Heading up the Pass

So we left off at Aunt Michelle's in Keizer. Cory had tuned our bikes and had also told us about a side route around 22 that would take us through little towns on little town roads like Aumsville, and Stayton, Lyons, Mill City, Mehama, and Gates. We went past the state penitentiary, past the state corrections institute, past the safety training academy, past the animal recovery center, etc...We were on the back roads the good part of the morning enjoying little traffic and nice scenery. We stopped off at the house of a retired fire captain along the way, he had a little pack of Alaska Malamutes that I told Emily in my very strong man conviction, "those are friggin wild wolves, I promise." The captain assured us they were not in fact wild but would nip us, almost for sure. He told us stories about having his road sled rippin down these back country roads with 9 dogs leading the way...pretty cool, but he wouldn't rent us one for the trip, (bummer huh?) He brought out the Oregon recreation map and showed us the big hills coming up, "yeah, this one's a goodie, a real gut buster." We thanked him for his time and story and left him alone with his wild wolves.

hmmm... that was Kiel's input but now he is off fixing my tire (yep... blew out a new tire the other day... you wouldn't believe how well we are going to know each and every bike mechanic from here until Iowa...)

After visiting the captain with the wolves we were back on the road and feeling pretty good. We had a goal of making it to Detroit, OR so we tried to keep a pretty steady cruise. It felt great to be on the back roads -- in the silence of the country and able to check out the scenes. It's farm country out here... one might have thought we had already made it to Iowa (in fact we were jumping the borders of Linn and Marion County... for those of you who know my Iowa home you know that it is in Marion, Iowa which is in Linn County... how serendipitous). Reality hit though when we started to hit the hills. Mountains mocking us in the distance. This was not the Iowa I knew.

The towns we cruised through were tiny and run down... there was one town in particular that felt strangely like some of the towns we had visited during our trip to Peru (maybe even a little more run down than that)... everything was shut down and boarded up. We were definitely the only tourists within miles. People would stare us down and sometimes ask us questions and let out a little chuckle if they elicited the information that we are headed to Iowa. But everyone has been friendly and no one has thrown bottles at us from their moving vehicles... this is actually something that we have been warned of.


On our new little bike map there are these symbols that help us figure out when we are going to hit big hills (anywhere from one to three little triangles; one being the easiest big hill). We knew that we were in for a "gut buster", the captain had told us and our map agreed. And when that hill came, it really delivered. It was not impossible, we never walked our bikes, but upon reaching the top our legs were like jello and it was challenging to suppress the yawns. Reaching the top deserved a celebration, which we did for about 10 seconds as we looked down at where we started from the top of a dam. Then we enjoyed the real celebratory feeling of coasting downhill for awhile. The rest of the ride into Detroit Lake State Park was good and almost quick enough.

Rolling into a big campground like Detroit Lake we attract a lot of attention. Some folks mentioned that they had seen us biking during the day and others were just amazed by our gear and our plans. The night went by quickly with us just going through the motions of feeding and resting and housing ourselves. We loved up some warm food that we cooked on our great little penny stove (a stove created out of a pop can -- or in our case a Pabst blue ribbon can) and crawled into bed pretty quickly.




Day Three : 60 + miles and about 1000 ft. elevation
Keizer, OR to Detroit Lake State Park

So if we thought the hills into Detroit Lake were bad we were by no means prepared for today. The hills, or I guess I should call it a hill (as in singular), we faced today was grand... epic... brutal. Someone, during our trip prep phase, had mentioned to us that we would conquer a 30 mile incline during our Oregon route. I think today was it. Granted it was a subtle hill for most of the day... so subtle that we often had a hard time telling if the road in front of us slanted up, down, or flat. But when we would turn our heads to check out the road we were leaving behind us it was clear that we were gaining elevation at a fairly rapid rate. The sign posts gained elevation rapidly... the first letting us know we had reached 2,000 feet followed quickly by a 3,000 feet sign (someone had failed to post the 4,000 feet point... we kept on waiting and waiting for that sign to arrive). Our pour jello legs peddled the whole day in easy gears... and the mileage markers didn't come quick enough. But it felt like we were getting "it" done... whatever "it" was... I, at least, felt a great sense of accomplishment every time my leg would agree to turn one more time around the gear wheel.

I've been trying to check in with what a person thinks about while biking. It's a lot of time during which it is very complicated to talk to the person that you are traveling with (the car noise mixed with the way that sound travels doesn't work too great for long and meaningful conversations). For the first couple of days I composed lists in my mind and imagined what we might see on the road and sang one line of every song I know... but on this day, the entire day, my conversation within was one of encouragement for my self and mostly my legs.

We breaked a lot during our uphill climb... we enjoyed a small lunch riverside (next to Santiam River)... and we grinded away pedal stroke after pedal stroke. So this is when, reflecting back to earlier in this blog, my tire blew. Not cool... and this time it was not just my tube it was both the tube and the tire. Thank god for Duck Tape! We healed up my crummy tires once again, with creative flair and blue duck tape. These are the brand-new tires that I had just purchased in Salem -- touring specific tires. But I had found a way to stress them and puncture them; I had hit a huge rock the day before while enjoying the scenery.

The day passed at a slow and steady pace. I think we did about 30 miles of traveling between the hours of noon and seven. And when we finally found a campground we did not question passing it by.

Did we mention that this weekend marked the start of the deer hunting season in this particular region of the Cascades?? Probably not, since we weren't really concerning ourselves with hunting deer. But it turned out that maybe we should have. The campground was full. We talked about where we could hide out and Kiel struck up conversations with other campers about our options... but nothing was panning out. We were hungry and tired and we had biked 30 miles uphill. We felt like we had earned our SMALL camp footprint. At the very end of the camp I remembered part of the conversation we had with Captain the day before -- he had told us about a campground where his buddies (Artist and Ivan) were camping. And it seemed like we were at that very campground... and further we were standing directly in front of a truck with a "retired lyons fire fighter" marked truck. I thought we were saved -- name dropping ALWAYS works.


Unless you have the wrong people. Lloyd and Ron and the boys were not the buddies we thought they were going to be but they turned out to be just as wonderful as any friend of Captain's. They offered up their campsite to us for sharing and we gratefully accepted. Lloyd and the boys were up for the hunting. They let us know that they would not be up late partying because they were on an early morning mission. Lloyd even offered to leave us some coffee on the fire for when we awoke (hours after they had headed out to hunt).

Day Four : 30 miles and about 3000 ft. elevation
Detroit Lake State Park to some small campground before the Santiam Pass

Another Night in Keizer

Here we are in Salem, OR for another night. At least we have some time for writing down a bit of our story thus far...

Day One

Our kick-off from the Kellow farm near Hebo, OR went pretty well -- we were busy pulling ourselves and our bikes together while Kiel was also trying to finish off a few building projects at the farm. Somehow we managed to leave only about an hour behind our estimated departure. At 12 pm we were standing at the gate of the farm saying our goodbyes to our vehicles and the two dogs that watch over the farm (black dog and brown dog... we think they have more creative names but we don't know them).

We made it about 30 feet before we realized that we had a few more adjustments to make on Kiel's bike... Slow going. But we realistically believed this ride to Salem (about 55 miles) to be a shake-down cruise. We still have a lot to learn about touring and expect no shortage of adjustments and stops along the way.


It was a good cruise. I will admit that my legs suffered slightly but it felt good to see the road at a slowed down pace. Everything from the foothills in the distance, to a farm on the side of the road, to a small grasshopper or Caterpillar crossing the road... you could really check it all out (even the traces and remnants of human activity... missing boots, stuffed animals, and more). For the most part the road was easy rolling -- we only really conquered one series of decent sized hills. Coming down from the hills was not as great as we thought it would be. Riding with full packs is still new to us and learning to balance is a challenge. We clocked-out at about 24 miles per hour going downhill according to a local county sheriff who found great joy in shouting out our speed from his speed trap... still being a bit cautious with our speed both down- and up-hill (although up-hill is more of a bodily limit).



Arriving into Salem felt great... until my tire blew out. We were on the bridge heading into town -- with easy sight to the bike shop that we were headed to -- when I felt that oh-so-familiar feeling of my metal rims grinding on the ground. We quickly fixed our first flat together (there will probably be more). We were both amazed how easy it was to use two sets of hands instead of one when working on a bike. When we rolled into town we were just minutes before the close of the bike shop -- Santiam Bikes -- but they happily helped us out. In addition to the blown out tire I was also having funny derailer problems -- tires we can manage but the derailer is still a new thing even for all four of our hands.

The bike mechanics were instantly intrigued by us... this was the beginning of our celebrity. We look like tourers with our packs and spandex and people want to know about tourers. Where are you going?... Which way are you going?... Feeling a bit funny about saying that we were headed to Iowa I kind of giggled as I answered their questions... I mean who tours to Iowa (out here its either tour down the coast to baja or you are headed to the east coast... no major stops in the Midwest -- and here we are two young brand new tourers who don't know how to fix a derailer). The bike mechanic laughed back and said something under his breath that was along the lines of "go figure". I admitted that Iowa was my home state and he explained to me that another mechanic at the shop was headed on a bike tour to Iowa starting on Monday (it's Wednesday now so he will be less than a week behind us). At the same time across the store Kiel was chatting up another mechanic who actually calls up our fellow traveler, Cory, and hands the phone off for Kiel to meet Cory. It's probably pretty rare to meet another person on tour to Iowa while in Salem, OR...

While at the Bike shop we were also offered touring advice, free dinner and a place to stay. So much support on our Journey already, but we already had plans for the night -- Kiel's Aunt Michelle and Cousin Tyler live in Keizer (which is connected to Salem). We already had dinner plans and family to stay with... now I'm wishing we had family sprinkled all the way across the states to the Midwest. It was a perfect end to our day and everyone seemed very pleased that we had survived our first day, including us. Life on the road isn't looking so bad -- especially with all of the kindness that we are finding in the folks along the way who are genuinely interested in our story.

Mileage Count for Day 1 : approximately 55 miles (not a lot of elevation change)
Hebo, OR (Kellow Farm) to Keizer, OR (Auntie Michelle's house)

Day Two


This morning was looking bright. We knew that we had a few things to get done before we hit the road -- we knew that it would be a late start yet again. Kiel had to make a stop at the bank and to find some new shoes (his shoes appeared to fail during the first day -- he was losing feeling in his feet -- not a soothing feeling for a biker in training). In the process of finding new shoes, at a great price, I started to have problems with my derailer again -- it was jumping off the gears and doing a lot of extra crunching. At first we thought that we would fix the problem ourselves since nobody else was able to do it. But again, may I remind you, that Kiel and I both have a lot to learn about maintaining our bikes. We can clearly fix things enough to "limp by" but our limping was no match for any hill. Our first climb up hill, a couple of miles out of Salem, made it very clear that we were not leaving town today. I couldn't get my chain set solid enough in any gear to get a good crank out of my bike. We turned around and sat down to check out my derailer again outside of the State Penitentiary -- I actually questioned if that was the appropriate place to hang out, I was waiting for a prison guard to jump out of the bushes and tell us that we needed to leave. But it turned out to be a prime location. The prison had heavy exit traffic -- it was at the end of shift and apparently it was also a visitor day.

Just as Kiel and I were giving up on our ability to fix my problem and admitting that we were destined to spend one more day in Salem a man, Garson, pulled up and offered his help (he said he knew what it felt like to be stranded). He loaded us up in his truck and drove us out of his way back to the bike shop downtown.

Back where we started, oh well. We walked back into the bike shop and met a new bike mechanic who instantly knew our story... it was Cory (our fellow traveler). He spent an hour or so on both of our bikes -- and may have finally accomplished the unaccomplishable... he fixed my derailer (at least for now... and we know that if we run into problems, Cory is only a few days behind us, how convenient). We also scored the ever-allusive Oregon State Bike Map which I had been looking for -- the Oregon DOT stopped printing it after they ran out this year because they are creating a revised version. We also learned of a great route for tomorrow -- a route off of the main road and supposedly with fewer hills. Our delay was definitely a blessing in disguise. But we are ready to hit the road again tomorrow.

I do think our layover in town, which really did include about 30 miles of biking throughout town, was greatly healing for our bodies. I'm hoping that this will serve us well during our next few days -- which will include a bunch of up-hill climbs. The day after tomorrow will be our first pass, Santiam Pass. Who's worried?

Mileage count for day 2 : Maybe 30 or so...
Keizer, OR to Keizer, OR