Wednesday, June 16th
I'm in Portland! I have been here for almost a week now and I LOVE this place! Well actually, I have been reminded why I love and hate this city. I hate it because of the rain. I've been reacquainted with the frickin' wet stuff, both the regularity of it as well as the impact that it can have on outdoor activities... But despite the weather, Portland has shinned upon me, and it's easy to remember what makes this city so unique and special. As soon as I arrived, I checked in with the local mountain bike specialty shop, Fat Tire Farm, so that I could buy a trail map and get up to speed with the bicycling events on the upcoming calendar. It turned out that there was a large bicycling event in North Portland off of Mississippi Ave that featured some criterium racing right around the corner.
With the news of the event and freshly armed with a book pointing out all of the local hot spots I needed to find some peeps to hang with. I called my friend and former work associate, Quentin, and his wife Shannon. Unfortunately, Quentin was away on business but would be back for the weekend and he and Shannon were totally into hanging out on Mississippi to watch the crit races and have fun.
I dove into my mtn bike guide book and decided to head out to Scappoose to check out some local trails. Along the way, I met another rider who suggested that I take a loop trail known as the "roller coaster" due to its high speeds, jumps and up and down fun. Well, I couldn't resist riding a trail with that kind of description. It turned out to be one of my worst riding days, EVER! The rain had been falling in Portland for about two weeks making the trail ridiculously slippery. I was spinning and falling all over the place. At one point I was going pretty fast down a double track and as I turned to follow the trail to the right my front tire lost traction and I slammed hard on the ground. Good thing I was wearing a helmet because my head to a decent hit. After wiping the mud off and clearing my mind of WTF?, I rode on a bit more cautiously. I realized that riding in my normal aggressive manner alone could end badly so I backed off and just looked for some hills to climb (there were plenty).
The weekend came and Quentin, Shannon and I went to the Cirque de Cycle. It was a blast!There were tons of Portlanders to look at ;) (Keep Portland Weird). The racing was awesome!

We witnessed a pretty gnarly crash in which one rider sustained some pretty heavy road rash. He got up and kept going... Ouch!