Harvest Century

Quick Stats
Distance: 104.3 miles
Elevation Gain: 1,991 feet
Average Moving Speed: 15.5 mph

In a word, today's ride was COLD. Yes, beautiful fall colors. Yes, nice to get in "the last organized ride of the season". Yes, fun to ride in general. But very, very cold, particularly when we started at 7:20 this morning. Forecast called for temperature in the 30s in Hillsboro, and I believe it probably was.

I tried my new balaclava to keep my head, face and neck warm. Worked fairly well but after a couple hours started fogging up my lenses while going up hills since my mouth was covered. I brought my ear warmer band thingy but left it in the car.

Amy liked all the pretty scenery: hillsides, orchards, nurseries, pumpkin patches. The ferry over by Canby was kinda fun. Steep climbing up out from the river though.

Quality of the roads was pretty good, but there was quite a bit more traffic than we would have liked after the ferry ride, which was somewhere around the halfway point, probably.

Lots of rest stops with excellent food choices. And the food at the end (burger, corn on the cob, pumkin pie) was delightful.

Quite a few riders today. It was a bit crowded at times, but not as bad as Reach the Beach or Seattle to Portland.

All in all an excellent ride but for the cold. I'm not going to include this as a "do again" ride because of the temperature, but I can see us being tempted to do it again since it was so well supported, and I have to admit it is fitting to wrap up the season on a good, cold ride. For much of the ride I was having positive thoughts about switching to indoor training!