Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Mill City Coffee Run with Susan and Bill

Sweetpea at Rosie's

Susan was starting her taper for LEL, so she recruited me and Bill to keep her under control for 200k.  Nice sunny day, perfect for a ride through the Willamette Valley to Mill City and back.

stalk of wheat photobomb

For three people who don't live all that far from each other, we all showed up in Wilsonville separately.  Shame on us.

Susan had found a recipe on one of the many food porn sites she visits - the Elvis Sandwich.  Woven bacon, with banana and peanut butter filling.  Mmm.  She thought it would be great ride food, and made one for each of us.  Knowing that it was coming, I didn't do hardly any food prep for this ride.  A pbj, a couple of bars and gels, and some drink mix.  The route has places to buy food as well.

Elvis Sandwich.  The napkin was a nice touch.

Ok then.  Ate a very adequate breakfast, and arrived at the Wilsonville Starbucks with time for a mocha and a scone.  Susan arrived with the goodies, and Bill showed up shortly thereafter.  We departed on time (!)

This ride was the inaugural long test ride of the new Sidi Dominators.  I had commuted to work a couple days during the week - seemed ok.

shiny new shoes

Uneventful trip over the Boone Bridge, and then we headed for Gervais.  Oh my.  The tailwind the entire way to Stayton was just amazing.  We got there in very good time, too early for the bbq they were firing up outside.  So I had another mocha (they were out of mango smoothies :-(  ), and about half of that Elvis sandwich.  My, that was a lot of bacon.  And salty, which on a warm day is a good thing.

Susan and Bill

Susan takes my picture

We then headed out of Stayton by a slightly complex route. Bill: "Ken wanted to make sure he got the one block of gravel in town on this ride". Southeast to Mehama, Lyons, and our destination, Mill City.

Brief stop in Lyons; Susan practiced her sidewalk nap technique.

Pause in Lyons

Rosie's Mountain House Coffee was hopping.  We got in our orders (smoothie and a scone for me) and retreated to the front porch.  Susan commented on the amount of time we were frittering away on this ride, but wasn't really pushing us to leave.

Bill

Susan alerts the followers

Now it was downhill all the way back, but with a serious headwind.  Yeah, knew we'd have to pay for the push on the way out.

Bridge, Mill City

Fixer-upper, Mehama

Another stop in Stayton (it WAS a control) where I ate another quarter of the Elvis sandwich, then north onto Howell Prairie Rd, with its legendary headwinds.  We pacelined, but the wind was a quartering headwind, echelon worked the best for me.

Amber waves of grain

shadow panda

Stop at the gas station at Hazel Green (I think) and Howell Prairie - did a little FB activity while waiting for all to finish up.  Sadly the espresso stand was closed.

Finally reached the end, and rode into Gervais.  Cold beverage refill, and the last of the Elvis sandwich.  17 more miles to go.  Bill and Susan finally let me pull for awhile :-)

Elvis Sandwich.  The napkin was a nice touch.

It is a shame that such a nice ride has to start and end with the I-5 Boone Bridge, but that's the only way over the river for miles and miles.  The northbound shoulder was somewhat cleaner.

Back into Wilsonville; got cold drinks at the grocery, then visited for a bit before heading homeward.

Ride stats:
126.6mi
3300 vertical feet
14.29 avg mph (wow, that tailwind was helpful!)
11:34 total time

All the pics here

Note: this posting mostly composed with the iPad Blogger app.  Don't paste the picture html code directly from flickr, though.  Still figuring that out.

1 comment:

Phillip Jackson said...

I'm also having problems posting pictures to blogger with Flickr HTML code