying, “This is nothing. I’ve been a lot loster than this.” We probably didn’t even lose twenty minutes on this little navigational error.
A little later, we rode into Silverton. Silverton, Oregon is one of those towns that ends up on calendars. It is very pretty with its red brick buildings and white framed storefront windows. There is a big, brightly painted sign on one brick wall. It is the kind of sign that adds character to a downtown rather than cheapening it. If the people are nice, I think I could live very happily in Silverton; and I would be surrounded by great bicycle country with quiet roads.
I bought my first burrito of the ride down the road a bit, in a town called Sublimity. Leslie documented that burrito on electronic media. (She took a picture of the burrito with her digital camera.) When she is not riding her bicycle, Leslie spends a lot of her time at the university in Eugene digitalizing media for storage. On this brevet she took pictures of everything. Later, she would snap a picture of the gumdrops I knew I shouldn’t eat; the ones that tried to start a headache a little further down the road. People tell me I’m full of it, but high fructose corn syrup does not sit with me as easily as sugar or honey. I sometimes eat those bags of cheap candy -- where you get two bags for a dollar or one for fifty-nine cents -- and they almost always make be feel lousy later. They sure taste good though, and they’re full of pep.
Now it was time to get down to business. We had covered bridges to cross and we had to get the construction dates of all six bridges and manually record them on our brevet cards with old fashioned pens and pencils. I used a gel pen. Ha! You can’t call me old fashioned with my down tube shifters and freewheels. I use gel pens and now carry a digital camera myself. (Actually, my usual pen is a fountain pen I fill from a bottle, but the ink runs in the rain so I brought the gel pen.)
Before we got to the first bridge, we had some hills on Old School Road. One of those hills was kind of steep so it was pretty easy to notice. Then we had another bear left. I was a bit behind everyone here since I had stopped to water the weeds. As I prepared to bear left, I saw that the rest were coming back on the road that went straight. “Bear left!” I shouted as I started off on the steep downhill after a logging truck.
“We know, now,” the rest replied.
And then there it was, the Schimanel Covered Bridge. I really do like these brevets with a theme. (My favorite SIR brevet so far is the Three Volcanoes Brevet.) The Schimanel Covered Bridge is a red bridge with a white board frame around the entrance and it was built in 1966. I was expecting a date earlier than that. That’s the year I finished sixth grade and I know that was in the very recent past because I am still a young man. Maybe the other bridges would be older.
Then we went on to Scio. I lead out and I don’t know why, but the rest lagged behind. When I got to Scio, I saw that the main street was already closed for the parade we were warned about. I turned onto the main street anyway and had a thousand watchers on either side of the street. This was not a time to do something silly: like fall down.
I was looking for the Covered Bridge Cafe and I was in a panic. I expected to be told to get off the street at any second. “What’s the matter? Can’t you read ‘Road Closed?’”
I never did see the sign for the cafe, but a voice shouted, “Chuck, over here.” There were bicycles leaned against the wall behind the people in lawn chairs that lined the street. There was a cafe. It must be the one I wanted. I leaned The Red Randonneuse against the front and went inside. The line to the counter was a hundred yards long and five or six abreast. I went back out onto the street. Eric Vigoren was there.
“Did you get your card signed in there?” I asked. We have to have our brevet cards signed at predetermined stops to show we were there and what time we arrived since we not only need to finish the course on time, we also have time cuts at the various controls.
“Yes,” he answered.
I went back in thinking, “I’ll be here twenty minutes.” That’s when I saw a young woman bussing tables. I went up to her and asked if she would initial my card. She wondered why, I explained, and she initialed it.
When I came out, the rest of my group was rolling by. “Over here!” I yelled. They looked over, didn’t see me, but saw the bikes and pulled in.
I was suffering that feeling you get sometimes when one person too many steps into your elevator and all you want is out. I asked a lady to let me through the spectators and onto the street and I pedaled out of town before an imagined and furious sheriff threw me out; or worse, put me into the town jail for parading without a permit.
As I rolled out of Scio, I thought I might catch Eric and Maggie Williams, but pretty quickly I was at the Gilkey Covered Bridge. There were some riders there I knew so I pulled my camera out, told everyone to smile, and took a picture. This was a white bridge built in the 30’s.
That group was leaving so I wrote down the construction date and took off after them. I was closing slowly on them when I looked behind and saw my group closing slowly on me. Where we were to turn left to stay on Gilkey, the group ahead went straight. Our group followed me, but everyone was filled with doubt, including me.
“Why are they going straight?”
“I don’t know, but the cue sheet says turn left to stay on Gilkey. I’d chase after them, but it would take twenty minutes to close the gap and they’ll see their mistake before that. In twelve minutes we’ll hit Crabtree and then we’ll know for sure.”
Paul, with great confidence, said, “Twelve minutes!” and took off down the road followed be the rest of us. We found Crabtree Drive and then the Hoffman Covered Bridge. As we pulled up, I felt very good. It’s good to know where you are when you are the smarty pants in front.
As we rode into the narrow white bridge, I saw a fly fisherman on the stream below. Whenever I see a fly fisherman, I think of my dad who taught me, and Ted Williams, years before I was born, and when Dad was just a teen, how to cast a dry fly. Most of my childhood vacations surrounded mornings and afternoons casting flies to hungry trout.
Lesli and I talked about bikes a lot as we rode along. Most of the time the roads were empty and we could ride in pairs and even three and four abreast chatting at fifteen miles and hour. She’s waiting for a Rivendell she ordered three years ago and she has collected a nice selection of parts for it and learned a lot about bikes and frames during the wait. She admired The Red Randonneuse, but I told her she will be very happy with the Rivendell. I should know, I have one hanging in my garage.
“How is it set up?” she asked.
Its just a frame now, but I rode it a lot before I stripped it down.
“Why don’t you ride it now?”
“My frames are better.”
“In what way?”
“Because I design and build them, of course!”
Actually, I assured her, Curt does a very nice job on his frames and the Joe Bell paint jobs are super nice. I’m sure she will like the bike when it’s all done. For now, she rides an old Trek frame set up with one chainring and a freewheel on back. When I asked how many teeth are on the chainring she wasn’t sure but thought it was 41 or 42. That is a set-up I have considered myself. When I was younger, Schwinn sold five speeds set up like that. Nina had one when we got married, but she maintains it was a ten speed. She’s mistaken. It may have been her bicycle, but I’m the one who pays attention to them.
The next covered bridge was Larwood Covered Bridge. There was a little park and a fish hatchery on one side. There was also a fairly large group of riders. We all chatted, made introductions, and were introduced. I took a picture of the bridge. Lesli took pictures of everything else.
The next stop would be the Sweet Home Thriftway and everyone seemed terribly excited about it. It was twenty-three miles away and we were obviously going to get there as fast as we could. I was puzzled. “Are Thriftways very fancy grocery stores in Oregon?” I wondered. We have a pretty nice Triftway in Olympia, but it’s not that exciting.
Well, the Thriftway wasn’t much to get excited about. I did get some pasta and pea salad and that was good, but we all found that there wasn’t a trash can around and after we policed the sidewalk, we didn’t find a good place to deposit the trash. There was another trouble with the Thriftway. The sidewalk became too comfortable for most of the group and some people even began comparing their shoes. I wanted to go so I straddled the Randonneuse and considered ditching everyone. Peg saw what was up and suggested that Chuck was chomping at the bit and we left.
On we rode, after some confusion because we left the parking lot by way of an exit the route planners hadn’t considered, toward our last two bridges. The first one was the Crawfordsville Covered Bridge and it was the only one we didn’t actually cross. The road now crosses the river on a new bridge right next to the covered bridge and there is a guard rail separating the old bridge from the highway.
Thirteen more miles of riding brought us to the Earnest Covered Bridge. It was a nice old bridge with a wooden deck. As I understand it, the wooden decks of bridges were covered with dirt to protect them from horse hooves. Rain washed the dirt off so they covered the bridges. The bridges we had crossed so far, were all paved and didn’t need covers. But the Earnest Covered Bridge was aptly named. It was the real deal.
All through this country, we crested small hills that revealed beautiful valleys. And we crossed and rode along too many rivers to keep track of. And the sky got brighter with each passing moment. I think Western Oregon has done a better job of keeping what is beautiful than Western Washington has.
We stopped at the Mohawk Post Store to have our brevet cards signed and to grab a bite to eat. I bought a frozen burrito and put it in the microwave with the intention of just thawing it out. That microwave must have had a nuclear reactor in it because when I bit into the burrito, I scalded my tongue. It’s still tender.
Eric Vigoren and Maggie Williams joined the group at this stop. I met Eric last summer and have seen him a few times since. He became famous for being one of two U.S. randonneurs to ride 10,000 KM worth of brevets and permanents last year. He is also a very nice guy and, along with Peg and many others, he does a lot of the work that makes these rides happen for the rest of us.
As we rolled away from the store, Maggie must have noticed the small Coho decal I have on my rear fender because she said, “Coho! Is that you Chuck?” Of course it was.
After a while, we came out into some open country and the breeziness we had experienced all day turned to wind. It wasn’t terrible wind and it wasn’t always in our faces, but it was enough that we formed a pace line so that only one of us had to push through the brunt of it. Lesli took her turn out front and, if you ask me, went a little harder than necessary. After awhile, I heard Peg ask her to slow down about a half mile an hour. Soon after that, Eric, who was at the back, pulled out into the road and loudly commended Lesli for the great job she was doing at the front of the group. The only thing was that if she didn’t slow down, she would be riding by herself. Lesli told us that she could smell coffee in Harrisburg.
Harrisburg was a control where we ate more snacks, got our cards signed, and prepared for the evening by donning some warmer clothes and turning our lights on.
As the sun sank lower, the wind stopped all together and we had a beautiful evening for a ride in the country. When it became twilight, we saw a sliver of waxing moon with Saturn just below it. It was a wonderful sight.
Some miles down the road we passed a roadside park and someone asked if anyone needed a rest stop. There were a few aye’s so we pulled into the parking area. The restrooms were locked so some riders headed off to the bushes. One of them was Maggie and another asked her if she needed toilet paper. “No,” she held up a Zip Lock bag with something in it, “I have my kit.”
Paul said, “Kit? What’s she mean, kit?”
One of the women explained that they have kits for such stops and began to tell Paul what is in the kit.
Paul raised his hand and said emphatically, “Stop! Maggie and I just met and I don’t want to know what’s in her kit.”
Up ahead, as we rode on, we could see white on the fields. It looked like a mirage to me, but it was way too cool for that. Then we rode past some trees and saw acres and acres of little white flowers on little green plants. There were communities of white beehive boxes placed here and there. It was a spectacular sight and I warned that if you tried to walk through that field, you would soon fall asleep. Maggie said she would like to walk out into the field and fall asleep. I suggested that she not sleep near the boxes because they were full of little waker uppers. She said they wouldn’t bother her. They could crawl over her face and into her nose and ears, but she would sleep on. With seventy-five miles to go, I let the sleep subject drop. Besides, the last Sobe green tea with honey had kicked in and I was feeling just great.
Buena Vista Street was supposed to be easy to miss, but we didn’t. We rolled into Independence, which was an open control, and found the town pretty well locked up. There was a bar open and a little park with restrooms across the street. We pulled into the park and looked at the bar. Out front, a guy was trying to kick start an old Sportster, but not having much luck. A band, with a loud bass and not much else, was trying to fire the crowd up inside and they were doing a much better job of it than the Sportster fellow. I didn’t feel much like going into the bar with my spandex and reflective sash with matching ankle bands on and no one else did either so we signed each others cards.
A friendly woman, in an electric powered chair, and an even friendlier dog on a leash came by. “Where are you all going?” she asked us.
“To Newburg.”
“Newburg!” She laughed. “Not tonight. It’s too far. We’ll get a pickup and haul you there.”
“We know how far it is and we’re prepared for it.”
“Are you planning to go up that big ass hill on River Road?” she asked. We decided to get going before she summoned someone to help her save us from ourselves.
The rest of the ride was in the dark and it began to rain after a while, but it was misanthropic rain -- the kind where the drops don’t really like each other so they keep to themselves. If it was trying to get us wet, it did not succeed, and after a bit, I think we all decided it was going to continue to be a beautiful night. It was, at least up until 3:45 when we finished. Soon after that, I went to bed and don’t know what else happened.
Coho Thoughts
Sunday May 20, 2007