The Oregon Randonneurs hosted the Three Capes Brevet on Saturday.  The name of the brevet is somewhat interesting because during the ride, I think we only tested ourselves on two capes.  Don’t think we were cheated, though.  By turning inland before the third cape, we were allowed to ride up one of the most enjoyable valleys I have ever ridden a bicycle in.  I will have more to say about that valley later .  For now, I will say that this brevet was as much an event as it was a ride.

    The obvious question when you see the place is how do they get away with charging only $40 per room.  The answer is that the place is really a self contained resort and once you check in and give them your credit card number, you can eat, drink, and play to your hearts content.  Everything is charged to the room.  And man o man was that place full of people having fun.  On Friday night there were three bands playing in three different rooms.  There were people playing pool in the Doctor’s Office, people playing frisbee out on the lawn, people soaking in the soaking pool, people eating delicious meals in the dining room, and people drinking everywhere.

    Since I wanted to get up before 5:00 to be ready for the  6:00 am start to the brevet, I wondered how I would get any sleep at all.  I even heard someone do a Tarzan yell from between the main and top floor as I lay reading myself to sleep.  But by 10:00, some big doors were closed and the commotion could barely be heard from our room.  I slept wonderfully.

    In the morning, the only people stirring were riders and housekeeping staff.  In order not to wake the revelers from the night before, we met at the far end of the parking lot.  It had been raining and everything was wet, but it was supposed to turn into a nice day.  We were briefed in the dark and 58 riders left promptly at 6:00.  Forest Grove is a fairly substantial town and home to Pacific University, but we were out of town and into farm country in a matter of minutes.  As the dawn began to light the landscape, we found ourselves riding through freshly washed fields of green.  It was a cloudy and beautiful morning with almost no traffic and the roads to ourselves.  We did overhaul a farm hand on his way to work on a bicycle.  He was pedaling as fast as he could, but rider after rider passed him.  As I went by, I said, “Hola!”  and he returned the salutation with a smile.

    Several groups of riders formed.  At the beginning of rides like this, they are substantial groups.  One of the pleasures on these brevets is that you get a chance to ride with very skilled riders.  By the time you get to the point where you feel like you can ride 300 km, you have enough miles behind you to make the people around you feel comfortable.  There were plenty of riders like that in these groups and I was kind of hoping to meet one of them in particular.  

    Nuts, I thought as rider after rider passed by slowing just long enough to make sure I had what I needed to get back on the road.  The flat was especially annoying because tires and tubes had been tempting my patience the past few days.  Two days before the brevet, I was going over the Randonneuse and checking her out.  I lubed the chain and checked the tires for road trash that might be working its way through the tire.  There were a couple of white patches on the rear tire.  I rubbed them and realized they were thread casing.  I ran over to Deschutes Cyclery, and sure enough, they had three Avocet Duros in 700x28c size.  I bought two and left one for another customer.  

    When I got ready to pull a tire off a front wheel, move it to the rear wheel, and put the new tire on a front wheel, I saw that the front tire was squishy.  The tube had a tiny leak in it so I patched it.  I knew that leaky tube wasn’t my trouble this morning because that was a different front wheel.  The trouble today is that I picked up a Michelin wire.  Now I don’t know what I was thinking, or if I was thinking at all, but when I pulled the wheel off, and as I watched riders going by, I let the wheel flop over onto the side where my headlamp is mounted.  The lamp reflector popped off and I knew it was broken.  My heart sank.  What was I going to do?  I was sure I would need a headlamp before the end of the ride.  

    One rider pulled over and asked me how I was doing.  I told him I flatted and then broke my headlamp.  He suggested that I had better turn around.  That would have been the prudent thing to do, but I’m not known for prudence so I said I thought I’d ride on till noon or so.  If I couldn’t come up with a solution by then, I could turn around, be back before dark, and have a nice ride.  I was reasonably confident that I could come up with a solution after I determined that the ears that hold the reflector onto the light had snapped off, but the reflector itself wasn’t broken.  I just had to figure a way to hold the reflector in place and let light out the front.  Holding it in place wouldn’t be too hard so that’s what I did on the spot.  I took the duct tape out of my road rash kit -- which consists of two gauze pads and some duct tape -- and tried taping the light together.  Since everything was wet, that took a few frustrating minutes, but the flat was quickly fixed so I wasn’t too bad off even if now I was the last rider.

    By the first control, I was catching up to some of the riders, but since the control was up a road we ascended just to add some extra kilometers so that we’d finish with 300, I met a lot of riders coming down the road as I turned up.  One rider was on a Saluki.  He noted that he was on a dog and I was on a fish.  I opined that we were animal riders.  By now, we were out of farm country and deep into the Oregon woods.

    We rode out to the coast on Wilson River road.  You can’t run out of water in this country because there are creeks cascading out of the woods ever fifty to a hundred yards and waterfalls so numerous that few of them are enjoyed by people taking the time to stop and look.  Wilson River Road climbs up over the Coast Range.  It isn’t a steep climb, but it is fairly long and in the end rewarded us with a long, fast decent into Tillamook.

    By this time, while still concerned about my headlamp, I was kind of enjoying figuring out what to do about it.  A solution no longer seemed to be my trouble.  The trouble was choosing one of several options.  I kept thinking about Paul Donaldson, “the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Randonneur.”  I read about him in Dirt Rag Magazine.  He broke his crank and still finished a 200 km brevet within the time limit.  I don’t think that makes him the world’s greatest randonneur, though.  He may be the humblest randonneur or the most modest randonneur, but maybe not the world’s greatest.  Still, he finished his brevet and I was only planning to finish.  When I think about what I’m going to do, I usually remember the Bible verse that says, “Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.”   The World’s Greatest Randonneure broke his crank and still finished the brevet.  I was only a knucklehead who broke his headlamp and thought I could finish.

    At Tillamook we were close to the ocean.  Even though I work on the salt waters of Puget Sound, I live about 70 miles from the sea itself and seldom see it.  Since I earned my keep for more than 12 years as a seaman, the ocean always stirs me and I was anxious to see it.  But before we arrived at Cape Meares, we had a short climb up a steep hill on a badly broken road and then a steep decent on the equally broken other side.  I’d seen some salt water by this time, but not the open sea, until we came out of the trees and saw the boundless Pacific crashing on the beach.  There was a lot of sunlight at that point and I was able to get a good look at the Pacific Ocean again.

    There was a store at this control and I went in looking for electrical tape for my headlamp repair plan.  I ended up with a roll of electrical tape and a roll of clear packing tape.  I also got some clear food wrap from the control workers.  I was set.  The woman at the store asked what I needed the tape for.  I told her I broke my headlamp and had to repair it before dark.  She asked how I broke it and I told her I am a knucklehead.  She laughed and admitted she is also a knucklehead who breaks things.

    After Netarts, we had another climb to Cape Lookout.  There were more ocean views along this stretch and some houses that must belong to wealthy people.  As we rode through the woods, we passed some pretty beat houses.  Some of them hadn’t seen paint for some time and looked like the weight of the moss on the roofs might collapse them.  Ocean views are another story.  Most of the houses on that kind of real estate are pretty swank.  One mansion was surrounded by a 14 foot tall, black chain link fence, topped with a barb wire balustrade, and rolled razor wire.  Rich people have troubles I don’t even want to know about.  What ever goes on inside that fortress evidently inspires a level of paranoia I don’t ever want to experience.  

    All along this stretch, there are islands and rocks that buffer parts of the coast from the full fury of the Pacific.  The name, Pacific, was bestowed upon this ocean by Ferdinand Magellan.  There were probably other people who had other names for it, but Magellan’s name stuck.  It means peaceful sea.  North of San Francisco, the Pacific isn’t all that peaceful.  I would imagine that the people who live along the Oregon coast see some impressive storms.  Fortunately, it wasn’t stormy during our ride, but there was certainly enough surf to make the views spectacular.

    Gliding high above one cliff was a paraglider hanging from his silken canopy.  He soared with the gulls and I wondered what they thought of him.  I know what I thought.  I thought that if I was up there I would want to get down; and fast.  It didn’t look like fun.

    In Pacific City, we had our penultimate control.  It was an open control and most riders seemed to be stopping at the market in the center of town.  While I was there, I carried out the repairs to my light.  I wrapped electrical tape around the reflector and base of the lamp several times.  Then I wrapped more tape around the perimeter of the lamp.  Finally, I cut and peeled the tape from the center of the lens.  It all looked good and my only concern was that a substantial bump in the road might knock the whole thing off and it would shatter on the road.  That was a big concern and every time I hit a pothole or crossed railroad tracks, I cringed.  

    Soon after Pacific City, we turned onto US 101 and completed 100 miles.  This is a busy road, but we were only on it for a mile.  The next turn was onto Little Nestucca River Road.  You know, you see a cue like that on a cue sheet, or possibly you note the road on a map, but you just don’t have any idea of what lays ahead until you turn and pedal.  Little Nestucca River Road was one of the very nicest roads I have ever been on.  Certainly this must have had something to do with my mood, and with the light, and the season, and I might not experience it so marvelously again, but on Saturday, it was one of the very nicest roads I’ve ever been on.  This is one of the supreme pleasures of randonneuring: People who love to explore on bicycles plan routes through some of the neatest places they ever find and give us cue sheets to guide us through them.  

    The road wound up the valley and the river came down.  Again and again, we crossed the river on narrow little bridges that warned those of us going up to yield to those coming down.  Traffic was almost non-existent and the houses here and there looked like they belonged in the valley.  I would have been happy to ride the entire brevet in a valley like this even though it was uphill all the way.  If you ever pass by this road in your car, don’t turn up.  You’ll spend all your time watching the road.  And don’t try to walk up the road.  It will take too long and become monotonous.  But if you’re on a bicycle, do not pass it by.  It is as perfect as perfect gets for a bicycle ride.

    Three miles after turning off of Little Nestucca River Road, we came over the last notable summit of the day.  There were plenty of hills left, but no real climbs.  

    Down we went into Grand Ronde where I found a bean burrito.  Bean burritos are my favorite substantial randonneuring food and, as far as finding them, I’d been striking out so far on this ride, so I was happy to get one.  

    A little later, we passed the biggest Indian casino complex I have seen yet.  I didn’t stop, but it looked like a good size mall.

    On Yamhill River Road, I met up with Bill.  We rode together for the next 25 miles and had a terrific tailwind almost the whole time.  I felt like Bill was making me ride faster than I wanted to and I mentioned that to him.  He told me he felt the same way about me.  That’s synergy, I guess.

    At the information control at Ballstone, we hooked up with four other riders and it looked for a while like we would finish the course together, but it wasn’t to be.

    In the little town of Amity, we stopped to fuel up.  The wind was still blowing and when everyone sat down next to the store, I said I was getting cold and thought I would get going again.  So on I went by myself, assuming the group would catch me soon enough.

    We had been out of the woods and in farm country for a long time by now and that continued.  I rode through Dayton and into Lafayette.  I lived in a city called Lafayette when I was growing up, so that name always brings back memories of riding bicycles and hiking through the hills.  

    The Lafayette on this ride is a town in transition.  When I entered town, I passed some trailers and beat looking houses with for rent signs on them.  There were some markets with signs in Spanish and I surmised from the look of the residents that Lafayette fills up with farm workers during the summer.  Then, after making my turn onto Bridge Street, I saw several of those developments where hundreds of mini mansions go up in a matter of months; each one a big house on a small lot.  Yep, Lafayette is in for a change.

    Then it was back to pedaling.  The evening became fully night soon after the monastery so I didn’t see much the rest of the way back to the lodge.  I did get a good view of the lights of Forest Grove and I have to commend the route designers for choosing quiet roads to finish up on since many of us didn’t finish until after dark.

    Back at the lodge, I turned in my brevet card, showered and met some riders at one of the pubs to talk about our experiences.  Everyone seems to have had a good time.  Nina found me there.  She had been exploring the art in the lodge.  We were soon joined by Cecil and Andrew and had a good time talking about a very wide range of subjects while they ate.  After their dinner, I went to the room where the final control was set up.  I tried to hang on till the last rider came in, but at 20 minutes to 2:00 am I gave up and went to bed.