Outdoor Travel Geek

  • well traveled path

    Starting location: Cape Perpetua Campground Ending location: Umpqua River State Park End of day cumulative mileage: 446.9 I woke up this morning to find that it had rained again last night. It was still drizzling a bit so I decided to sleep more. I ended up oversleeping and didn’t get out of camp until about noon.…

  • military acronyms

    Starting location: Pelican Shores Inn, Lincoln City, OR Ending location: Cape Perpetua Campground End of day cumulative mileage: 395.0 There’s a couple of military acronyms that I really like. The first is SNAFU. It stands for Situation Normal: All F’d Up. That’s pretty much what the last few days have felt like. There’s been some sort…

  • hard day’s night

    Starting location: Somewhere on Meadowlake Road between Beaver and Portland Ending location: Pelican Shores Inn, Lincoln City, OR End of day cumulative mileage: 339.3 I had prepared myself for the possibility of some rough nights on this trip. I brought both my tent and my hammock in case I couldn’t make it to a motel or…

  • inauspicious start

    Starting location: Econolodge, Portland, OR Ending location: Somewhere on Meadowlake Road between Beaver and Portland End of day cumulative mileage: 269.2 (including STP miles) I woke up well rested enough to soberly think about the journey ahead. It’s about 800 miles to Davis. Most of that’s on the well traveled Pacific Coast Bicycle Route. I…

  • STP 2011

    Here are some random thoughts about this epic bike ride– The Big Show I didn’t realize when I signed up, but the Seattle to Portland Classic is actually a pretty big deal. Ten thousand riders converge on Seattle and make the attempt to ride down to Portland. I think it’s at least five times bigger…

  • all aboard for seattle

    I’d love to ride the trains across Europe or Asia someday but I’ve never understood the appeal of trains in the United States. The difference in the US is that less people ride the trains, so the schedules are terrible and the trains are always late. And on top of that, trains in the US are…

  • psycho cyclo

    “That’s crazy!” That’s the response I get from most people when I tell them I’m planning to bike from Portland to Davis. I think that was pretty much the response of everyone except for my dad. My dad’s response was, “Hey, when are you getting married?” Which of course is his standard greeting whenever he…

  • food, fitness & fireworks

    Even by my fairly gluttonous standards, this weekend was a pretty fattening weekend. First stop was House of Prime Rib. My friend Vince was back from China, so we hit up this bastion of gluttony to celebrate. It was pretty dark inside, my crappy cellphone camera couldn’t get a good picture. Time to get a…

  • hanging around

    The weekend started out on a down note. I went into San Francisco to attend my friend Brian’s grandmother’s funeral and be a pallbearer. Interestingly enough, I’ve been a pallbearer as many times as I’ve been a groomsman now. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of being either– I’m mostly opposed to wearing…

  • epitome of stupidity

    Sometimes I get some stupid ideas. This was one of them. Luckily I have friends who can stoop to my level of stupidity. Our original plan was to start at the bike bridge in Winters and float to the graffiti bridge at the end of Davis. But we found that the water was too slow…

  • random memorial weekend

    At the beginning of the week I had no clue what I would be doing for Memorial Day weekend. The Memorial Day holiday falls on a Monday this year, and since I am off on Fridays I had a four day weekend but no plans whatsoever for it. And then, randomly, the weekend sort of…

  • expensive rides

    Today was an expensive day. It started off with a trip to the car dealer. My car was due for its 60k service. Sixty thousand miles. Gosh that’s a lot of miles for a three year old car. But I knew when I bought the car that I would be using it a lot. I…

  • strawberry fields forever

    For the past few years I’ve made it my goal to try to bike at least three century rides per year. In addition to that goal, my overarching goal for my century rides this year is to complete the 100 mile courses for all the rides that I have done the shorter courses for in…

  • trail daze

    On Saturday I went to a workday at Christian Encounter Ministries with a few people from DCCC. According to their website, CEM is a ministry for youth who are dealing with anger, depression, abandonment and youth. It’s located on a large ranch in the Sierra foothills. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of work…

  • big lens, small zoo

    I was pretty bummed out that I didn’t get to experience the shuttle launch. I had even rented a humongous lens so that I could take pictures of the launch. Since I didn’t get to use the lens for the launch, I decided to go to the Sacramento zoo and take pictures of animals there.…