This post is brought to you by the letter B

B is for Birthday and we had lots of birthday Saturday in Portland! It was the quarterly family birthday celebration. The sun came out, the dinner was fantastic and it was great to see everyone together. Here are a few birthday pictures to enjoy

B is for Beautiful! We headed to Bend on Sunday with everything packed in Jen and Joey’s Odyssey as they were off to Hawaii that morning. It is amazing to see that landscape change as you head east. Red rock, arid, sage brush type landscape with the Cascades in the background. We tailgated on birthday party leftovers in rest stop and did not make a lot of stops as pullovers were almost non-existent

B is also for Bite of Bend! When we arrived at our VRBO rental it looked like cleaning was still in progress but no one was around. The owner responded very quickly and it turns out there was a mix up on the cleaner’s schedule. We walked into town to give her time to finish it up. As with many change in plans, it turned out to be all for the best. Our walk started with a stroll into Drake Park on the way to town. It is a gorgeous park with a big lake, Mirror lake in the middle.

In downtown Bend we discovered a street festival, Bite of Bend, featuring food, a music stage and of course, plenty of brew tents. It’s only a week-end event so we were lucky that the whole cleanup mixup happened and we got to see it.

B is for Bridges even when you don’t see any. What?  Today we did the Twin Bridges Loop ride, one of the Oregon Scenic Bikeways rides. And scenic it was! 36 miles of rolling beauty but I sure never saw a bridge! The ride started with lots of rotarys and construction traffic until we escaped the greater Bend area. There is definately a building boom here. Once out of Bend it was ranch and farm land with an almost constant view of the mountains. It’s amazing how fancy and well kept the farms and ranches are – must be a lucrative occupation out here! There was about 2000 feet of climbing over the 36 miles so I would not call it easy but we really did quite well.

Just about peed my pants when we stopped at the one above. It was just a minor butt break but when I saw the start of the decent I was a tad worried. It was fine; very steep initially and then smoothed out. Some kids are very lucky and get a teepee to play in

Our only real stop was at 25 miles where we had a nice lunch and met a couple riding a  Santana tandem that have ordered a new co-motion a lot like ours. He works in one of the local bike shops.

After lunch we hit a climb almost immediately and that felt like a bit of a slog but we made it. A bit futher there was a nasty one that just went on forever. We did stop, not all that far from the top, took a few pictures, tried to start breathing again and then walked the last little bit of the climb

All in all a fantastic ride even if there were no bridges. Mediterranean for dinner and I expect we will retire early.