Oregon Tour 2014 Days 9-11: Portland Union Station to St. Paul Union Depot

Portland Union Station

Time to check the bikes and panniers, get lunch, and search out one more untried craft brew. Plenty of time to walk over to the 5th Avenue food truck pod for lunch, and then to  our new favorite tap room, Bailey's on broadway for another Oregon or Washington beer. 

I must say, this tour exceeded all expectations, and parts of it were damned hard. Pat and I joked on the train ride home that we should make each subsequent bike tour more difficult than the previous one in the hopes we could die in the saddle, and wouldn't that be a great way to go. We did have rules, however, such as we'd just leave the other where he fell, no use interrupting the tour (of course, call it in to the authorities), take whatever bike kit we'd long admired, and continue on our way. 

Ready to box 'em up.

5th Avenue food truck pod. We need these in Des Moines. They dot most of Portland.

Back at Bailey's for a pint. I asked the bartender if he ever had to buy shirts, or if he just wore the free craft beer t-shirt swag. He said he only wears the swag and thinks he has the best job in the world. I don't blame him.

Back at Bailey's Tap Room to try our 19th and 20th Pacific Northwest labels: Crux, On the Fence (Bend, Oregon), on the left, and Pike, Kilt Lifter (Seattle), on the right. These will be our last Pacific Northwest beers until we drink our carryons on the train.

Whoops. I spoke too soon. As our train is at least an hour late, we were forced into sampling yet another PNW quaff: the very local Seismic IPA, from Pints Brewing Company, two blocks away. At Wilf's (isn't that an acronym for something?) in Union Station.

Union Station greenery.

In case you've ever had that fleeting sense of relief that, hey, we really don't live in a third world country. (Union Station Amtrak restroom)

Leaving Portland and only 1 ½ hours late. Not bad for Amtrak. Oh, and thanks, Republicans, for subsidizing the automobile industry, and underfunding mass transit. But I digress.

They announced when we got on the train that the dining car wouldn't be joining us until Spokane. So, boxed dinners for all the sleeper car passengers. When I asked about the vegetarian option, our car's steward said there was a shrimp salad. When I suggested that shrimp wasn't vegetarian, he said, "well, it's not meat." Then, he said I could get a "gratis" vegan veggie burger from the cafe car. I'm sure it was truly vegan because there were no natural ingredients in it. Oh, and I waited in the cafe car for over an hour because the guy who runs it took his dinner break during dinner. BTW, I did not eat this lab specimen.

First train beer of the trip, brought on board, of course. Flat Tail Seriously Low Budget Double IPA (8.0% ABV—There is a reason we are sharing these carryon beers), from Corvallis, Oregon. (Near Kennewick, Washington, 7:11 PM PST)

Second round: Fire Mountain Brew House Steam Fired Stout (7.6% ABV), Carlton, Oregon. (Near Mesa, Washington, 8:01 PM PST)

Near Connell, Washington

Near Connell, Washington

Fort George Cavatina Stout (8.8% ABV), an American Imperial Stout from Fort George Brewery & Public House in our starting point on our tour, Astoria, Oregon. (Near Lind, Washington, 8:47 PM PST)

Deviant Dale American IPA, Oskar Blue's Grill & Brew, Lyons, Colorado (8% ABV). Ok, not a Pacific Northwest beer, but damn good. (Ritzville, Washington, 10:02PM PST) Beddie-bye after this I'm guessing.

What will they call this park in 5 years when the glaciers are gone? Park? (East Glacier National Park Station, Montana, 9:04 AM MST May 24, 2014) Now we only have the long slog across North Dakota, and the delays of  kowtowing to the fracking freight trains.

Pat and I put this out to the FB crowd whilst killing time in North Dakota, with the following query:
Ok, we feel Amtrak needs a new slogan. Any Ideas out there? So far we have
"Amtrak: Crossing America One Tie at a Time"
"Amtrak: Come for the Adventure; Stay Because You Have No Choice"
"Take Amtrak: It's Not Our fault You Can't Afford to Fly"
"Amtrak: The New Face of the Slow Train Movement" 
“Amtrak: We May be Slow, But Our Service is Bad"

These are the results of our FB brainstorming session:
Glen Wilkins Amtrak: Third world service in a first world country!
Randall Damon Or, since we kind of live in a third world country, Third World Service at First World Prices
Tim Donovan "In Russia trains on time. In Amtrak who cares"
Patrick McClintock Inspired by this morning's diner car service: Amtrak, service with a snarl.
Randall Damon We finally made it to St. Paul. "Amtrak delivers...eventually."
Lana Wood Johnson Amtrak: Pay more, get less.

We arrived in St. Paul some 8 hours late. Thanks, Republicans and Republicrats.

Oregon Tour 2014 Day 8: Champoeg State Park to Portland

Lunch at Thai Peacock, downtown Portland.

Made it back to Portland. Miles ridden: 462 miles. Miles per hour: 10.1. Days: 8 (7 sunny; 1 torrentially rainy and windy.). New beers tried: 21 (all Oregonian & Washingtonian). Passes crossed: 14. Passes made: 0 (note to P&B). Close-calls with assholes in SUVs: 500. Close calls with assholes in RVs: 200. Close calls with assholes in pickups hauling ATVs: 100. Fingers flipped at aforementioned assholes: several. Heart beats missed: 7,000. Whales watched: 2. Flat tires: 0. Expectations met or exceeded: 6 (Scenery, weather, beer, food, coffee, bike infra-structure, beer). Expectations quashed: 5 (ODOT's coastal bike signage, traffic, speed of traffic, coast 101 bike route, Amtrak). Injuries sustained: 0. Injuries caused: 0?.

The ride into Portland proper was a bit hairy. For all its great bicycle infrastructure, the outlying areas are still typically suburban and car-centric. From up here, it'll be all down hill, literally, as we wend our way downtown and to the Willamette River, and our hotel.

Google maps wasn't much help as they wanted to route us up busy Hwy. 99. So, we made use of this West Coast ride app for the rather circuitous ride into town.

Tonight we traded in our campsites for the Hotel Benson, conveniently located close to the Portland Union Station.

Our next stop after lunch was of course beer. First up, Pints

We both had the Rip Saw Red. Very tasty. 

Note: this brewery is now called Ascendant Beer Company.

A block from our hotel is the marvelous Bailey's Tap Room. They set the standard for what I expect from a tap room.

Yes, that's right: $4.50 for a proper pint (20 ounces--thanks, Sam Adams. You defeated the British and we get stuck with 16 ounce pints!?). Take note Full Court Press @ the otherwise superior El Bate Shop in Des Moines.

Final beer stop of the day, the pretty weird Tugboat Brewing Company, also within two blocks of our hotel.

A small sampling of the odd assortment of kitsch at this strange place. I might have enjoyed it had the beer been better.

Perhaps we chose unwisely, but we really didn't care for our beers at the inveterate Tugboat. This is the oldest craft brew pub in Portland, and from what I've seen, it's been eclipsed by the newcomers, like many older craft beer places.

Addendum: This place closed in 2017. According Tugboat's owner-operators Terry Nelson and Megan McEnroe-Nelson, it's not for lack of customers. Rather, it's the "atrocious, decayed, fleabag" apartments upstairs. Tugboat was forced to close for repairs in March of that year, when a fire ripped through the upstairs Stewart Apartments, collapsing the bar's ceiling. They never reopened.

Oregon Tour 2014 Day 7: Albany to Champoeg State Park

Clover field near Keizer.

Rousting ourselves up from our nondescript hotel's beds, we first hit the equally mediocre breakfast bar with the usual suspects—clientele as well as cuisine. Slammed a feeble cup of Joe (Tom Waits covered it in his song Eggs and Sausage: My veal cutlet come down, tried to beat the shit out of my cup of coffee, coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend itself) and a pastry—or I think it was a pastry—and hit the road. 

When I envision a trip like this, I usually plan on camping most nights. It's a major reason I undertake unsupported bicycle tours (tours where you carry all your gear on the bike).  However, if we were to do a boring old hotel tour, we could carry much less gear. Conversely  when you schlep a hundred pound bike up a 20 percent grade all day, you damn well want to have a reason for it. 

Of course, trips don't always work out the way you plan them, especially on a loaded touring bike, subject to the whims of mother nature. An extreme example of this is a 250 mile tour Pat and I did across Missouri on the Katy trail, 2009. It was so hot that week—over 100 degrees and humid every day—we never camped out once, and actually contemplated UPS-ing our gear back to Des Moines at one point. So I was especially looking forward to camping tonight; ain't nothing like cooking your own grub on a camp stove, quaffing a beer or two while contemplating your luck at being able to do the very thing you were doing, and sleeping in your own digs without worrying about the hotel duvet's pathogens. And of course the best part of camping, in my opinion. is coffee in the morning.

Today was another 60 mile day, again on the Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway, with but one comparatively insignificant 800 foot climb. Usually, by this time in a tour, you're really quite fit, and used to the daily 6-8 hour shift of pedaling, slipping easily into a kind of meditative state.

This was shot leaving Albany, a working class and economically depressed town about a quarter the size of Des Moines. Despite their small size and lack of economic well-being, they had significant bike facilities such as these lanes leading us through town and onto the open road. This, in part, reflects the state of Oregon's bicycling infrastructure efforts, but the locals have also bought into it. Great to see. 

Today's landscape would be primarily hop and clover fields, this one near Independence owned by Rogue Brewing Company.

I edited out my thumb as best I could. Obviously a shot taken on my phone and not my camera, where that can't readily happen.

These Scenic Bikeways are a mixture of dedicated bike lanes, paths, and quiet roadways. Quite frankly, I'd take this every time over a drop-dead gorgeous coastal route jammed with traffic.

Hop fields near Keizer. These plants will grow to the tops of these crazy tilted phone-pole looking trellises. This being only May, they have a ways to go.

Full Sail isn't a bad label. They have a tasty pale ale, as I recall.

Gratuitous shot of loaded touring bike, for no apparent reason other than my hands were free or something.

The explanation for this was already taken, making it doubly gratuitous.

Getting near our campground in the Aurora area.

A tidy little park.

Standing by my beloved MSR Hubba Hubba tent. If you want a florid extolment of this particular piece of kit, click here.

We ended up at about 60 miles for the day. We made a wrong turn and had to backtrack a few miles. As you can see from the elevation profile to the left, the last two thirds were down hill or pretty damned flat. All-in-all, quite an enjoyable, penultimate day of touring. Tomorrow we have to figure out how to navigate into Portland.

Oregon Tour 2014 Day 6: Eugene to Albany

The best thing about today's ride was the sheer easiness of it: only a little over 50 miles, gorgeous weather with nary a head wind, and pretty damned flat as well. Bonus: very little traffic. At times I almost thought we were in Iowa, so bucolic and green it was. Not much excitement today. Very hard to capture the landscape with my camera, the Willamette is really a very pretty valley, but seemingly nondescript in a photograph. Perhaps that's just the photographer.

Near Harrisburg, Oregon.

Shedd, Oregon.

Somewhere or other.

Not many amenities in hardscrabble Albany. Stayed at a bare-bones hotel and ate and drank at the same establishment, the Calapoola, Brewing Company, down by the Willamette River.

They had a pretty decent assortment of brews, including something one does't see all that often, a chili beer (which I had to at least sample). I can't even remember what I ate, but it filled whatever void the beers didn't.

Pat and I each had the Santi Amber, a decent beer, naturally made with local ingredients as its description reveals: 

SantiAmber 

ABV: 5.5%
Rich in color, a medium-bodied brew with a soft velvety slightly sweet caramel finish, moderately hopped with Willamette and Cascade for a well balanced Amber. 

The day was a little over 52 miles with traversing Eugene and a couple of sidetracks. If you look at the elevation profile on the left, you can easily see what made the ride, shall we say, less than challenging. Tomorrow we will make up for our shabby hotel with a good campout.