March 30, 2025 to March 31, 2025
Leif Erickson Drive / Salem
Sunday
A more interesting day than expected. Rachael decides on another walk out and back Leif Erickson Drive, which is quickly becoming a favorite with her. I’m headed the same way, but on the bike and with the plan to ride it to the end and then up Delaney Road to Skyline Drive. From there the plan is to roll east along the crest until dropping down to the river on Logie Mountain Trail before biking home along the river. I’m pretty open-minded on the route I’ll follow, depending on how I feel and how the weather holds out. I might drop down and follow Rock Creek for few miles, and I might cross the Saint Johns Bridge when I come to it and finish up on the east side following Willamette Bluff. In any case, I look forward to be getting in some climbing while enjoying some of the classic views on this old favorite.
That doesn’t happen though. I start perhaps a half hour after Rachael and eventually catch up to her when I’m seven miles into the ride, not long after she’s turned back and is steaming for home at a steady 4+ mph pace. We stop briefly to compare notes and rub noses and then she’s off again, gathering no moss.
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My plans change in less than a quarter mile and I turn back also. It’s not the weather or my condition though - I feel fine and am looking forward to the ridge ride ahead. It’s my rear wheel, which suddenly feels soft to me when I ride the gravel. I stop, check it out, and confirm I’ve flattened. Crap.
Fortunately I’m well prepared and have brought along a repair kit and pump; but there’s no place to sit down and repair a flat here and it’s not really something I want to do anyway. I pump it up and then decide to just see if I can just ride it home and repair it there in a comfortable spot while sipping on an NA Black Butte Porter. Hopefully it’s a slow leak.
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It’s not a slow leak. I make it only a quarter mile - just far enough to reach the next distance marker. It just comes into view when I feel the tire soften again; and by the time I reach the post the tire is audibly creaking. It’s time to reconsider the plan. I could pull the tube out and repair it, but it would be faster and easier to just throw in a new one; but this is when I discover that the old brain is only half full and half empty - smart enough to bring a pump, tire levers and a patch kit, but not so smart as to throw in a spare tube also. the older I get, the more aware I am that I’m nowhere near as smart as I thought I was. I’ve just been lucky.
I’m not feeling too lucky at the moment though, with nearly seven miles between me and home, a tube that wants to flatten about as quickly as I fill it up, the chance of an afternoon rainstorm ahead, and bad knees. But of course I really am lucky - it could have been much worse. This could just as well have occurred five miles later, maybe in some remote and inaccessible place. At least I can console myself with each quarter-mile post I come to: well, there’s one less quarter mile I’ll have to limp, I’m thinking. And once I get back on pavement I should make better time and get more distance per refill; and nearer to home I can save the final mile by hopping on the streetcar at 23rd and Northrop.
It’s a slow go, with probably seven or eight refills along the way and a fair amount of rough riding on very little air when I’m hoping I’m not ruining the rim. I do make it through to the pavement finally though, and then it really does go faster as it’s paved and downhill most of the rest of the way. I’m doing well enough that I get a mile out of the next one, and after that I’m close enough to home that I don’t bother with the streetcar and just ride it in. And I’m lucky in the weather also, as the first sprinkles start about five blocks from home.
Monday
Today’s the day for my long-planned trip to Salem, something I’ve been trying to fit in ever since we first returned from Spain. The original idea was to drive down and meet up with Frank and Carl, and a date was on the books until the onset of my health issues crushed that plan. Thinking I might have covid and not knowing what the cause of my devastating headache and other symptoms was I couldn’t risk exposing my friends. It’s the same reason we cancelled driving to Seattle to visit dad. That was such a horrible month, but I didn’t know yet that the worst was yet to come.
By the time we returned to Tucson though everything was much brighter and the three of us started lining up candidate dates. I was even toying with the idea of making an overnight trip out of it if I got lucky with the weather, by biking down through Oregon City one day and then back up the west side on the way back.
That ambitious plan got superseded though when I started planning for another test the rheumatologist ordered up for me. This one is a calcium bone density scan to check out whether I’m at risk of osteoporosis, one of the potential side effects of prolonged prednisone usage. The test is scheduled for May or June sometime, long after we’ll be in Europe, so I ask the doctor whether it will work to take it early here before we leave.
It will work OK, if I can find an open slot. I check every Kaiser lab within driving distance, and there’s only one appointment available - in Salem. So that sets the date - I make a midday appointment at the lab and then arrange meetings with Carl before it and with Frank afterwards. It pencils out, but makes an uncomfortably crowded agenda - especially since I can’t leave home before sunrise and have to make it back before dark.
And later of course I have the brainstorm to meet Carl separately down in Aurora, which is a much better plan. Today it’s just Frank and the test. Frank is first, at the Broadway Coffee House. It’s a spot just a few blocks from his home and an easy walk. I could meet him there and we could walk over together, but instead I drive down early, grab a table, and settle in at a familiar spot. I’ve been here before of course, but it’s startling to look around and see that nothing whatsoever has changed since I was here last. It’s a nice coffee shop - open, airy, and with a nice selection of scones. I’ve probably been here several dozen times and it’s nice to have the memory refreshed.
What really startles me though is realizing how long it’s been since I sat here. Memory is so strange. It feels to me like it hasn’t been long at all, until I start thinking back. I can time box it by events, and am shocked to realize it’s been thirty years - half my adult life! I’m certain of it.
I started coming here when I was a team lead on the CSEAS Project, a six or seven year endeavor to move the state of Oregon’s child support enforcement system off of its antiquated COBOL system developed in the 1970’s onto a more modern architecture. It was a very difficult project, led by one of the large accounting firms that specialized in this sort of thing (Price-Waterhouse, I think), and overall took seven years before it finally ended up in a huge, embarrassing, financially ruinous news-making failure.
I don’t recall for sure now but I think it was the most costly IT project failure in Oregon’s history, displacing the previous mega-catastrophe, the Cascade Project - another multi-year disaster that attempted to move the welfare systems (food stamps, cash assistance, etc) off of COBOL also. I was a lead on that project too, and like the CSEAS project it was a huge financial loss and a career-ender for project managers, division heads, and the like.
If only we’d known back then how simple this sort of work was. Now, we could just bring in a few bright Doge boys fresh out of high school to flip it all over in a few weeks and be done with it.
______________
So that time-boxes it at one end. I came here on my lunch hours while I was working on the CSEAS project, and before I decided to become an independent contractor to work at Saif. The project team was housed in a facility near the Broadway Coffeehouse, and I’d drive over there on my lunch hour to meet Frank and ———
Oh, wait. That’s all wrong. I didn’t drive the car to work at the CSEAS project. I biked to it from our home in South Salem, where were still living at the time; and for lunch I’d walk back to the PSB for the lunchtime bridge game. If I was driving it was on the way down from Portland, and must have been much more recent. Frank’s right, we didn’t meet here at all. I really can’t remember now when or why I started coming here, and have no idea how long it’s been. It could even have been as recently as seven years ago, right before ai finally fully retired and we went vagabond.
Anyway, here’s Frank.
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2 weeks ago
I make it out to Kaiser in plenty of time. It doesn’t go well, and I flunk the test. Which doesn’t mean I’m getting osteoporosis. It means I flunked the pre-test because I didn’t read the prep instructions well enough and didn’t get tested at all. I don’t want to talk about it.
Today's ride: 15 miles (24 km)
Total: 1,351 miles (2,174 km)
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| Comment on this entry | Comment | 7 |
That scone looks delicious, not like the dry little biscuits people go to the Puyallup Fair to buy. If you've not seen it before, this map should give you a laugh. https://brilliantmaps.com/scone-map/
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I blame it on the prednisone and its effect on my short-term memory, but there’s probably something here too about the fact that I’ve never been half as smart as I thought I was.
We
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