Harvest Century
 

Who is riding this Sunday? http://www.harvestcentury.org/

The weather forecast looks good, it's the last organized century of the season in the valley. See you there?

I have signed up for the 75 mile ride. I am still debating whether to drive up from Corvallis on Saturday and stay somewhere in the vicinity of the state park, or just get a very early start Sunday morning. I will be riding my Jamis Aurora and will put on some orangish attire to go with the theme of the ride.

I've been wanting to do this for a while, but it happens to fall on my daughter's birthday (she'll be 11). I asked her (at least half joking) if she would mind terribly much if I was gone for 9 hours riding my bike. She squinted her eyes as meanly as she's able (which isn't very mean) and said, "Yes! I would mind!"

So I think instead I'll be heading down to Heiser Farm on Saturday to try my hand at cyclocross. Now if only we could get some rain....

Trying to find somebody to car pool with me but no takers yets so probably won't make up my mind until late Saturday.

I'll be there, I'm doing the century. The forecast is looking fantastic!

I'll be riding the 100-mile route. Weather forecast is looking good...

OK, guess I'll HTFU and showing up since the weather looks nice.

Just in case anybody wants to know, Saturday morning, the temps at 7:30 AM in the area were

Newberg: 33 degrees
McMinnville: 29 degrees
I-5 @ Wilsonville: 33 degrees.

Oregon DOT road cams showed light ground fog, but by the time I got back from a local ride and checked about 2 PM, it was clear everywhere.

I'll be the guy in the fur-lined shorts & jersey.

We are going to start riding by 8:00, we'll look for the furry dude on the Trek!:lol:

OK....but I think I'll be in 'touring' mode tomorrow...so if you don't see me when you are ready to go, don't wait, cause I'm not going to ride the train for long even if I leave on it.

More on what they call the 'auto-boose', I think.

Last ride of the year, enjoy the scenery and stuff like that.

Well the ride was fun, a great October day. Other than a big backup at the Canby ferry (there had to be at least 500 bikes in line when I was there), the ride went smoothly. The rest stops were well placed and adequately stocked.:)

I ended up only riding the 75 mile loop as my group was going a little slow and so we made it back to the finish at 4:30

That's where the big disappointment set in. They had already ran out of the promised Rogue Ale.:notamused: There were no signs up saying they were out. Anyone in charge seemed to be hiding. So no apologies, no compensation. Just tough luck for the riders that hadn't finished. This was very disappointing from the organizers of a ride that is in its 6th year.

So with that lack of planning and lack of consideration for the riders I'm probably going to pass on the Harvest Century next year.

This ride went right by my house. If anyone remembers, my wife and I was outside painting our house all day. Spring Hill Rd, right before you take a left to go over the mountain. 18% grade.

I rode the 75 miler with my wife and a couple of friends. We waited for an hour at the ferry... It would be nice if they could run the route so we didn't have to cross on that thing. I don't know the area, so I also don't know what/if the other options are.... We made it in around 2:30 and there was still beer. They were only handing out small cups of it, so I'm guessing the nice weather got more people out than they expected and they were trying to stretch it out....... For 45 bucks, I may have started a riot if the beer was gone when I got there... ;) At least it was a beatiful day to ride and the route was pretty as well.

Dean

Yeah, bummer about running out of beer, they must have had many more people show up and register day of the ride, always hard to plan for that from my experience. The wait for the ferry was the biggest problem on the ride, I've done this ride several times, this was the first time that we had to line up like that.
It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful route. I'm always impressed how there can be such beautiful farm lands so close to the Portland suburbs. The rest stops were very well stocked, at one a lady in her 90's was slicing bananas and putting a glob of peanut butter on each slice for us, how sweet is that! At fifty miles they provided a good vegetarian lunch, I ate too much and it was hard to get going again, but it was SO good!

Sag support was excellent, 100 mile route was excellent, food stops were excellent and it was a nice fall day. BRAVO to Community Vision, I hope you made lots of money to support the good work you do for the handicap!!! I'll be back, as long as it's not raining too hard! THANKS!

I rode the 75 mile route, starting around 8:30am. The Canby ferry was at about the 15-mile mark. When I reached there about an hour later, the sign at my stopping point said 650ft to the ferry. A good 300 or more cyclists were in front of me and many others steadily joined the rear with the line snaking back another couple of hundred yards. It took well over an hour's wait for a 2-minute ferry crossing. I suggested to the organizers that they do the route in reverse in the future so that the ferry crossing is at the tail end of the ride rather than within the first hour, thus spreading out the cyclists more. The short route could revised to bypass the ferry completely, leaving only the 75 & century riders for the ferry crossing. Running out of beer was a bummer, but to be expected as the nice weather seemed to bring a lot of folks who had not pre-registered. Here is a photo I took of the ferrry line backup.

As previously mentioned, I didn't do the ride, but it seems to me that some time between an 8 AM registration and the end of a 100-mile ride someone could have figured out a way to get more beer. When I was in college we managed logistics like that all the time on much shorter notice. ;)