This year’s long, cold, wet spring has not been so good for kayak fishing. High water, at or near flood stage in the main rivers has made fishing there dangerous and the high country lakes, perfect for kayak fishing, have been snowed in until recently. Add to all that, it’s been really windy. All these … Read more
It is just about the middle of summer here in the Columbia River Gorge, it’s starting to look like it. The grasses are thick and starting to turn brown and the trails are getting hard packed and dusty Still dark and cool in the forest You can always find a bit of green in the … Read more
Today I went on a road bike ride from Hood River, down old Highway 30, into The Dalles, up and over Seven Mile Hill, down through Mosier and back to Hood River. A little over forty miles, this is a pretty popular bike route. Here’s the view from about 3/4 of the way up Seven … Read more
Today was the hottest day of the year. Not complaining at all, I’ll take sunny, eighty five degree days anytime over the gray, rainy weather we have here in the PacNW eight months of the year. Let a perfect summer day go by? Not likely, out on the trails we go. It was hot in … Read more
If you are any kind of bike rider, you know the Tour de France is going on right now. The past week, they have been racing in the Alps. Mountains like Luz Ardiden, Aubisque, Galibier and Alp d’Huez have a special meaning to any serious bike rider, enough to inspire me to head to the … Read more
Got back from a predominately soggy MBO in Oakridge, OR to find the same damp weather in the Columbia Gorge. Not heavy rain, but enough light to medium showers to make everything wet, but not muddy. Nothing to stop mountain bikers from riding. Everything is really green and the smell of rain and damp earth … Read more
Mountain Bike Oregon is a great mountain bike event in Oakridge, Oregon. Oakridge is a small town that used to be a booming timber town. Like many other similar towns in the Pacific Northwest, the lumber industry declined, lumber mills closed and the town’s economy was devastated. While Oakridge doesn’t have much of a logging … Read more
Stopped in White Salmon to pick up the mail and went for a ride at my old stomping grounds. The trails have dried out and gotten a little hard at the lower elevations and nice and grippy up higher. No mud anywhere, even the cattle mud holes have dried up. Even at midday, the summer … Read more
When your mountain bike doesn’t stop, which is a nice feature to have on a bike, it’s time to have a look at the brakes. Disc brake pads aren’t exactly cheap, so you try to get the most out of each set to the point where they don’t work very well anymore. Usually, if the … Read more
After more than a week of changing clutches, timing chains and head gaskets, I had enough of working on cars, so I headed down to North Bonneville, WA to check out the “Too Hot For the Streets” Car Show to check out some other guy’s automotive skills. It was a beautiful, sunny day and there … Read more