Oregon’s Scenic Bikeways
Pic-Travelogue of a week-long bicycle tour in Central Oregon, USA.
Oregon is a very bike-friendly state. Apart from hosting several websites for bikers to plan their journeys, it also has 16 official Scenic Bikeways. These bikeways are well-marked routes through beautiful stretches of the state on roads with very low motor traffic. Some of the routes are through trails where there is no motor traffic. I covered three bikeways on my tour. All bikeways had plenty of water stations, restrooms and campgrounds on the way. This tour was supported by Vargo Outdoors.
I started off the first day of my tour from Portland, straight into a climb of about 4000 ft. As compared to my earlier rides, the climb felt much easier because of my new cleats. After heading east from Portland I crossed the Mt. Hood National Forest over the Blue Box pass. The eastern side of the pass was strikingly dry. The dense and lush pine trees gave way to sparse shrubs. To avoid traffic altogether, I took a trail route to reach Maupin, a town of just 400 people.
“Hey, are you from Madras (Oregon)?”, a woman yelled from a car looking at my jacket. I noticed that she was desperate to talk to me because she had opened the door even before the car came to a complete stop. I had just mounted on my bicycle and was about to leave after a short refreshing break at a lake. “No, I am from Madras, India”. “Oh, India? We are Indians too!” Both of us burst into laughter simultaneously. Indians in America, also referred to as Native Americans, derive their name from a mistake committed by Christopher Columbus. On his voyage to find a western route to India he landed on the Caribbean islands and claimed to have reached India. The mistake was corrected soon after but the name has stuck till today. I met a few more Native Americans in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. I found them to be very cheerful and funny.
On my second Scenic Bikeway, sometime during mid-day, I was jolted by this sight. I had read about many forest fires in the news but wasn’t expecting to be close to one. The states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming were attacked by hugely destructive forest fires. The one seen in the picture above was caused by an illegal campfire. Despite several awareness drives and plenty of signs cautioning against the activity, these occurrences of negligence don’t seem to die down. This forest fire in Mt. Hood has already consumed 50,000 acres of lush green forest land. It is predicted that it will take about 50 years for the natural habitat to restore itself.
I reached Madras, Oregon on day 4 and found a beautiful campground on the banks of the Pelton lake. I liked the town so much that I spent one extra day there exploring the trails around the lakes and creeks. The weather was pleasant and I was happy to be out of the smoke clouds caused by surrounding forest fires. The challenging trails took me very close to the lakes from where I could spot a lot of wildlife. Even as I was observing all of nature’s wonders, my mind often drifted to thoughts from the past.
Why do I cycle?
I went on my first bicycle tour when I was an undergraduate. It was the final few days of college and I desperately wanted to visit a hill station in South India. I did not have money to travel by car and I did not know to ride a motorcycle. So travelling by bicycle was the only option. That tour served as a first for many things. A horribly planned itinerary coupled with poorly managed packing ruined the tour. I could not visit all the places I wished to visit because I could not find the strength to ride up 4% gradient hills on my heavy bicycle. I often ended up cycling after dark due to intense heat during the day. I also spent way more money than I had estimated. But the silver lining among all the unfortunate events was that I got to know the place much better. With every dip and hump in the road I understood the geography of the terrain better. With the slowly changing landscapes, nature unveiled a different kind of beauty- the beauty of contrasting shades. When people saw me on bicycle, they were eager to talk to me and asked me about my journey. That served as a conversation starter which gradually helped me understand their life and culture better. Eventually, as I went on more bicycle tours, I began to prefer travelling that way even though I could afford to travel on motor vehicles. I find that all of the above reasons hold true here in the United States as well.
What do I think about while cycling?
The first long distance activity I was introduced to as a child was swimming. During long workouts, I used to think about a wide variety of things- that boy who was rude to me, that new strict teacher, that toy I wanted, or that unsolved mathematics problem. As I grew older I viewed the hour long activities as a meditational exercise and forced myself to focus on my breathing. During my bicycle journeys too I focussed on my breathing which was often interrupted by stray thoughts. On this tour my mind wandered through all kinds of thoughts such as- friends and family back home whom I missed deeply, an unexpected roadblock in my research, the food I wished to eat at the next town, evocative song lyrics, the dangers posed by wildlife, and so on. Whenever I got conscious about my wandering mind I tried my best to get rid of all thoughts. I also tried to lose focus on my breathing and made an effort to not even think about the beauty of bare nature. I yearned for an empty mind but I was unsuccessful.
After cycling through the trails in the national forest all alone the entire day I was covered in brick red dust. Earlier in the day I had ridden through some wet places in the forest where I had encountered a scourge of mosquitoes. My mind was constantly distracted by the irritation caused by mosquito bites all over my body. Moreover, the dirt roads as seen in the picture earlier were sometimes obstructed by fallen trees several feet wide. That came with its own set of challenges of straying into the forest to go around the length of the tree. All those incidents kept my mind occupied constantly. At the end of the day I was relieved to reach a deserted campground on the shore of a calm lake. My week-long tour had come to an end with an ice bath in the sapphire blue waters of Little Crater lake. As I entered the water, troubling memories from the day’s ride slowly faded away. I was no more distracted by the day’s hardships. I was not anxious of wildlife around me. I was not troubled by thoughts of pending work, research or other commitments. I was not aware of how cold my body felt in the water. I was not even admiring the contrasting shades of nature. Finally my mind was empty.
