Day 5 – To Klamath Falls
N42º 16.593' W121º 53.129'
Day 5 dawned with me on the phone, following up with various issues back at the office, before we got underway. Ah, the joys of owning a small business.
Breakfast was coffee, juice, bananas and a loaf from the Dog River Coffee Company in Hood River. If you ever get the chance, they make a pretty mean Americano. We packed up fairly quickly and hit the road to Klamath Falls. According to the GPS, it was about 100kms less than we travelled yesterday, but was expected to take the same amount of time. I have to say that on the whole, I’m an optimist, and a 100kms less should get us there an hour sooner. So it pisses me off when the GPS is correct.
First, however, we got to enjoy a tremendous ride up from the Columbia River Gorge up the sides of Mount Hood. Overall, we managed to travel through 1100 vertical metres in slightly less than an hour, on a road that was almost as enjoyable as yesterday’s. Of course, any illusion that this was going to be the nature of the rest of our ride through Oregon was mere fantasy on our part. Another 30 minutes saw us spat into scrub and a relatively straight stretch of highway that we were expected to follow for the next 200 miles. Sadly, this was in fact to be our fate. In other words, it really pisses me off when the GPS is correct.
Mount Hood, as we climb from the Hood River
In the meantime, however, we found ample opportunity to test our rules for motorcycle travel. And we didn’t just test one of the rules, we tested all of them.
The first rule was perhaps the most straightforward. Pulling into Madras, Oregon, around 1pm, we decided that lunch was in order. The only question was where. A cruise of the main street was revealing the usual suspects of restaurant chains, but nothing that seemed to fit the bill Just as the situation was getting dire, however, both of us spotted the Black Bear Diner. On the face of it, the Black Bear Diner was an entirely reasonable choice and in no way a violation of the rules. Yet, on closer inspection, the sign in the parking lot read ‘Family Food’, which in essence skirted the rules on a technicality (in that it didn’t say ‘Family Restaurant’). Where we found ourselves in actual contravention of the rules, however, was in our commitment to avoid eating in chains. Sadly, the Black Bear is one. Which leads to the latest amending corollary, which states that any restaurants with a significant bear theme are exempt from any previously identified exclusions.
The second rule was slightly more problematic. The principle that ‘we will go where the GPS tells us’ is all well and good in principle. Where this falls down, however, is when the road offers a choice and the GPS isn’t telling you a damned thing. What’s worse, this was not an isolated instance. The first experience came as we headed down US 26. This miraculously turns into US 97 about two hours south of Hood River, but the GPS in no way acknowledges the fact that this occurs. What’s worse, the interchange where the highways converge doesn’t actually appear on the map. This resulted in both of us navigating a cloverleaf from one highway to the other, with no acceleration lane at the bottom. You get off one highway and you’re on to the next. So you better be on your game, and not actually trying to figure out whether the highway you’re getting on is the one you really want.
From there, things went from bad to worse. No less than three other times, the highway did one thing while the GPS said something different. Only this would be both generous and inaccurate. It’s not that the GPS said something different, it said nothing at all. At least, not at the time. Once you didn’t do what you were supposed to do the GPS got downright ornery, but that was only after the fact. Beforehand, however, you had to predict the right move. It was only after you got it wrong that you suffered the consequences. Which, when you look it that way, describes the relationships of several of my friends.
Once past Bend, the drive got mind-numbingly boring. This may have been considered a positive, in that the excitement of the previous hour was a product of the mistakes we made rather than any actually enjoyment of the ride. The last 200 miles were almost completely straight, however, which gave me a good deal of time to reflect on the challenges of navigating Oregon highways. This has led to a few additional rules that will be implemented when I am appointed supreme commander of the universe:
- Drivers found speeding excessively in passing lanes and then resuming a sub-speed-limit pace once traffic merges back to a single lane will be publicly flogged.
- Motorcyclists who insist on riding together will learn how to actually ride in formation and not expect that they have the same size and distance requirements as cars. If they insist on behaving like a car, then they’re gonna get passed like they’re a car. And if that means someone trying to pass all of them only gets so far, they’re just going to have to suck that up.
- States shall be lenient in their speed limits, or in the enforcement of their speed limits, or both. They shall not be both petty in setting extremely low speed limits and anally aggressive in their enforcement of them.
We finally made it to Klamath Falls and the Running Y ranch. Judging by what we saw of the town, Klamath Falls was once both thriving and funky. Sadly, today it appears to be neither. The downtown is incredibly rundown, and at least half the stores have closed. The restaurants that looked interesting are shut, and those that remain are few and far between. And while the place that we were staying had a restaurant, it shut its doors at 8pm. We finally landed on a strategy of picnicking in the room.
The Main Street of Klamath Falls.
A run to the Safeway in town for food and wine, and a side trip to the liquor store for a bottle of Hendrick’s gin and we had what we needed. Not to mention some interesting insights into the differences between shopping in Canada and shopping in the States. In Canada, Safeway verges on gourmet in many of its offerings, but at the same time the government reserves the right to fully control what alcohol you buy. In the land that gave the world Prohibition, the only thing they won’t trust retailers with is the hard stuff, and you’ve got an incredible selection of wine and beer (particularly beer). Ask for pate, brie or a baguette, though, and you are going to get some very strange looks. What has been an odd and unsettling day ended the same way, but hiding in our hotel room seems to be a reasonable strategy to compensate.
The golf course at Running Y. You’d think there would be golfers.
Tomorrow, we head to Lake Tahoe. Today, we hunker down and catch our breath.