Today’s Date: May 22, 2024

Today’s Start Point: Sisters, Oregon

Today’s End Point: Mitchell, Oregon

Today’s Miles: 94.79 Miles

Cumulative Miles: 433.58 Miles

I am not sure which is harder, getting out of a warm bed in a hotel room or climbing out of a sleeping bag to face 40 degree temperatures. It’s sometime hard to get up either way.

When I woke up this morning, I had to decide whether to take a semi-recovery day and go 46 miles to Prineville, Oregon or go 95 miles and add some more climbing and go to Mitchell, Oregon. I decided to just wait and see how the morning went and make a later day choice.

I packed up, paid up and hit the road. To my delight, there was a 20+ mph wind coming out of the west, a tailwind. I pedaled through Sisters, a really pretty little town. From there it was due east, and it was as if I didn’t need to pedal.

East of Sisters the land is relatively flat to rolling farmland, surrounded by hills. I love the tailwind. Some of the scenes you roll by seem out of a John Ford western. Large cattle herds in fields with the hills and clouds in the background.

Due to the wind (and my awesome pedaling skills-ok, the wind), I hit Prineville, Oregon before noon. Now I had to make my decision, push on to Mitchell or take a break. It seemed disrespectful to the cycling gods to waste this tailwind, so I decided to push on. Once past Prineville, there was really no turning back.

About five miles past Prineville, the hail started. You might think that the hail was discouraging, but did I mention the tailwind? The weather would switch between rain, hail and sunshine, sometimes within a 10 minute span.

From Prineville it was a gradual rise to the beginning of the climb up Ochoco Pass. The climb was not as tough as yesterday, but the hail and rain added a new level of difficulty.

At the top of the Pass, the hail was coming down hard. As opposed to yesterday, I smartly decided to layer up for the descent. Good thing because it was even colder than yesterday; the drop was about 10 miles. I froze even with the extra gear.

I rolled into Mitchell while the rain was coming down pretty hard. I was looking forward to staying in a cycling hostel for the night, but it was overbooked. I ended up staying at another local hotel which is more like a boarding house. It would not meet with the standards of Leslie Landenberger, that is for sure.

Mitchell definitely looks like it is on the verge of becoming a ghost town, but it did have a good brew pub for dinner.

The ride was close to a century with some big climbs, but I feel surprisingly good. Today definitely gave me some confidence going forward.