Looping in the Wallowas

The Mid Valley Bicycle Club puts on a loop tour for their members every year. Volunteers plan the route and make arrangements and then it is run twice, in June and late July. It started more than twenty years ago as a fully loaded tour, but has evolved to the point where about half the people have their camping gear sagged. The June tour is balanced toward adults and teenagers while the July tour includes a lot more young kids. About twenty five riders and three sag drivers did the June tour. The tour started Saturday, 6/21 and finished up Sunday 6/29. The route this year was around and through the Wallowa and Blue Mountains. It started in Pendleton, the first night was at a school in Weston; Over Tollgate pass to Minam campground; via Enterprise and Joseph to Wallowa Lake State Park; over another pass to Ollocote campground; another pass and a detour to the edge of Hell’s Canyon then a long downhill to Halfway; through the desert to Baker City; into the Blue Mountains past Sumpter and Granite to North Fork (of the John Day River) Campground; yet another pass to Lehman Hot springs; and then over Battle mountain and back to Pendleton.

This year’s tour was characterized by excellent weather; a severe T-storm almost blew the Eureka tents down the first night, after that it was beautiful; nights down to the 30's in the mountains and 50's in the desert; cool mornings; hot afternoons into the 80's; 100 on the last day into Pendleton. We used all our clothes except the rain gear.

The kids did great. They didn't have much time to train so they sagged; Katy was on the tandem with me; Benny and Danny were on their own bikes, relatively unloaded; Ted was on my cross bike cause it had the lowest gears (with a compact-34x27). Ted is uncoordinated and didn't learn to ride as a kid. He doubled his total bicycling time on this ride and only crashed the first three days in a row, (no blood, no foul). He was slowest (of the Ahlvins) up all the hills, but did EFI. I was nervous about him descending but stationed one of the boys behind him and he did OK. He did ride over a snake when he couldn't dodge it like the rest of the guys in the paceline. By the last day he could hang in a paceline with the tandem in front; we averaged >18mph into Pendleton despite a mountain and headwind. For the other kids it was a vacation, for Teddy it was a huge accomplishment.

Linda drove the sag wagon (Element with rocket launcher) because it was a chance to share a family vacation. She did well, but it's a pretty boring job. She finished "Great Expectations", 1000 pages of fine print, while she was sagging. She enjoys cooking and camping and since all our stuff was allocated to our own car she brought a camp kitchen, including a Dutch Oven. If you're going to sag, sag.

The rest of the riders were fun to hang around with (generally, usually).

Some notes for the riders on the second tour: Cold Pop is out of business; the Hot Springs pool hasn't been cleaned in six years; the mountains are the same as when the club last did this route in 2002. Katy and I on the tandem (and Danny tucked in drafting) had a maximum speed of 47 mph and change.

Some of the old people are saying it might be their last loop tour; with our kids getting their own lives, this might be the last one the whole Ahlvin family does together. It was a great ride.