Sauvie Island Bicycle Ride

I bicycled to Sauvie Island, many years B.C. (Before Char).

That bicycle trip was "interesting". I took Newberry Road down from Skyline Road at the crest of the hill, because it looked like the shortest distance. Horizontally yes, but the longest distance vertically ...

It was a hot day, I was wearing shorts, and the road was MUCH steeper than I expected. My bicycle brakes overheated and started melting. I was speeding up, not slowing down. As I gained speed, I came around a gentle left curve to see the road angle more steeply, with a blind right curve at the bottom. I could not take that curve at the speed I was going; I would have gone rocketing straight ahead into the brush and trees below.

I saw a dirt bank on the uphill right side of the road.

In a split second, I decided to ditch the bicycle sideways into that soft dirt bank. I was wearing a helmet and bike gloves; what could possibly go wrong? By this point, time was behaving very strangely; 100 milliseconds seemed like 2 seconds. As I inched my way down and sideways, I saw that the "slowly" approaching "dirt bank" was a pile of crushed rock gravel with a dusting of dirt on it.

I survived, no broken bones or bruises, not even a bent bicycle, but some ripped clothing and an ugly case of road rash on my right leg and arm. Being young and immortal, I continued to Sauvie Island to meet my friends at the beach. They were young and immortal as well, so my road rash wasn't concerning. I took a longer and gentler route home; I wasn't THAT immortal.

2016 Google street view picture of curve, 40 years later. No gravel pile, no bare dirt embankment; soft-looking ferns instead. My landing spot is near the sunlit ferns, until the Google camera car revisits and takes new pictures. ditchturn.png.