September 7 through 10, 2012 – MT HOOD HIKE My two daughters wanted to give me something for my 70th birthday that they thought I would really like. I had been giving them a lot of flack about walking around Mt. Hood so they said that would do it. Zida, Marci, and Robert (nephew) went with me. Zida is a fitness instructor – no prep work needed (40 lb pack). Marci, a housewife – lots of prep work needed and given (38 lb pack). Robert does Yoga and bikes – no problem (40 lb pack). Now me – foot weights and a lot of walking in the boots I was going to use helped a lot over last time, but ONE blister still happened (32 lb pack). The more money you have the less your pack weighs. If you want to see pictures of this hike, you will have to take them. For Seven Million I will show you mine. That is what they are worth to me. As we started, the last time I walked it came back to me. As Marci would say throughout the hike, “This is stupid;” but moved forward celebrating her dad turning 70. It did make me happy to see them on the hike. It has views a camera cannot capture. Zida and Robert would laugh at Marci and we would hike on because it was 10 miles to camp and 10 miles out and it was only a 41 mile hike. First Day: First 2 miles of Pacific Crest Trail and then turn left onto the Timberline Trail. When you’re walking around a mountain counterclockwise, you always turn left. First thing is down and across the White River, then up and across Mt. Hood Meadows with lots of huckleberries. We played leap frog with a 10 person group; their youngest member was 58. Finally the big climb of the day up to Lamberson Butte and Gnarl Ridge. You walked on the side of a washout. Your walking sticks worked great – grind, rattle, vibrate in the rocks, wind blowing dust in your face. Not much else to listen to when you are hot and panting like a dog. (Refer back to Marci’s comment.) Ha Ha from Zida and Robert. Zida’s water bottle jumped out of her pack. Her other 2 were empty. We kept going up. We finally got silty water from a melting snow field. Marci had the pump to filter it. There were about two miles of flat if you added it all together. It was fun to tell people it is all flat and they think you are telling the truth. I was thinking it was time to sell my swamp land in Nevada. Time to camp: A mostly flat spot 100 yards off the trail at about 7000 feet elevation, a creek with water another 100 yards down. I laid there with my head out of the tent to see the stars and this big red glow came up. I thought it was a fire. It was just the moon. There were very few trees where we were. Day Two: I need glasses to see small things so I gave Zida my Alarm Clock. Bad thing to do. It is small and goes off at 6:30 am. She can sleep through anything and that little alarm was no problem. Now Marci, “What is that noise?” Going to bed at 8 pm (dark) and getting up at 6:30 am is a lot of sleep. I must go see the Cloud Cap Inn some time. I never got close to it because we walked down the other side of Elliot Creek and looked across at it. Most of the time, when you talked to the other walkers, it was, “Are you going to go down the rope or going over the glacier?” There are three ways to go and they can be hazardous to your health. That might be why the trail was closed – YOU THINK? There are a lot of people who walk by the sign and do just fine. This is not a walk in the park and you can get hurt very easily if you are not on your game. We went over the glacier. It was easy until you went up the other side with rocks that were as large as or larger than three feet around and moved when you walked on them. Marci was not happy on that part, and Zida had a few things to say too. Her finger came out (Zida taught it to her sister). Marci definitely thought “This is stupid.” The two girls were not happy. Robert and I thought it was a walk in the park. Robert was standing on a rock as big as a dining room table rocking it back and forth. “Now this is fun.” Oh, it was not over. You walked down a ridge line that had a narrow path on top. It was a few football fields down and if you kicked a rock, it didn’t stop until it hit the bottom. The other side was not so steep. It was only that way for a mile or two. Marci walked up to the path and had to compose herself so she could go on…after all there were the big moving rocks if she went back. Zida and her family do things like this so it was no big deal for her. The hardest part was over and it would be easier from here. HE HE. We were tired from the glacier crossing and now walked through where the fire was last year. Miles and miles of burned trees. Soon we came to Coe Creek, the most difficult stream crossing. There were 4 small trees across the roaring water. Zida went to cross the logs and her feet stopped. She was frozen there until she could get her feet to move again, but they procrastinated a lot. If you slipped and fell in, it would not be good. We all made it across with Robert carrying Marci’s pack. We went on past Elk Cove and finally got to Cairn Basin. There was another stream crossing that Robert forgot about. You just had to step on the rocks for about 20 feet. Day Three: Zida and I took a wrong turn out of Cairn Basin. Fortunately we both took the same wrong turn. The sign was burned and laying on the ground. Robert came to the rescue with his map. It was kind of a warm up and to get water. It added an extra mile but we made it up by taking a cutoff later in the day. We walked down hill most of the day. It was cold and windy on the ridge. Crossing the Muddy Fork was easy this time. There was a place where mud slides washed out a portion of the trail and left a long, long, very, very steep slope. They had cut a trail about a foot wide. Zida was following Marci and she was really tired from pushing the envelope throughout the hike. As she came around the corner, Zida heard her give a great big sign and say, “I am so tired of being one step away from death.” So, half way up you duck under this rock and go the rest of the 30 feet. When she got to the wide trail again, we asked if she wanted to go back. (I now think it is time for Marci’s comment again.) “This is stupid. Why am I doing this? Oh yea, my 70 year old dad.” She was fun to hike with and Zida, Robert, and I liked giving her a hard time. Ramona Falls was beautiful and meant we had made our 10 miles for the day. We decided to keep going. The Sandy River had a real nice bridge crossing with a handrail. The hand rail, well kind of, was a quarter inch rope that sagged a lot. There was another bridge that was real nice. Most on the hike had three or more logs over rushing water and other ones where you could just step on the rocks out of the water. The last day Marci was spent and the rock thing was hard for her but she stuck with it and her famous words came out more and more as the days went on. This is how to make your fellow hikers mad: You are walking along and stop on a steep hill and take a picture of a grasshopper. Robert, the vegetarian, almost stepped on it. Or as you are walking and get to a flat spot, stop and leave your fellow hikers on the steep part to start out on a steep uphill. You will get a lot of flack and be put in the back of the line. We knew we had a long hill the last day and decided to get a head start on it. This day turned out to be about 13 miles. We finally found an almost flat place to camp. Robert put his tent right on the edge of the drop-off. You could hear the rocks rolling down the hill all night long. Camped next to the edge, it didn’t give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling. It was not as steep on our side. Day Four: It was raining in the morning and I dug out my great big $5 yellow plastic poncho. They were giving me a bad time and said I looked a lot like Big Bird. There was not as much to see on the last day as a small rain storm came in and all you could see were clouds. You got to see them move and come and go before your very eyes. I went for my camera and was too slow. The canyon I wanted to take a picture of was gone in the clouds. Now you know it was meant to be. When we got to Timberline, Zida and Robert saw Ilene (wife) drive into the parking lot from Milwaukie, OR. As the two slow walkers came, Tim (Marci’s husband from Redmond, OR.) came driving up. Were we good with the timing or what? As they say, “We go together or we stop together, but we are always together.” To sum it up: A real fun hike and a birthday present I will never forget. I hope if you have kids, they will do the same for you. If not, take a friend and do it, or as Warren Miller would say, “If you don’t do it this year, you'll just be one year older when you do.” I say you might be dead and not get to do it. The training is what makes you feel great and when you are all done, you can say, “I did Around Mt. Hood” and be talking about something on the trail that the person you are talking to has no idea what it was really like – But you will know. If, by some strange coincidence, you find someone who has done it, bar the door, Katy!

Byran moving a rock out of the trail just to make it easier for the next hikers and Marci showing Zida and me her middle finger manicure for the camera.. www.mrbontheside.blogspot.com

August 30, 2012 Motorized Bicycle trip to the Beach Bike to the Beach Lot in Ocean Park, WA from Milwaukie, OR I have done it two times, but not on a motorized bicycle. Well, let’s get this to the start. Vellen (son) and I go to the salvage yard every Wednesday to look at the crashed cars and/or bid on some of them. I wanted to go to the coast early and just hang out. Talking to Vellen in the car I said, “I think I will ride my motor bike to the beach lot.” I told Myran (son) about it that night. His look was, “Have you lost your mind?” He had good reason. Let’s talk about the bike a little. I bought it for $35 and the motor for $150. By the money I spent things are not looking too high tech. The high tech is there because this junk really works some of the time. Myran said it was 125 miles, but that was not right. It was 140.4 miles and the extra 15.4 miles was “I really hope it don’t quit on me.” That would be about an hour before dark and pedaling drops me down to about 6 to 8 miles an hour - With the motor it would be 24.7 miles an hour. That is where it likes to run. Under that I had better be helping it by pedaling, like on a hill. There is about 2,000 miles on the motor and it needs a new motor bad. My long planning over a trip kicked in. Did I say Wednesday? That is all of a half a day to tune the bike and pack. Wednesday night Myran and I went to get our hair cut at the Barber College ($5). Let me put it to you this way. You get what you pay for. I got a quick great hair cut and then there have been others, but it grows back just fine. Even the good ones grow to look scruffy. Yes, I gave my blog to them - 1,027 hits so far. Well, back to the trend of thought. REI is next to the barber college. A back packing stove was what I needed. They have a lot of them. For 5 ounces less I could spend $50 more. It didn’t happen. You do remember the bike, and CHEAP comes to mind. $79 for the stove and pot. PROLSD is the name of the stove == 110G/4oz $4.50 will boil 2-1/2 gallons of water, two cups at a time. The time to boil 2 cups is 2-1/2 minutes and you can tell when it is done because the side is black and then turns orange when it is hot/boiling. Back to CHEAP. Costco has 10 freeze dried Mountain House dinners for $42.99/box. They use 2 cups of boiling water and taste great. I keep wandering off on something other than the bike. I am 70 years old. The head on the bike motor was leaking, so I made a copper gasket for it and found some old plugs that have been around forever. If I turn the end down to .150 I can get the cap on. New plugs are $1.50. I know what you are thinking, “CHEAP.” I have three in the box of tools with me and every kind of wrench I think I will need. There is not very much to this motor so the wrenches are very few, like 5. I am going to the beach so Ilene cooked me coffee and clam chowder. I put saddle bags on the night before so food, water, and stove go in one side and sleeping bag in the other – tent and air mattress on top. The rest goes in the basket in front. Ilene said I should take 4 fresh peaches. I don’t have to tell you what happened to them bouncing in the basket. Peach juice comes to mind. Tools, rain gear, gallon gas can, jerky, candy bars, and three little bottles of booze. Not more than 2 miles from the house that plastic sack bounced out and one of the little bottles broke. Whine, cry, boohoo. That was the only thing that could break in the basket and it did. The rest stayed in that time. When I hit a sunken part of the road, things jumped around a lot and sometimes out. I would have to stop and pick them up. The motor made the bike shake a lot and after an hour your hands and butt tingled a lot and it would be time to stop and rest, and then off again. The trucks that went the other way would wave at you. Some would give you lots of room when they passed you and some would not and others would not because they didn’t have room to give. I rode way over from the white line. This was good because there was this motor home that had his tires on it. When the big trucks went by, hold on tight because you were going to get a big push over then a great pull up the road. There was always that 1% that scares the bejesus out of you. When you go this slow, you have a lot of time to look at a lot of things and see a lot that you never see in a car. With the motor doing the work, there is a lot more time to look. I walked two hills about 2 miles long or it seemed that far. I would start up the hill, bike in high gear, pedaling for all I’m worth. The odometer would go 24 – 23 – 22 – 18 – 16 – pull in the clutch and stop. It was pushing time. Push to a marker on the side of the road and rest. Push to a marker along side or the fence and rest. Push to a marker on the fence and rest. Are you getting all this? Starting up the hill I had overheated the motor so it was time for the wrenches when I got to the top. I had to tighten the head. You could tell when you were going to have to do this by the smell of smoke from the motor. Some hills were not so steep and you could have the motor help you over the top. I would still have to tighten the head if I stopped. A tank of gas was good for over 50 miles. I used less than 1-1/2 gallons for the 140.4 miles. There was road construction down to one lane. All of those cars and trucks passed me and when I got there, they were waiting for me. I passed them back by riding on the side of the road. I did get a little chuckle out of that. OK, I would have laughed out loud but there was no one to hear me. There was a strong head wind all the way except when I was pushing up the hills. Then it was just HOT. I stopped in the shade when there was some. Yes, a highlight to the trip – the Astoria Bridge. I put the last gas out of the can into the bike. I didn’t want to run out on the bridge. I started up the ramp and with my help made it all the way to the construction (painting). At the top the flag man waved me through. Yea, I didn’t have to stop. With a strong head wind on the bridge, the motor would barely push me along. I was thinking, “Don’t stop now, wait until the other side where there is room to pull off.” Painting on the other end and they waved me through too. Yea! Yea! I was doing good. Tunnel – so I stopped and let a car and trailer through, then I went for it. No problem. Very, very narrow in this tunnel. I made it through the town of Chinook and on the other side of the town where there was a wide fog lane, the motor just stopped. Only fifteen more miles to go. You remember what Myran said, don’t you? This is not a complex motor. There is a carburetor and it has gas, spark, and the spark plug is hanging from a wire that needs to go back in the threaded hole in the head. Yes, yes, I grabbed it with my fingers. It was not cold; it was not even close to warm. It was very HOT and I did not hold it very long. It pulled the little wrinkled things and I put in a new one that I could only get 2/3 of the way in. It was working and I didn’t have to pedal. Yea! I didn’t stop to look at the gas that would take more to get going and there was no place to get more on this road. When I got to camp, there was a little in the tank. My hands and butt needed this to end. My back didn’t do too well either. It was a great ride, but ONCE is all I ever want to do it. I arrived a day early at our family camp out at Ocean Park, WA. where we have two wooded lots for tent camping. I figured my total ride time was 7 hours 14 minutes or an average of 19.32 miles per hour. Seventeen people at the camp out this year – three people couldn’t make it. We have been camping on these two lots for 38 years. It used to be just my family, now it’s the kids and their families and friends too. I took the entire luggage off my bike and rode it to get gas and a bag of oysters, and put 3 dozen oysters in the basket. What is a guy to do when in Oysterville? Well, you eat oysters. You just find a way. I had to buy a lighter at the store to start the fire and cook the oysters. There were pliers to take the oysters off the fire and a screw driver to open them. Now is that not genius or what? Yes, it cost money for an oyster pick. Does CHEAP still come to mind? Soon the other families started to arrive for the three day weekend. The kids (ranging in age from 14, to 5 months) played in the sand, and the older ones also tried their luck skim boarding. It was just three unbelievable days on the beach - Very little wind, sun, and blue skies. The highlight of the camp out was Matt (son-in-law) playing his guitar in the evening. Everyone sings Bob the Builder, Slide Girl, Pub with No Beer, Rockin’ in a Wooden Boat, and a lot of really good beer drinking songs. But, no one drinks any beer, just hard stuff. On the drive home we had seafood pizza, beer, and fresh baked, hot macadamia nut cookie with ice cream. If you want to be Byranized on this ride, don’t call Byran. I really did enjoy doing this ride, but it was a lot harder to do than a person would think or dream. The bike ended up with 171.7 miles. You have to do tenths because you might be walking a lot of them. My next adventure will be a week later – Walk around Mt. Hood – 42 miles counter clockwise to unwind last year’s clockwise walk. Things will be different on this walk. There will be training and my pack will be 32 lbs. not 40 lbs like last year. www.mrbontheside.blogspot.com So I did manage to print this story on one piece of paper and a picture. Am I cheep or what?