High Desert Miles

After we left Irondad behind in Klamath Falls our route took us along the interminable US Highway 97 across the high mountains of Central Oregon. At the time we thought the road was a trifle dull, long and straight as though designed by some resurrected Roman highway engineer, devoted to criss crossing the planet in dead straight lines. However, as we were soon to find out Highway 97 is straight but by comparison with what was to come, it is nothing even close to boring.Like most arrogant Californians my geographic knowledge of the neighboring state of Oregon is rather minimal. So little did I know of the Beaver State (make of that nickname, the state's official choice, what you will) that I was under the impression that these pine forests and granite outcroppings are located in Eastern Oregon. Irondad set me straight. "Central Oregon," he said rather tartly. The horrors of the wasteland known as Eastern Oregon lay ahead. There were tons of motorcycles on the road too. Strike that- there were tons of BMW motorcycles on the road. Huh? I scratched my head about this for a while trying to figure out where all these people had come from. They must really like straight flat roads just like ours in Florida. Finally the penny dropped: the BMW rally in Redmond, a place somewhere in middle Oregon, I think, was the attractant, not the road.Apparently that gathering was the ostensible reason for people being in this God forsaken area in the first place. I tried to envy the people out in the cold air and bright sunshine but all I could do was turn up the radio (NPR? Out here? God does love me) and keep driving. The Fusion was doing splendidly. For reasons known only to the control freaks in the Oregon Department of Transportation the speed limit on this dead straight stretch of smooth open highway is a modest 55 miles per hour. That's right, the legal limit is 88 kilometers per hour in Canadian miles. Why? Who the hell knows, probably because no one who created this ridiculous limit actually ever drives this insanely straight boring road. While we're griping about this ghastly straight road let's take a look at the rest stop. Vast open spaces of pine forest line the highway and the rest area is little more than a pull out, and of course no fun is allowed for our furry fellow travelers.
I felt absurd, primly walking my dog on a leash in a primeval pine forest. So I broke the law. I might as well take this moment to confess I also broke the speed limit. A local in a store told me the cops "allow" up to 65mph without getting shirty, but I kept a weather eye out for likely cruisers.

It was quite pretty when you took the time to stop and take a proper look. It was so dry my hair was like straw, my finger nails were aching and my lips were covered in lip balm. I am no great fan of so called dry heat and dry cold air in the 60's doesn't improve my outlook.

One stops in a rest area to rest, which is a North American euphemism for taking a leak. Some wag had labeled the hand dryer and I got a filthy look from another occupant when I burst out laughing. I waited for him to leave before I recorded the priceless moment. This one's for buffalo bill.

The problem with me being me, is that I get endless pleasure from the most inappropriate things. For the serious minded among us here is a scenic mountain. Happily I took this picture because the Hallmark Moment is wrecked by the wires, the sign and the RV in the foreground. This is life in the raw, unretouched, never ruined by Photoshop.

Oy! What are we waiting for here? Poor Cheyenne had no idea we were just at the start of the return trip to Key West.

From time to time we passed villages, which frequently reminded me of nothing quite so much as the Siberian villages I passed in my train ride across Russia in 1981. Trailers, abandoned vehicles and pine trees instead of birch trees, wooden huts and shuffling peasants. Close but not the same because poverty resembles itself everywhere. This truck reminded me I could not live in these rugged places. Give me a sedan and a comfortable road please, and don't give me a 4 x 4 and dirt roads.An oasis! The blessings of coffee...

These espresso booths used to be a Seattle phenomenon where they think they are the coffee experts. Seattle's best coffee is black and bitter which supposedly makes it good, and I refer to the super over roasted yuppie coffee as battery acid. What made this coffee good was the sweet flavor and the cheerful server. This fall she is going to university in Redding (California) to become a nurse. She also liked dogs and Cheyenne liked her.Local dogs never get away with the things visitors get away with and somehow I caught the mournful look of resignation before this dog retired to curl up on the front seat out of sight.

More endless straight stretches, more BMW's. As you can tell here they are all wearing day glo yellow vests for extra visibility. (I'm being facetious. I think a glowing headlamp does more for visibility than bright clothing which is frequently hidden by luggage and accessories).
Okay, I take it back. The scenery was spectacular. Not like Florida at all.

That is actual live snow on the mountain tops on the 17th of July. Amazing. Keep in the freezer, if you ask me. In Bend, a charming city I saw these people wandering, probably not lost, and planning to get into that cold snow pack run off. Weird.We had planned to meet at a restaurant in bend with Bobskoot and Sonja and here they were, at last.

Bob's Suzuki is overloaded with electronic toys. None of them apparently could find their way to my wife's iPhone location. They had to call the old fashioned way for directions. Time for lunch.

Irondad

We left the San Francisco Bay area around four o'clock, about half a day behind schedule but we bravely droned north up I-5 through the great heat sink of California-Not-By-The-Sea. Temperatures were around 104 degrees and when we stopped for gas Cheyenne was extremely reluctant to leave the comfort of her bed in the back seat. We got to Redding, the last city of any note at the head of the valley, stuffed an In N Out burger into our faces and pressed on as the sun went down.Klamath Falls Oregon was our destination and as darkness descended we found ourselves sweeping up hill and down dale in a most unFlorida-like fashion. The freeway spun down and away and then doubled up on itself in a steep uphill climb, then at the top of each hill the road dropped like an elevator shaft out of sight into the darkness. Outside temperatures dropped out of sight as well, into the 60's. Finally we reached the dreaded Highway 97 turn off, away from the false comfort of the well traveled Interstate and discovered the main two lane road to Klamath Falls was a long straight stretch of road through the mountains. We were alone in the dark. My wife fell asleep, head thrown back, mouth open, Cheyenne stretched out behind me and soon her deep sonorous snores provided the bass accompaniment to my wife's more lady like vibrato. They both woke to the stench of pulp mills that hangs over the highway into Klamath Falls. It was midnight and I was a wreck. Motel 6 where are you?We had breakfast scheduled with the redoubtable Irondad so as soon as the cursed alarm went off I was out of bed like a marine on maneuvers so Cheyenne could get her walk, thus waking up the unfortunate locals trapped behind wire serving their eternal time. The local idea of garden ornamentation is a challenge to someone burdened by my delicate sensibilities. Everyone should have a skull in their flowerbed. These horses were living the life of Riley in their paddock with their stable, hay and grass in abundance. Cheyenne has met a few horses in the Keys but she is uncertain about their intentions.
We stumbled across a pathway that looked like a converted railroad or something. We were, finally, no longer entirely alone. Everything is of interest to my dog so our pace was slow. I had no watch but suspected Irondad wouldn't be late to our appointment.
Oregonian jogging.I don't know who Wiard was exactly but the list of rules for the park named for him/her was entirely overwhelming. No dogs, no booze use common sense about covered it all I think.

And in case we've left anything out, any behavior prohibited by state law is also outlawed here. Phew! Use three words where one will do...We got back to the parking lot with fifteen minutes to spare but to no avail. There he was.

Dan Bateman is a riding instructor, former cop and Oregon resident who has a blog here: http://intrepidcommuter.blogspot.com/ He is not a man to wear Crocs but he wanted a picture with them immediately upon meeting me. He's the one wearing the butch boots.Irondad is all business on a motorcycle which he should be as he trains people to get their licenses in Oregon's first rate motorcycle training program. Oregon has a few drawbacks, high unemployment, no self service gas and no sales tax but they don't stint on their motorcycle training.Personally I'm not a big fan of personalized plates as they are too easy to remember ("9-1-1? Some asshole on a motorcycle nearly ran me off the road...") but he has nothing to fear in that department. So he has a personalized tag on his Yamaha 1300:

We hit the diner he recommended and started the process of feeling each other out. I was surprised to read in his blog that he was worried about meeting me. You'd think it would be obvious that a goof like me would be wondering how I would taste with hot sauce to one of his mien.The Black Bear Diner next to our Motel Six was perfect. They had an enormous menu and a waitress who was so grumpy I felt obliged to keep prodding in an effort to get her to swat me.

Perhaps Irondad should have swatted me instead, as he ducked and weaved from my camera lense.

I tried to snag a picture of him doing something virile and active, like chewing on toast but he wanted to be presented more as a wimp, making a point with his food.Notice the flank of dead cow draped across his plate. This diner is not a place for the faint of heart when it comes to portion control. Some patrons pretend to read the paper but secretly they are shoveling their vast meals into secret compartments in their laps. No one wants to disappoint the already fierce waitress who expected all plates to be cleaned.

This is not a football, it's a biscuit. Could have fooled me.My wife took one look at her scramble and passed out in consternation. The coffee mugs were perfect, huge and manly and easy to refill. I drank a gallon.

From behind our barricades of food we discussed Moto blogger scandals, motorcycle training, women (Marriage is Best-sorry jack) and so it went. The bears never stopped watching us.

He just wasn't going to let me get his picture while wolfing his food.

I did resist the pies but these things look like my idea of heaven. As my wife says, while on vacation we are on the See Food Diet. I will pay for it when I get home, I know so that made it easier to pass up these delights.

After an excellent breakfast with excellent conversation Dan treated us to the meal and I went looking for...the Cubby Hole? This bear themed thing goes a bit far.It was good, and too short perhaps. He calls his motorcycle Elvira where I call mine The Bonneville, perhaps because I lack imagination.

They made a good team as they left the parking lot in some unfathomably cold temperatures.

Next time in Key west would be cool. I shall stuff him like a foie gras goose. We had to go north to meet more strangers.

You don't see snow in July in Key West. Thank God.

Berkeley Waterside Café

Leaving Santa Cruz wasn't easy but slipping over the Santa Cruz mountains put us squarely in Silicon Valley, a whole separate world and suddenly we were no longer in the familiar, small coastal town of our youth.My wife graduated from Palo Alto High School, but she didn't get in to Stanford University where her parents worked; she went over the hill to hippie town and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Those were the days when the Santa Clara Valley was becoming the home to the high tech that would lead the world in silicon innovation. The place has grown up since then. We rode Highway 101 through Silicon Valley, we chased the iPhone's directions to a hole-in-the-wall dim sum restaurant in Burlingame, and by early afternoon we were zipping past San Francisco International and the city of South San Francisco, home to the industrial suburbs of The City (locals never call it 'Frisco, a nickname considered excessively familiar). I used to drive tractor trailers around here and it was another nostalgic moment. As a kid I had always wanted to be a trucker... The fog rolling in as usual over San Bruno mountain.When I first moved to California I thought I wanted to live in The City. San Francisco has that effect on people, similar in all respects to Old Town Key West. In the end I found I preferred small town California and I never did live in The City, but I worked there for years. I had low seniority at the trucking company where I worked so I got the most feared route- delivering doubles up and down the hills of San Francisco.Driving through San Francisco in a car is apiece of cake compared to driving doubles but still we got trapped by lines of cars on the elevated freeway to the Bay Bridge.There was no time to step off the freeway and indeed traffic persisted onto I-80 into the East Bay. We needed to pee so we pulled off at University in Berkeley, and we discovered a delightful spot within sight of the freeway. I needed an espresso and Cheyenne needed a dog cookie and we had found the right place.

We had stumbled across a not-for-profit youth program teaching bike repair, boat building and coffee shop management. It was a delightful spot.

The views across the lagoon were phenomenal, as was the delicious cool breeze blowing in from the San Francisco Bay on the other side of the freeway. The red bicycle was being adapted as a water machine, two canoe hulls on a wooden frame. I'd love to see it in operation. Very, very cool.

These kids were engrossed in building their dory. A dory is a New England design with a flat bottom and slab sides which is used to fish some very rough waters.

The coffee shop sells beef bites for dogs so Cheyenne was taken care of.

The espressos were perfect and Cheyenne was ready to explore as usual.Our server with the bright smile took our cups, and a couple tossed in the trash (!), people are weird of course.Really, what a great place to take a break.

Every detail in this astonishing place is a product of youthful enthusiasm. There are more projects in the pipe line.I didn't have to twist the wife's arm too terribly hard to take a break and go for a wander. We saw swans (I think).Something that looked suspiciously like a Key West bird:And a dude taking a break from riding a crotch rocket.

A father being...fatherly:

A kayaker pretending he was on the Suwanee River:And that thought made me wish I was home, humid warm and surrounded by greenery. We weren't, we were here, shortly to be surrounded by yet more traffic clogging I-505 near Sacramento, the state capital known to some as Sacred Tomato.Next stop: Oregon and Irondad. Zoom zoom.