City Planning

Every medium size town seems to have two centers. The first and most obvious is giant and new. It's well engineered for parking and convenience and consists of huge stores like Fred Meyer and Lowes mixed with Taco Time and a few more local franchises. The other being small and often hard to find consists of antique shops, bookstores, and cafes that would look familiar to any SF hipster.

I tend to think of small rural towns in a particular way. It seems that once a town gets over 10,000 it shows (on the surface anyway) a lot of similarities with other like-sized towns not only in its big box stores but in its general hip-ness as well. You could cut four blocks out of Redmond for example and put it in Portland or SF and no one would know the difference. I bet that dastardly fellow The Internet has a hand in this.

Pictures While I've got some Internet

From bottom:
Hula-hoopers at the Eugene Saturday market (just noticed you can't really see them, but trust me, they're there)
The line in front of Voodoo doughnut on saturday morning.
A broad spot in the McKenzie River
Oddly burned trees on the way up Santiam Pass
Crossing the Pacific Crest Trail

Day 3 Numbers

Start: Blue River Reservoir
End: 7 miles East of Sisters, OR
Miles: 70.59
Seat Time: 6 hours 19 minutes
Average Speed: 11.1mph

New speed record of 35.5mph coming down off Santiam pass. Thats probably about as fast as I'll go. Technically the 520 is a more stable bike than the Madone but the bags more than cancel that out. In my head anyway.

Redmond

Enjoying some tea and a muffin at a groovy little coffee shop in Redmond. Putting on tights for the last few miles last night may have been a mistake in the long run. The extra pressure on the theoretically rehabilitated right knee has aggravated the old injury and it's causing a fuss. On the bright side, the weather is clearing up and the chai is fantastic, so, on the whole, a good morning.

Location:NW 12th St,Redmond,United States

Highway campin

About 7 miles East of Sisters I found a charming pair of trees to sleep under, just off the highway. There's an amazing feature that makes this noteworthy. For the first several miles outside town it's farm butted against farm. Solid private property, some even having signs touting video monitoring. I was starting to worry that it would be like that straight to Redmond, 20 miles away. Then the road turns around a little rocky outcrop and the land completely falls away into a wild valley. Aside from the road, there's no sign that people had ever been here. Even the farms were completely hidden after going only a few hundred feet. Neat.

Sisters

Made it to sisters pretty quick after the pass. Two of the group of three caught up to me as I had a snack and stretched my butt and the three of us made good time into sisters. They kept on while I pulled in to find food. I had time to bask in the glory of a half rack of BBQ ribs proffered by a bored but friendly girl in front of the grocery store before the rain that had been looming finally began coming down in earnest. So I'm here enjoying their AC power and their cell reception while I see if the rain passes. Also I found a spoon here. I was excited about that.

It's a funny place, Sisters. Everything here seems to be new but it's all fronted in the style of a wild west town. It's a look that doesn't scale well. These stores are way too big for it. Also there's a llama standing on a tiny hill across the highway.

No Service

There's quite a lot of it out here.

About 10 miles outside of sisters. Fun little detour...

Must say I'm very glad I was diverted from 20 at the beginning. I'm on it now and it's much bigger/busier than 126. Made it over the pass though. Touch of rain. Crossed the pacific crest trail and got to enjoy the descent that I had been earning for the past few hours at 5mph.