Lookout Mountain

I went for a ride today! Now you're saying to yourself "You rent motorcycles, and you have seven at your disposal, you probably ride every day!" Well, I don't ride EVERY day. Actually most of my job is at the computer. I answer emails from potential and future customers. I answer their many, many questions. I get their insurance and SPOT devices set up. I add stuff to our website, make sure the calendar is up to date, put pictures on facebook, and interact with other motorcycle minded facebook pages, for exposure. I fill out a lot of customer paperwork, wash bikes, make sure all the stuff that goes on the bikes is in order, and spray Lysol in returned helmets. Most of my riding is to the gas station to fill up a bike, or to Pro caliber in Bend, to order parts, or to pick up parts. The truth is, I could jump on a bike, and take off into the mountains any time, but when I'm here by myself, I just don't...very often. I'm not afraid to ride on the pavement by myself. I've ridden between Bend and Portland, alone many times. It's the off road stuff that isn't such a good idea to do alone, but today, I went for a ride.

I wanted to go to the top of Lookout Mountain. It isn't very far from our house. I see it all the time. I know there is a Forest Service road to the top, because I've seen it on the map, but I've just never been up there, and today I had a bug to go.

I chose our smallest bike. It's not our shortest bike, but it is light, and only has a 250cc engine. I love my BMW, but if I drop it alone, I can't pick it up. Well, I did pick it up once; the Rawhyde guys made me lay it on its side...gently, lay it on its side. I wasn't riding it, or anything...it was just for demo purposes, to prove that I COULD pick it up. Anyway, it took me three trys, and I about hemorrhaged, but I got the thing picked up. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it again, and I don't want to try. I know I can pick up the KLX if I had to, so that was to be my trusty steed. I packed some water and a granola bar, and off I went.

The Forest Service marks their roads with a stick that looks like this:

 They don't survive the winters very well, and the Forest Service isn't very prudent when it comes to repairing or replacing them. Many times, the number on the road, isn't the same as the number on the map, sometimes the number decals fall off, leaving only a partial number, and other times the shrubs are covering the marker all together.

 It's always fun to play Where's Waldo with the road markers from the back of a motorcycle in the forest. 

Despite the challenges,I managed to navigate my way to the correct road. On the way up, I encountered some logging.

 I'm always amazed that pictures of steep roads, don't look steep. The next picture is the road to the top. I thought it was kind of steep-ish.

At the top, I parked the KLX in the shade, drank some water, ate my granola bar, and had a look around.

I thought with a name like "Lookout Mountain" there would be some kind of lookout at the top. That seems like a reasonable assumption...of course not. THIS is what's at the top.

 Solar panels, a very tall antenna, and whatever that white shed is. This isn't the first time we've ridden up a mountain only to find a big ol' pile of technology at the top. Oh well. 

I took a picture of this:

I'm not sure what these are called. They're common here; we even have them in our yard, but they usually grow straight up. I've never seen one do this before.

I didn't spend a lot of time at the top of Lookout Mountain. I decided it looked like the kind of place a bear, or mountain lion might call home, and I didn't want to be the thing they called lunch, so I hopped on my bike and headed back down the trail. I stopped half way to take this picture:

I had a great ride, I didn't drop the bike, and I now know what is at the top of Lookout Mountain.

 

Oh Recycling We Will Go!

Every couple of weeks I need to take care of the garbage and recycling around here. That doesn't sound very exciting, or blog worthy, but in Oregon, we take our recycling pretty seriously, so come along and I'll show you how it's done.

First of all, we keep the returnable bottles and cans, separate from the household recycling. We had a party last weekend, so we have a few bottles and cans to return.

In Oregon, you pay 5 cents deposit per can or bottle. This applies to soda, beer, and water. We get the 5 cents back when we return the empties to the store. I think this is supposed to deter people from littering, and encourage recycling. It does work, but not always the way it was intended. There are lots of folks, like us, who save their cans and bottles until they can't stand to have them around any more, then we take them to the bottle return at the store; but there are still lots of people who litter, or just throw the cans and bottles away. This has sparked a cottage industry amongst the low income, and mostly homeless, who have rigged up bicycles with trailers, and go digging through trash and recycling bins. This isn't a problem, really, the stuff gets recycled either way, but sometimes they do their prowling late at night, and if the garbage bin is right near your bedroom window, it can wake you up and make you crabby. I know this for a fact.

Household recycling is all the paper, cardboard, plastic, glass jars, etc. Boxes, like from cereal or mac and cheese, are folded flat and recycled. Junk mail is recycled. We even recycle the cardboard tubes from the toilet paper.

To answer the question on everyone's mind...no, we did not drink a case of Crater Lake Vodka; that's just the box we keep in the closet to throw the recyclables in.

After all the bottle, cans, and household recycling items have been sorted, we are left with this:

A bag of real garbage. This is mostly comprised of kitchen scraps, cat box scoopings, and used tissues. Mostly cat box scoopings. This bag is heavy, and it smells bad.

Once the truck is loaded, we head off to the recycling center at Sunriver. It doesn't cost anything to leave the household recyclables.

Here are the bins. There is a place for glass, a place for large flat cardboard, and the rest just goes together in the bin.

Next, we go to the bottle return at the store. Every grocery store in Oregon has a bottle return. It is usually located somewhere outside the store. Most are kind of smelly, and there are usually a lot of homeless, at least they look and smell homeless, folks hanging around. In the busier areas, you may have to wait your turn. I love the bottle return at Sunriver, because it's kind of an upscale place. They keep it really clean, and it doesn't really attract too many of the previously mentioned sort.

At the bottle return, you place your cans or bottles one by one in the hole, the machine reads the bar code, and gives you credit. The cans must not be smashed. The machine will smash the can after it reads the bar code. When you are done, push the red button, and a ticket will be generated that looks like this:

This ticket says I had 52 cans and bottles, and I get $2.60 back. I took the ticket inside the store, and handed it to one of the checkers, who gave me this:

Not too bad. I could almost buy a couple of cans of soda, and start the whole process over again!

Thanks for recycling with me!

It's Been an Interesting Year!

After a few attempts at recovering my password, I've opened the squeaky door, and blown the dust off my blog. I started this blog about a year ago, when I thought I had time, and interesting things to comment on. Then, life got busy. Oh so busy.

It all started one day last fall, when Billy called me and said "So what do you think...should we start a motorcycle rental business? I found a great first bike on Craigslist." Well there I was, standing in the middle of the Portland Flower Market, with my co worker, Heather, cell phone in hand, saying "Sure, that sounds great! Buy the bike!" I hung up the phone, turned to Heather and said "We just started a business". It wasn't quite as simple as that. Billy and I had been talking about it....oh, maybe for a week or two, but sometimes if you talk about something too much, you might just talk yourself right out of it. So on that day, Oregon Dual Sport Rental & Adventures was born.

Let the work begin! There are all kinds of things you need to do when starting a new business. We had to apply for an LLC, get a tax ID number, find out about insuring all the bikes, and since the business is located at our house, figure out how to insure our house and property. We had to make business cards, fliers, join the Chamber of Commerce, buy more bikes, set up a website??!! Holy cow! We did all of this through the winter and spring, while working  our "real" jobs in the Portland area.

With the business to be located at our house in Bend, one of us would have to move there full time. Since Billy's real job pays more than my real job, I would be the one to move. So last May, I bid farewell to my co-workers at the flower shop, packed up the cats, and moved to Bend. Billy commutes between Portland and Bend, twice a week on his trusty F800GS "Darth". He should be getting his 200,000 mile patch from BMW very soon!

 We have met some really nice people who work in motorcycle related businesses here. Giant Loop is in Bend. They make travel bags for motorcycles. Atomic Moto is also in Bend. They have some great gear for riding. High Desert Adventures is a dual sport touring business in Prineville. They sometimes rent bikes from us for their tours. Moto Fantasy is a motorcycle rental business near us. They rent street bikes, and also have a great bed and breakfast lodge. All really nice people, and we're starting to feel like part of the community.

 The motorcycle rental business is slowly taking off. We have been getting busier as the summer progresses. Our customers have all been great. We had our first international customers last week. A couple of really nice guys from Nova Scotia. They enjoyed a day of riding, and then went with us to an ADV meet up dinner in Bend. We all had a great time. We have only had one miss hap, so far. A customer from CA went riding alone, and had an unintentional dismount in some deep sand. Five broken ribs, and a bleeding lung; two nights in the hospital. Thank God he's mostly okay, and thank God for the waiver. Every one of our customers signs a waiver saying they take full responsibility for their actions. They acknowledge that what they are about to do is very dangerous, and they cannot sue us, and their spouse, kids, grandkids, future kids, cat, dog, bird, and/or neighbor can't sue us either. Period. Billy and I have found that we work really well together. He has a head for numbers, facts, and figures, while I am creative, and have learned how to manage our website, and make our business visible. We both wrench on the bikes....well, he does most of the wrenching, but I do some too! Together, we make a good team, and at the end of the day I still love him more than ever!

So how has my summer been? Great! I love living in Bend! In June, my parents took the family on a fabulous Alaskan cruise, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. We had a wonderful time, and saw lots of beautiful scenery. (I will try to put up some pictures in a future post.) In July, eight of my childhood girlfriends came to visit. We had fun catching up on each others lives, and did some sightseeing around the Bend area. August brought our 3rd annual Deschutes River Float and party weekend. We had a small group this year, but we all had fun! We all slept on the patio, and watched the Perseid Meteor showers.

My son Cody, lives in Bend now. He works at Izzy's Restaurant, and is planning to go to Central Oregon Community College. We get together and hike, or just hang out. That has been really nice. My daughter Haley, is going to be a senior (how is that possible?) at the U of O. She is involved in the marching band, Gama Phi Beta sorority, and now she is also employed at an Izzy's Restaurant in Springfield.

So that's what's been going on with me this past year. I will try to get more pictures up in future posts. We had a major computer melt down over the summer, and most of my pictures are stored other places, but I should have some on this new computer soon. Stay tuned!

Stacie

Stop and Smell the Roses

      Every town has its "must see" things. The things that no self respecting tourist would miss. Things that a town might even be famous for, but sometimes, when we actually live in the town, we put off visiting those things. Last week I got to play tourist in my own town. My mom was visiting from California, so I gave her the nickle tour of Portland.

     Portland is known as "The City of Roses", and we have a large and famous rose garden. Despite the fact that I am a floral designer, I had never been there. I decided it was time for me to visit, so this was the first stop on our  Portland tour. The Rose Garden is HUGE! 10,000 plantings of 500 varieties of roses grow on a terraced hillside overlooking Portland. What a beautiful place to wander around and smell the roses.

    The Rose Garden also has a  Rose Store. If it looks like a rose, smells like a rose, or has a picture of a rose on it, you can find it at the Rose Store. The only thing you can't buy there is a real rose. No rose bushes or fresh cut roses for sale. Oh, and the penalty for cutting or harming roses in the garden: $500. (...or was it more? I can't remember.)

     Near the Rose Garden is the Japanese Garden. We walked up the hill to the gate, but we didn't want to pay to go inside and see it. We can do that next time. I did take a picture over the fence, though. 

                 



Lush and lovely looking Japanese Garden

                                                                                  
     Leaving the Rose Garden area, we drove past some beautiful hillside homes, and made our way up to Portland's most famous home, the Pittock Mansion.

     The Pittock Mansion was built in the early 1900's by Henry and Georgiana Pittock. Henry was the owner of The Oregonian, newspaper.

    

  The mansion sits up on a hill with a spectacular view of Portland and Mt. Hood. Mt. Hood is not visible in my pictures, due to all the haze from wildfires in the Oregon Cascades.



My mom having lunch with the best view in town.
                                                                                                                       





    

As far back as I can remember, my mom has enjoyed looking inside houses. It shouldn't have been any surprise to me when her curiosity to see what was inside this house was much stronger than her curiosity to see what was inside the Japanese Garden, and she paid for us to go inside and have a look around. Marble staircases, intricate wood floor patterns, and fancy moldings. A very beautiful and interesting tour.

     We spent the rest of the afternoon in downtown Portland, poking around in stores and looking at the local oddballs. We took a quick peek inside the "Elephants Delicatessen", where we ogled all the fancy meats, cheeses, and desserts. They had 19 different kinds of salami! I just had to take this picture. Yumm!

    

We saw quite a bit of Portland. I think we covered most of the "must sees". I can't believe it took me this long to see the Rose Garden. I will have to get back there before winter comes and the roses are all gone until next spring.

      

Getting Back to You...

     In an earlier post, I said I thought some old western movies were filmed at Smith Rock, but I'd have to get back to you on that. I looked it up, and here is what I found:

 Much of the 1994 film adaptation of the 1976 book Even Cowgirls Get The Blues was filmed within view of Smith Rock. Partial filming for the 1997 feature The Postman took place on location, while it additionally appeared in Swordfish in following years. Several westerns have been filmed here, including the John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn film Rooster Cogburn. The Rockhard building at the park entrance was built as a movie set for this film, portrayed as "Kates Saloon".

Pretty impressive. Having just watched the remake of "Rooster Cogburn", I think this is a good time to add the original to our Netflix list!

Anyone visiting Oregon, really should plan to spend a day at Smith Rock. It's beautiful! I never get tired of going there, and I'm an eager tour guide! (Even the worst photographer can't take a bad picture here.)






                      
                                        Billy, at Smith Rock 2009

**Note: I guess the movie we just saw was "True Grit", but the Rooster Cogburn Character was in it.

How to Pick a Ride

     Billy and I each own a copy of a very dog eared road atlas. Every time we return from a motorcycle ride, we get out our atlases and highlight the roads we traveled.  Of course, the Oregon page has more yellow than any other.

    
     There is also a page in the front of my atlas, where I have highlighted the states and provinces I have ridden.

     So how do we pick a place to ride? That's easy; go someplace that isn't yellow yet! That's exactly what we did on Friday. We had a beautiful day ahead of us, and the desire to go for a ride. We pulled out the dog eared atlases and found a road to the coast that was not yet yellow. Packed a few snacks, filled up the water bottles, and away we went.

     The road from Hillsboro to Yamhill is one we've traveled many times, but after that, it was uncharted territory. We turned west, and soon came to a fork in the road. In my mind, we should have taken the left fork, but we took the right, and came to a sign that said "Pavement Ends". Don't get me wrong, we love riding off pavement, but two logging trucks came out while we were getting our bearings, and we decided it wasn't a good choice.

     Back at the fork, we got back on the right track. The road was beautiful, with lots of good curves and twisties. We did encounter a gravel stretch. It wasn't long enough to qualify as an "off road" ride, but added a little excitement. Our road came out in the tiny town of Beaver, where we headed north, on Hwy 101, toward Tillamook.

     Being Labor Day weekend, we did encounter some holiday traffic on 101. We took an impromptu left turn, to get away from the crowd. This route took us along the coast, to this beautiful lookout.

     We followed the road to Netarts. We've seen signs pointing the way to Netarts many times, but have never been there. It's one of those places that you have to go to on purpose; it's not really on the way to anything. Since we were so close, and it has that great, funny name, we made a quick visit to Netarts. Not too much to report, just your average seaside town, but it's fun to say Netarts!

     Heading north, we thought we would stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, for a bathroom break and a few samples of cheese. Not a good idea. Everyone and their dog was there. Lots of people waiting in line for ice cream and cheese samples.

     Crowds are not our thing, and besides that, Tillamook stinks. I mean it REALLY stinks. I know it takes a lot of cows to make cheese, and I know cows are kind of smelly, but this is a "you fell face first into a fresh cow pie, and got some stuck in your nostrils" kind of stink. Time to head home.

     We headed back to Hillsboro on a road that Billy had ridden many times, but was not yet yellow in my book. He said it was fun, and he was right. Lots of curves and good views! When we arrived back in Hillsboro, we got out the highlighters. 200 miles and more yellow roads. Pretty good day!

The Most Fun Weekend You Can Have Without Riding A Motorcycle!

Clearly, any weekend is pretty good if it involves riding my motorcycle, but the "Lewis & Clark" Deschutes float weekend, was an awesome good time, and because I had to drive the truck full of "stuff", it didn't allow any motorcycle riding.

On Friday, before all the other guests arrived, Billy and I took Bodean and Sheila, to explore the lava tunnel. The tunnel is about a mile long, very very dark, and constantly 42 degrees. In some places it is narrow and in others quite cavernous.

                                                              Sheila entering the tunnel

                                                          Billy and Stacie in the lava tunnel

                                                            Stacie at the end of the tunnel

The only way out of the tunnel, is the way you came in! All the way to the end and back, takes about an hour
....and yes, it's quite chilly!

After we emerged from the darkness and warmed up a little, we crossed the highway, and went to the top of Lava Butte.

                                                          Always fun to cover up the "E"!

The view from the top of Lava Butte is spectacular. On a clear day, you can see for miles. In this picture, lava flows, forests, and Mt. Bachelor is just to the left of the tall tree.

                  Billy and Bodean. Kings of all they see? By the way, that's a lip balm in Billy's hand.

On Sunday, it was my job to drive Bodean and Sheila to Portland, and drop them off at their hotel near the airport. Since their flight wasn't until Monday morning, we had all day to do some more sight seeing.Our first stop was Smith Rock.

 Such a beautiful place. You really can't take a bad picture here. Smith Rock is popular with rock climbers and I've heard that some of the old westerns were filmed here....not sure which ones. I'll have to get back to you.

                                                           Another view of Smith Rock.

We drove historic Hwy 30 out of Troutdale. A very beautiful, but narrow and windy road.

The highway goes past this building, where you can park your car and see views like...

                           ...this. The Columbia River Gorge.

A few more miles down the road is Multnomah Falls.

     Always beautiful. Looks better with less people, though!

An all around, pretty great weekend! I'm so lucky to live in Oregon!