August 3, 2021
Day 82 - Columbia city, OR to Portland, OR
Home coming
Today we slept in until 7 and made food time getting ready. We ate, packed and we were out on the road by 8. I did have some of the best coffee I have had in a while, Richard made it with a mocha pot so I'll have to look into that when we get home. We are heading to Portland today, so we should have no shortage of coffee for the foreseeable future. We hit the road with a tailwind and lots of traffic on hwy 30. It was only a 32 mile ride to downtown and was relatively uneventful.
We were in an industrial area until we took a right turn and it instantly became suburb with cool Portland looking houses. They were built on a hill and had the garage down on street level and the house up above.
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We kept riding and passed underneath the interstates and into downtown. There were homeless everywhere. And alot of the downtown shops were closed, partly because riots, covid, and homeless populations. We went right to voodoo doughnuts, but the line was huge, so we decided to bike to the one across the river. We ride over a big bridge and up through another industrial area, but this was the food and beverage area. There was a canning facility, a bread making place, and Nossa familia (a coffee roaster). The line at the other voodoo was decidedly less long, and we had placed an online order anyway. I ate 3 doughnuts right there and we left feeling ill looking for some actual food to eat since it was noon. We found a vegan restaurant called blossoming lotus. It was expensive, but sometimes it's nice to go to a place that goes all in for vegan food, making cheeses and such. It was delicious and we left to go to a bike shop to get a new tube before heading to our hosts home in southwest Portland. Google predicted an hour long ride to our host. It was only 6 miles, but apparently there is a huge hill in Portland that goes up to some really beautiful homes. The hill was a struggle, even though it was only 500' up.
We rode 3 miles past the hill and arrived at our destination. It was hard to see the house through all the vegetation. Chris met us out front and showed us to the garage in the back to store the bikes. Chris worked in renewable energy and rosemary with endangered species, so I knew we would have some cool conversation. We took showers and chilled out until around 5 and sat in the backyard with Chris chatting about the environment, jobs, and building. He had built the adu on their property that they rent out now. It was interesting to hear about a new air tight process that he used on the building rather than an interior home wrap. Rosemary went to a restaurant and picked up falafel for dinner and we ate on their front porch and talked about travelling by bike. From what everyone tells us, Europe is the place to be if travelling by bike. They even have designated routes that the eu makes and apparently respect cyclists there, how odd. After dinner Mary and I walked the Multnomah neighborhood. We came back and went right to sleep.
Mileage:45
Altitude gain:1700
Today's ride: 45 miles (72 km)
Total: 4,364 miles (7,023 km)
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