[trip-list] Eugene

[drewish@katherinehouse.com]

CURTIN, OR 07/25/02 - Up in the morning to NPR, packed it up and got moving. I didn't stop for breakfast because I'd purchased some "organic" bagels at a co-op on the way out Corvallis the day before. I was starving when I finally stopped to eat one. I guess organic means "molds quickly" because all four of them were covered in green and white. I was tempted to eat the least moldy one out of principle but the smell was too much. 

Diane Bishop, my bike contact with the City of Eugene, had emailed me a set of directions to get onto a the greenway, down along the river and into town to meet her. Closer friends, family and co-workers will be shocked to learn that I was at our designated meeting spot I was a full hour and a half ahead od schedule. It was partially because I didn't want another flat tire to delay me and partially because I just ride so darn fast. [That second one was a joke.] With this extra bit of time I went looking for a close by place to eat at. What I found was I-5, a mall and the accompanying acres of parking lurking just out of site of the bike path. All I could find in this asphault desert was a Taco Time. I was hungry enough to take what I could get and retreat back across the river to safety.

I met Diane at a beautiful rose garden along the trail and we rode on to City Hall. There I met Beth Forrest, the other person coordinating my visit and then finally Mayor Jim Torrey. This being my first visit to a city on behalf of the NBG and the first time I remember meeting a mayor, I was a bit nervous. I wonder if it was obvious, he started out by joking with me "I didn't wear a tie today, I figured you wouldn't be wearing a tuxedo on your way down." Feeling a bit more at ease we talked about their greenways and I spent quite a bit of time telling them what a good job they were doing. He gave me the proclamation (they're actually going to mail it so it doesn't get trashed riding down in my bags) and a bunch of Eugene schwag [it could be spelled like that...]. We went outside to check out my bike and get a couple more pictures before the Mayor had to leave to go back to his business. 

Afterwards Diane took me to lunch at this wonderful Indian-Mediteranian resturaunt. As we ate we looked over the brand new copy of ODOT's bike map Diane dug up for me (if I'd known she had one I wouldn't have ridden the 6 miles to recover the old one) and planned a route south. Until that point I hadn't really looked at the California side of things. I'd been thinking ride to Medford, then start planning out the California part. Based on the maps I've got that would have set me up to spend at least a full day riding on I-5. The more I looked at it the better the coast started to sound, traffic might be bad but I-5'd be worse, the coast is more scenic and it's not that much farther out of the way and the weather should be cooler. So off I set.

20 miles south of Eugene in a two gas station town called Lorain I got to talking with a fellow named Jim. He'd been an Airborne Ranger in the '50s and '60s, had an accident parachuting that ended with him landing on his head, and--since I was talking to him--surviving. He was a rider too, pedaling around on a pretty sweet little Canondale he'd tricked out to work with his tweaked back. We talked straight for an hour and a half tearing through world politics, details of his military service, Judeaisim's take on the end times, and local history. 

Down the road I camped between the rows of someone's pine tree farm. Less than 50 miles to the ocean.

etc.
* Rural is rural no matter the state. I have to keep reminding myself I'm not in West Virginia. Seeing the trucks hauling lumber not coal does help jog the memory.
* No matter how good it sounds, Chef Boyardee Macaroni and Cheese can only disappoint you.
* Riding in West Oregon in an education in the subtelties of the color green.

andrew

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