| QUICK STATS | This Ride | 2010 Cumulative |
| Distance | 110 miles | 3985 miles |
| Elevation Gain | 3712 feet | 43.23 miles |
| Average Moving Speed | 15.75 mph | 15.07 mph |
| Dog Bites | 0 | 1 |
The day started with sunshine. It was a wonderful thing to behold, particularly considering the prior day's adventure in the rain.
I was able to see Mt. Bachelor from Bend and you could definitely see that it had received some snow from yesterday's storm. Perhaps not much, but enough to tell. It made me even more glad we turned around when we did yesterday and didn't try to ride all the way up there.
Strange bicycle lanes on Reed Market Road in Bend. I appreciated the attempt to provide an extra buffer for cyclists, but there were a couple drawbacks. Sometimes when approaching a traffic circle it was confusing as to whether we were supposed to use the vehicle lane or the sidewalk. I tried it both ways. When on the sidewalk I almost missed the path back to the bike lane as it was overgrown with weeds. Amy missed it and was "stranded" on the sidewalk. The other problem was that by raising the bike lane a little higher than the vehicle lane (kind of like a sidewalk) it was obviously constructed separately, and consequently it tended to be very bumpy compared to the smooth vehicle lane.
There was traffic. There was wind. Much wind. There was gnashing of teeth. And grumbling.
However, there eventually came a nice descent, and beautiful Crooked River scenery for the 17 miles between Prineville Reservoir and the city of Prineville. All was well.
Except that we still had 30 miles to go, and having carefully studied the forecast we knew much of it was going to involve headwinds. Resigned to our fate we gritted our teeth and took it out on our pedals. We did well, averaging 17 mph over that stretch in spite of the 5 mph headwind. (The headwind would gust higher than that, but averaged out to 5 mph for the whole stretch.)
At approximately mile 100 we passed a couple touring between Missoula Montana and San Francisco. They had big bags all over their bikes. Seemed nice enough. I wouldn't want to climb with all that gear though.
I drank 5 water bottles. Tried to eat while riding as much as possible. My trail mix dispensing rubbermaid container works so-so. Not sure if I'll keep using it or not. Having the trail mix while riding is sure nice though.
Oh, we penciled in 35 minutes for off-the-bike time, and ended up with 38 minutes, so pretty nice. And it was way better than previous long rides.
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