Corvallis

Short Version:
Bike repaired, just in time to kill it again.

Long Version:
We drive pretty slow through towns anyway, but especially so when we're looking for a bike shop who can do a spoke replacement and wheel tune at short notice. And a second-hand bookshop, as I'd long-since finished not only my last purchased novel, and the one we stole from the underprivileged children of LA, but also pretty much every other item of reading material in the Reaper. As it turned out, none of the towns we passed through had bike shops - or not that we spotted - until we reached Corvallis, which had umpteen, and loads of bookshops too.

We found a Reaper-appropriate parking spot directly outside a bike shop with a thrift store next door. Perfect! Apart from the fact that the mechanical service section of the bike shop was "Currently accepting bookings for next Friday." Not what I wanted to hear. More luck at the next one, though - Corvallis Cyclery were friendly and interesting and nice, and they not only fixed my wheel on the spot, they gave me some great 'where-to-ride' advice as well. Thus armed, I collected lovely wife from the thrift store and set off into the rural heart of the Willamette Valley, to Falls City and the Black Rock Mountain-Bike Area.

We passed our most astounding white trash family on the way out to the trailhead, and when we arrived, we found about half the parking lot taken up by a huge pickup with an even bigger trailer attached. We got to chatting with the owner (Hi Travis!), who, in the company of three of his friends (who'd just left in the second truck) had done Colorado -Calgary - various places in British Columbia - Vancouver - Falls City. Next stop Bend, then home to Colorado. They`d done the Vancouver-Falls City leg that day. That's a big driving day! As has become our standard practise, we picked his brain on where we should ride (adding a healthy grain or several of salt to each one on the grounds that he`s a downhiller), swapped email addresses, and set off for a ride.

Up a hill.

I'm starting to feel like a stuck record, or whatever the modern equivalent is*, with my laments about the hill-climbing we do, and in all honesty I don't actually dislike it as much as I make out. We do, however, seem to spend a heck of a lot of time riding up hills, then a much shorter span riding back down them. That was certainly the case at Black Rock, where we climbed for an hour up a pretty nice, shaded fire road, then rode downhill on some pretty cool trail sections for about half that. At the most. Would have been way less if my fancypants Fox Talas fork hadn't died halfway down. Bloody thing. The trails were reminiscent of the Vertigo Trail in Queenstown, NZ - for those who've not ridden there, I'd liken it to a downhill BMX track. Black Rock had some more rocky technical sections than Vertigo though, which made it far more enjoyable. Back at the parking lot, we saw deer and got naked, because a sign asked us not to do so in view of the nearby Christian Camp. Red rag to a bull, signmakers! We did make sure there were no kids about, and we weren't dancing around or anything. Well, maybe a little bit of dancing.

Then we dispersed into the woods, ate delicious foods, and prepared ourselves for Reaper Sleeper II: The Aliens Attack At Dawn (or maybe just a little earlier)






* = Screw the modern equivalent, I'm from the 70s! When I repeat myself ad nauseum, it's a stuck record I'm emulating, not some digital glitch bollocks.