St Helens Ride

A bad day of riding is better than a good day at work. The bumper sticker says fishing, but it applies to bike riding also. Had a day off today and a guy at work had sent out an email asking if anyone wanted to do a ride out in St Helens Oregon. So I drove out there in sunny parts and then rainy parts and back to sunny. Met Steve K at his place and we started out in dry sunshine although the road was wet and I got blanketed with muddy spray. We cruised along at a pretty good clip and the shoulder widened enough to get close to talk and I found out that he's training for a triathlon that I did last year and am going to do this year also. So we talked of tri's and training and kids (he has two small ones), etc. Had to stop and take a picture of Trojan nuclear plant because it's getting demolished soon. It has a park and two small lakes that people fish in in the summertime. Rode on to the town of Rainier and to the base of the Longview bridge connecting Washington and Oregon. That was 21+ miles one way so we turned around and it started raining and the wind was a very strong headwind. That explains why we were going so fast on the way out. On a sunny day, from both of the towns (St Helens & Rainier) you can see the mountains they are named for, but not today. We ended up riding slowly against the wind back to St Helens nonstop for a 43.9 mile ride with an average of 15.5. Steve K recommended a cafe to eat at, so I headed off to the Scappoose Bay Marina cafe. It turned out to be a cozy hot dog restaurant with some delicious sounding chili dogs and stuff like that, but it's training season, so I got a pretzel and Diet Pepsi and that was my lunch. I was the only one there so the owner Randy talked to me about baseball, he was a huge Cubs fan, and the Portland Blazers basketball team.