Welcome to Boring, Oregon.

nev

Super Térrarist
While we were on a bike trip in India in 2007 - I've probably written about it in a ride report for that trip - Without crashing I managed to run my Enfield off the road and made contact with the road with my right foot, which then caused my lower leg to pivot at the knee in a direction completely different to that which anyone would have designed a knee to bend, which tore/damaged/crushed the lateral meniscus and gave me months and months of walking displeasure and the ability to "crack" my knee whenever the tendons get a bit wound up. One other side effect of this was that on several occasions after the initial injury, when i pivoted my weight on my knee in a particular way, the nerves would send a message to the quad muscles in that leg to shut down and I would fall to the ground like a sack of spuds.

About 12 months ago Jo suggesting that we go for a holiday back to New Zealand south Island. The Aussie dollar was doing a bit better than it is today, and while fudging the figures a little, I did manage to put together a case that the difference between a bike trip on hired bikes in NZ and the USA would just be the additional cost of the airfares to LA rather than to Christchurch... and from that, a 2 week holiday to NZ escalated to a 5 week trip to North America. I'm sure in the long run that the difference in cost was only minor, if you move the decimal place to the left :)


Some investigation into bike hire in USA led me to MotoQuest, who are based in Anchorage but have offices in Portland OR and Los Angeles. They do tours and bike hire. Initially my plan was to hire in LA and drop the bikes in Portland, but after being told that there was no sales tax in Oregon, and that the cost of hiring 2 bikes for a month would be significantly cheaper, the decision was made to start and finish in Oregon. Because this company specialises in one way hires between Portland/LA and Anchorage, which must go through Canada, the hire company had no issues with their bikes being taken out of the USA and into Canada, which broadened the scope of the trip somewhat.

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twowheeler

two wheels are best
made contact with the road with my right foot, which then caused my lower leg to pivot at the knee in a direction completely different to that which anyone would have designed a knee to bend, which tore/damaged/crushed the lateral meniscus
Ouch.

Thanks for the post - just googled MotoQuest & they'll be useful for a future trip - how come you two aren't on a pair of Harley Ultra Classic Electra Glides or Indian Chieftains :lol: :wink: ?
 

Williamson

Part of the furniture
:watch:

.... just googled MotoQuest & they'll be useful ....

MotoQuest look very competitive, only US$65.00 per day for the DL650. Never mind that's the October to February rate. That's summer time, ain't it? Or is that winter? I hear that it's not cold over there in winter.
 

nev

Super Térrarist
After a 14 hr flight from MEL to LAX, a 4hr wait in LA then a 2.5 hr flight to PDX it was almost exactly 24hrs door to door from our house to the hotel in Portland. We had a few hrs sleep then went for a walk around the town.

The food carts in Portland are the places to eat. Mostly Gyros, asian, mexican but a few different and interesting to be found. We had a great chicken and salad meal at a food cart selling Hawai'ian food.

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some have interesting names

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nev

Super Térrarist
:watch:

MotoQuest look very competitive, only US$65.00 per day for the DL650

The thing about US prices is that they invariably invariably quote the base price which doesn't include things like tax, compulsory insurance, loss damage waiver, etc. The rental cost of the bikes we got from them was 30% more than the quoted daily cost, and because we started the trip in Oregon, there was no sales tax. Sales tax if we'd started in California would have increased the cost by another 10% or so.
 

nev

Super Térrarist
Saturday morning we woke up and geared up in our bike gear, then called a taxi. Checked out of the hotel and went outside to wait for the taxi.
We had decided to decline the offered hard luggage for this trip and just strap our duffle bags on the back of the bikes. These are the same bags we pack in for the flight, so we know everything will fit.
As I picked up the first bag to walk it over to the taxi, I must have pivoted "just right" on my right leg, the bag went down and my leg gave way and I collapsed onto the ground right beside it. The taxi driver was a bit puzzled what was going on. I had a feeling of dread... was this the end of my holiday?
I got back up on my feet and into the taxi and we drove to the rental shop. I was wondering whether I would be able to walk more than a few metres before my leg might collapse again. When we got to the shop I took a few steps and my knee felt ok and I was walking ok, but my confidence was quite shot. I was concerned that it might collapse under load when I was stopped on the bike.

The bikes we had arranged were a matching pair of F700GS. Mine was about 3 years old with 44,000 miles on the clock. Jo's was newer, about 1 year old. Both were registered in Alaska, which is the base for MotoQuest.

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You cannot underestimate the street cred which is instantly bestowed upon you when riding around the lower 48 states on Alaskan registered bikes. At least once per day we were approached by people saying "you're a long way from home" or "have you ridden all the way from Alaska?". They were normally a bit taken aback when we said we hadn't actually ever been to Alaska, but this was normally more than made up for when they found out we had actually come all the way from Australia.

In my planning for this ride, I'd strung together a list of things to see in various NorWestern states in the USA, and thinking back to previous trips I had decided upon an average of 350km riding per day. We wouldn't ride every day, and some day's we'd need to ride further to make it to a particular place, but my rough calculations over 29 days would make almost an even 10,000km, so this was the distance I was using when I was exploring different routes to take. My planning pretty much plotted a 10,000km route which would act as our starting point, but weather and road conditions would need to be considered.

I wanted to be back from our holiday before the US summer holidays started, so we had to be off the road by early June. This meant our start date would be the first week of May. I had checked climate data and confirmed that in the places we were going, on the dates we would be there, the night time temperatures would remain above 0 and daytime temperatures of at least 15C. The biggest variable was the winter. A long cold winter or a late cold snap could through our plans into disarray. Many of the placed we had planned to go were at high altitudes so the weather had a potential to disrupt things. During our summer i kept an eye on their winter. The NW states of USA were having an exceptionally warm winter. Snowfalls for the year were in some places less than 10% of the annual averages. There was a drought in Northern California. Not good for the ski industry or the farmers, but perfect for us.
 

nev

Super Térrarist
After loading up the bikes, we were off and running. I had a short day planned for our first day, up to Mt Hood and then down to Bend, only about 190 miles total.

There was plenty going on at Mt Hood. The car park was fairly full. There were plenty of snowboarders up there using the last remnants of snow near the carpark.

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The Timberline Lodge at Mt Hood was used as the "Overlook Hotel" in Kubrick's movie "The Shining". In reality, they only ever used some helicopter views of the building in the movie when the car was driving up the road to the hotel. Even the shots of the car driving to the hotel were not shot there. The studio built a full scale replica of the front of the hotel at a studio in LA and filmed all outdoor scenes there. None of the indoor scenes were filmed at the Timberline Lodge either. Regardless, it's a movie I loved, and a place I wanted to see.

That night we stopped in Bend, Oregon. At a chemist I bought a knee brace which would offer some support and stopped hyperextension, and I had adopted a strict regimen of putting down my good leg first when I came to a stop.

Bend is on a river

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and has a microbrewery or two. The least I could do was try some of the local hefeweisen.

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glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
I'm sure in the long run that the difference in cost was only minor, if you move the decimal place to the left :)


LOOOVE your work, mate :clap::bs:


I had a feeling of dread... was this the end of my holiday?

:doh: NO!
Ever tried a knee-brace or something like that? At least to help along in situations like that....or when the knee gives way out in the sticks when trying to lift a bike back up etc

Never mind...just saw the reference in the next post :D
 

nev

Super Térrarist
The next morning my knee was sore, but I could still walk on it. I resolved to minimise walking for the time being and be very careful not to put any twisting force onto it. For the next week or so it would lock in place and feel like bone on bone grinding when trying to straighten it. I wore the brace on and off the bike for about 3 weeks. Eventually it improved so that by the end of the holiday it was pretty well as good as new.

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nev

Super Térrarist
Bend to Alturas.

The morning started off with a straight run down a highway. Stopped for a break in a rest area. There was an RV here which had rear suspension failure, and an old bloke standing with a sign stating "Old, broke and ugly. Need RV suspension fixed. Have a quote from a repairer".

We continued on. Was hoping to run into Crater lake national park from the north, but the roads were still closed from the winter so we had to run further south and then double back to the southern entrance but Crater Lake was definitely worth the extra 50km.

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From Crater lake we kept heading further south. There were a few small towns further down the road along where we wanted to go which each had a single motel, and one motel was not answering their phone and the other had rooms, but there was nowhere open to eat in town, so we went a bit out of our way to Alturas, which was a bigger town with a few different accommodation and food options. After a stroll through town we settled on an Italian restaurant. It was mothers day but they had a few tables free. The food there exceeded expectations and as usual we stuffed ourselves on their very generous portions.
 
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