COVID-19 Consolation Ride

Well, as with so many other things, our planned ride on the Nevada BDR has been postponed. Not sure when we’ll do it now, but after talking, Eric (my brother) and I decided the best thing would be for us not to do the trip. Partly because it seemed irresponsible for me to travel from Portland to Bullhead City, and then for us to stop at stores and gas stations along the way, being contagion vectors from our respective cities. And partly because the likelihood of the services we’d need along the way (food, gas) closing up shop seems to be going up by the day. So, with much grumbling, I cancelled my vacation time.

Of course, all my stuff is still sitting out in the living room, looking like I’m about ready to leave on a trip. Can’t quite bring myself to unpack it all and put it away yet.

On the plus side, the cancellation created an opportunity to start a new friendship, consummated with a “get to know you” ride into Tillamook State Forest here in Oregon. My fiancé’s work colleague rides a BMW R1200GS, and she’d been saying for a while that we should meet and ride. No time like the present, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s relatively easy to maintain social distancing on motorcycles. Heck, we couldn’t even get our Bluetooth helmet coms to work.

So, Ned rode to my driveway in Tigard, then we headed out HWY 217 to US 26 to HWY 6 to the eastern-most OHV stop in the state forest. I failed to turn on tracking on any of my devices that do detailed tracks (I’m still getting used to all this new equipment) but we mostly stuck to the legal gravel roads and two track at Browns Camp OHV Area. At one point, we did peel off onto a 4x4 trail (noted as Powerline 004 on maps), but quickly turned around as neither of was was really up for what was feeling like a very technical ride all of a sudden. I’d like to go back and do it at some point, but yesterday was not the day. I will say this, though: although I wasn’t up for that trail yesterday, I continue to be amazed at how sure-footed a 600+ pound motorcycle can feel. There were whoops, rocks, roots, puddles, hills and sharp switchbacks in the short distance we did on Powerline 004…and I felt like the Quota was up for it. Well, except for the not-yet-fabricated skid plate. Bashing the bare sump would have been bad.

Here’s a short video of one nice, docile section of the ride yesterday. It was a gorgeous day, and it was nice to stop thinking about the news for a bit.