Go West Young Man

Well... I'll be hopping on the airplane for Cycle Oregon next Thursday. I'm thinking that I'm good to go. I've packed everything with the exception of things that I can't until it's time to head for the airport. I think I'm there fitness wise, but it's always an unknown for me when I start doing real™ climbs. Not the faux ones we have here.

You know, like 10 mile long ones. Like on Day Three, Happy Camp to Lake Selmac. A nice little 54 mile ride with 5200 feet of climbing.


The only wild card in the whole deal is the weather. They've had an odd summer out there. More like the summer that Iowa normally gets, but didn't this year. That bit of weirdness makes trying to pack interesting™.

For example, there was the "epic" day on Cycle Oregon 10 when they went up Mc Kenzie pass. It managed to snow that day. They were busing people off the mountain. I wasn't there for that bit of "fun". The image to the left is of me when we went over it on CO20 in 2007. So, it boils down to bring lots of stuff that you hope you don't need to use.

My biggest challenge is going to be trying to ride well within my limits. It's going to be hard to dial everything back several notches. But if I can manage that, it should be fun and not a bunch of extreme suffering. I'll be riding with my friend Steve who lives out there. There is also a friend of a friend that I'm hoping to get a chance to talk to. This year, we are also going to be hanging with Camp Aloha. It's an informal bike club, but it should help to simplify the daily camp logistics. So... I should have a good little group of people to hang with.

Note From Steve: Oregon sucks... don't move here.

Yoga Notes: My practice won't go into complete hiatus with this trip. CO does daily yoga classes that are tailored to cycling. I've done these on my past trips there and it helps. Here's a link to the newsletter story about it. I figure on bending the instructors ear some given his cycling background.

In other yoga news, a few of us did a "semi-private" lesson to review jumping up/back last Friday. I have a few new things to try. I did try to work a number of them in during the class at the Shala. It's going to be a very long journey to get to the land of "magically float". I'm hoping that I'm not too sore tomorrow. But, if I am, I'm probably doing it right.