I really wanted to slip in one more ride before the end of the season, and putting Babe the big red Viffer away for the winter. My first approach, and plan, was to finally make an assault on Windy Ridge, FR99, the 'best riding road in Washington State'.

It didn't quite work out that way. I got into full gear expecting it to be a brisk day, and knowing that the wind was howling through the Columbia River Borge. I went out to the garage, only to find that the rear tire on Babe was completely flat.

I don't mean a little low, I mean not completely holding a bead on the rim.

I haven't ridden the bike for a couple of weeks, but I know that the tire was full-up over the weekend. I inspected it closely, and didn't see any damage, I decided to pump it up and see what happened.

I have a nice air compressor, but whoever designed the air chuck that I have, never had to work on a motorcycle tire. I'm (almost) sorry that I don't have any pictures of me in full leather, on my chest, trying to use a tiny bicycle frame pump, while holding the rear wheel off the ground, to get enough air into the tire to take it to the gas station for air.

It held air, and seemed to do OK while riding around, but I didn't want to go too far from gas stations and cellular service until I had more confidence in the tire. Out go the plans to ride Windy Ridge. I think Its a plot.

Instead, I decided to ride out Highway 14, and take some of the back-roads that I've seen, but never ridden before. Here are a couple pictures. Nothing spectacular, but I do want to share with friends.

Ron 11.09.01



Riding in the fall has always been one of my favourites. When I do the old 'I remember when...' stuff, it often goes to rides in October and November. Of course, in the 'old days' I never had motorcycles with the kind of performance that the VFR has, and a 'fast clip' through some of these backroads was 35 to 40 miles per hour. I found several times yesterday that I had to back it down from 60+ going into the corners. The bike is perfectly at home there, but if there is a negative bit about the Avon Venoms, it is that they don't grip for squat on damp compressed leaves.



What Kind of turned into the final destination was Beacon Rock. This is the center magma that is all that is left of an old volcano. The entire mountain portion of the volcano has eroded away, and all that is left is this magma basalt that rises straight up almost 900 feet from the surrounding area. Back in the 20s, a man named Biddle owned the property it was on, and decided to build an 'easy' way to the top. You can see the result. It is quite a climb, but the view is spectacular. The only problem yesterday was the 50MPH+ wind. I decided that the top was more than I wanted to achieve.



From approximately half way up, this is the view to the southwest. Today, I know for sure that half way up was plenty. My riding boots are truly excellent for riding comfort, and I feel confident that they would do a good job of protecting my feet and shins in the case of an emergency landing, but climbing boots they aren't. My calves are so bunched up today, that even as I type this, I've had to stop and stretch them several times.


Well, the rest is text, but I thought I should complete the interesting (to me, anyway) points of the story.

We continued into Carson, and went to the only pub in town. There is a big sign at one end of the parting lot that says 'Hog Parking Only'. I didn't park there. Going inside, the help completely ignored us engrossed as they were in a rather slurred discussion of the comparitive merits of the Winchester versus Browning pump shotguns. After breaking into their conversation directly, we got a couple of beers, and sat down to be ignored again. Mine was Hank's Ale, and the top of the glass tasted good, but as I got toward the bottom, I began to suspect that the last use of the glass was as an ashtray, and it hadn't been cleaned since. I didn't leave a very big tip.

As always, I enjoyed browsing through a little antique/junk store they have there. If you're looking for the esoteric, this is the place to go, and it ain't real expensive.

The next mistake of the day was deciding to ride accross the Hood River Bridge instead of going back to Bridge of the Gods, or on to The Dalles. The Hood River Bridge is a steel grating bridge, and is absolutely like riding on ice with the wind blowing. There are about one and a half lanes on that bridge, and I was using all three of them--not fun.

I was figuring on heading down Highway 35, but wanted to stop at the first reasonable looking pub to get the ash taste out of my mouth, so headed west on the main street of Hood River. I guess its been a few years since I've done that. I almost can't believe how yuppy that city has gotten. I know yuppy is one of those 80s throwback words in my vocabulary, but I don't know a better way to describe it. The whole main street looked like a movie mockup of a prosperous town. And, there seems to be a new city ordinance that bans taverns inside the city limits.

On the plus side, it was well made up for when we did pull in at a lounge at the west end of town. The Red Carpet Resturant is one that I have seen probably hundreds of times through there (I used to work a lot with the Sprint Telecom folks, and would exit the freeway right past it), but never actually visited. The beer was only a little on the spendy side, and they only had a couple brews on tap, but they had a large selection of micros in bottles, and it gets my vote for the friendliest tavern I've been in this year.

Heading down Highway 35 was a little bit of an adventure too. I'm still not sure if it was just the way it was surfaced, or the bad stuff, but the highway had a distinct shimmer in the lowering sun. I never did stop to check it, and I didn't slide at all, but I took it pretty slow, and stayed in the tire tracks where it was a nice comforting dull grey. I don't like riding on ice, or any reasonable facsimilie.

A quick stop at Government camp for fuel, and then down the mountain to ZigZag where I cut off on what used to be the Barlowe Road wound its way back to Gresham, and the garage where I put Babe away. This weekend, I'll add up the Stabil, and cover up with tarps so that I can devite a little more time to finishing up the R/R project I've been working on.

Thanks for checking in,

Ron