Friday, September 15. West Roosevelt, WA, to Biggs, OR.
Nancy had arisen in the night, and had seen a beautiful, windless riverscape; and when she got back in the tent and told me, I suggested that we should get up right then and head out for Biggs. I wasn't completely kidding; and in retrospect, I wish we had left then.
But instead, we waited for daylight, and we talked with several of the windsurfer dudes, mostly about the days' forecast. One guy thought it would be windy the whole way, but the others thought we had a good chance to get to Biggs before it got really bad - even though, by all accounts, the largest pressure gradients existed there at the moment we left camp this morning. With an eastwardly-trending weather system, we were destined to run into it.
We stopped for some ice and water before leaving West Roosevelt, and then took off down route 14. The pattern from yesterday held true, with lots of truck traffic - but the winds were lighter and the road, overnight it seemed, had become smoother. We no longer felt compelled to get out off the shoulder for a smooth place to ride; there was plenty of room on the shoulder. The first half of today's journey was actually nice, and I started to think we might be able to go all the way to Lyle, 21 miles farther than Biggs.
Then we reached the base of the first 500-foot climb, covering most of 3 miles. As climbs go, especially the climbs we've done, this was pretty low on the challenge-o-meter; but, the road surface changed from the smooth, ample shouldered road we had been so enjoying to the crappy, chip-sealed, gravelly-shouldered, bone-rattling "surface" that had been the bane of our existence yesterday. If the climbing wasn't all that challenging, it was certainly bumpy. And, the westerly wind had begun to pick up.
I had been eyeballing the dark clouds to our northwest, hoping the obvious wisps of precipitation would not reach our expected position, or that, if it did, not make it all the way to the ground (as had been the case a few days ago, when rain evaporated before reaching the ground). But the expanse of the darkening clouds grew along with the wind, and the road continued to rise, effectively bringing the earth up to the level where the rain could reach it.
As we approached the John Day Dam, still climbing, the rain began in earnest, and we stopped to put covers on our backpacks and for Nancy to finally put on her rain jacket (I had BEEN wearing mine already, being the cold-weather wuss I am). Maddeningly, from where we stood on the side of the road, putting this gear on, I could see a hundred yards up the road to a point where it WAS NOT RAINING. I desperately wanted to just stand on the pedals and GET THERE, where we WOULDN'T GET ANY WETTER; but of course, as we got there, it had begun to rain there, too. So we continued the climb, into the wind, and under the increasingly heavy, and cold, rain.
Then it started to hail. My bell rang repeatedly under assault from the tiny chunks of ice, and my hands, already starting to go numb from the cold, were jolted back to life by the constant needling of the impacts. The winds grew in intensity but began to come from varying directions. We had begun to penetrate to the center of the low pressure system that was driving the wind.
With the road already wet and covered with tiny, melting chunks of ice, it was already pretty treacherous riding, and we had long since given up trying to find a smooth place to ride, hugging the shoulder for dear life; but the trucks continued to speed by, most without even bothering to change lanes, sending up collossal volumes of spume from the road and adding to the swirling wind with the vortex of their wake.
And in a moment I began to think it was as bad as it could get, I saw the lightning in the hills to our north; before I could even stop concentrating on the rain and hail long enough to wonder how far away the lightning was, I heard the thunder, booming down the canyons and echoing in the gorge.
I know, I know: there's no way. There is NO WAY it could have been that bad. There is no way someone could even make this UP it's so awful. And yet there we were, laboring through it all to push ourselves onward; pushing with an effort that, in the right gear, can propel us many yards with each stroke, but at that moment moving us distances better measured in inches. Frustrating, yes, but we didn't have TIME to be frustrated - we were wet and cold and windblown, and all we wanted was somewhere to stop and get out of the weather and the wet clothes, and into a hot shower. Biggs became our oasis, hopefully not just a mirage, where we could slake our thirst for a few of life's little comforts.
Soon we were unable to predict which direction the winds would be coming from at any moment, only that the wind would be blowing. Focussing hard to maintain balance and direction while watching for wayward traffic and dangerous road debris (of which, given the wind, there was a surprisingly ample supply), I was relieved to finally see the sign pointing to Biggs, realizing the unspoken decision I was sure we had both made to stop there for the day. By that time, the hail had stopped, but a light rain continued to fall. It was also near this point that we saw the sign pointing to Stonehenge (actually a replica, and functioning as more of a war memorial than as a solar observatory), but we elected not to make the touristy stop there due to the swirling, 30-mph+ winds, and the rain, and the lurking threat of more of the hail we had so recently left behind us.
The road to Biggs, prominently advertised a mile beforehand as US Route 97 to Bend, was marked at the turn as inconspicuously as the road to Stonehenge (the replica we had just bypassed), and at first I was not sure if it was actually the road we were supposed to take; it just said "Maryhill Park" and pointed roughly south. Finally concluding that it couldn't be anything else, we took it.
The road down is a steep grade and winds around a few times; it is easy to pick up a LOT of speed, even today with the confusing winds and rain. At speeds like that, it becomes even more difficult to maintain control, and we both had to brake often to stay upright. At one moment the wind was pushing us off the edge, and at the next moment forcing us out into the lane of travel. For once, the trucks seemed willing to give us enough room to maneuver, perhaps only because they didn't know where the hell we would go (like we DID).
We safely made it to the bottom of the descent, where we rolled on past Maryhill Park and the museum there (swirling winds, rain, hail), to confront possibly the single most dangerous, bike-unfriendly bridge we have seen on this trip. There are two lanes, one in each direction, with posts and road bumps dotting the centerline, and a gutter about 6 inches wide. Abutting that is a raised concrete "sidewalk" about a foot wide, too narrow to walk on WITH our bikes. With the winds (swirling, 30-mph+ winds) and the incline on the bridge, it was too dangerous to ride, so we had to walk in the 6-inch gutter with our bikes up on the narrow concrete walk. The trucks at least slowed down as they passed us with inches to spare. Finally, at the top, and absolutely livid, I waited for a break in the traffic and then brought my bike down to road level and took the entire lane for the rest of the ride into Biggs; Nancy followed suit. If some of the drivers behind us were delayed for a few seconds, so be it.
We reached our refuge, a TraveLodge, just as it began to rain again. But they had room, and soon we were basking in our oasis, enjoying the inexpensive luxury of shelter and running water. And, after a shower and lunch at Linda's Restaurant here in Biggs, described by one of the windsurfers as "kind of an armpit place", I recalled one of Melanie's comments from a cold morning in Wyoming: "Armpits are a great invention."
I couldn't agree more.
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