how to take the slowest possible trip up to Sandy for donuts.
Today I was planning on going out to Sandy to get a dozen donuts. But today the executive office of Bicycle Fixation was also in Portland, and had whipped up a group ride out “somewhere” (which turned out to be a ~45 mile loop out to Edgefield and back) and I wanted to ride downtown and be social for a change.
And it was certainly a change. My usual ride up to Sandy is a mad scramble for the hills so I can get there, get donuts, and get back in a 4 hour window. And, compared to basically every other randonneur in Portland, I’m kind of slow, and the conversations I have on brevets are usually done while I’m panting to keep up at 15-20mph. This morning was, on the other hand, an actual honest to g-d social ride, and the part of the ride I did with them out to Gresham (where they peeled off onto Main/233rd to cross over to where Edgefield is, but I continued up towards Sandy) took almost 3 hours, at which point no mad scramble would have been enough.
But it was Sunday, and a absurdly warm and sunny April Sunday at that. So it didn’t matter.
(And I did get the donuts after a mad scramble from Gresham to Sandy. And then on the way back I ran into some friends coming home from a loop on the Springwater Trail and ended up that lap at an even more leisurely speed. The total loop time was a speedy ~7 hours for almost 100km.)