Adventuring in Gresham

Gresham somewhere in the distance...but before Mt. Hood

Gresham, Oregon* is Portland's suburb to the east.  It's no secret that this overgrown farm town (now the state's fourth largest city**) is looked down by us urban and urbane Portlandites***.  But it's great for a little adventure now and then.  It's on the way to the Columbia Gorge, Mt. Hood, and the Clackamas River Valley in the Mt. Hood National Forest.  It doesn't hurt that it's relatively easy to get to Gresham by bicycle: hop on the Springwater Corridor multi-use path and you're there!

And Tuesday was a nice spring day: partly sunny, high around 60F/16C. Another great day for a bike ride.  But so much stuff needs to be done for the impending big trip!  So a compromise: ride to Gresham and park my ass in a coffee shop for a few hours of laptop action.

The 10 mile (16 km) ride to Gresham was nice.  I headed south on the I-205 bike path to Lents, where I got onto surface streets for a mile.  I could've connected to the Springwater directly, but it would be a bit longer of a ride.  The trees were starting to bloom and there were plenty of happy people on the Springwater.  The only bum note was clouds obscuring distant Mt. Hood.

I spent a few hours at the busy coffee shop searching for info on the lappy, and then it was time to head home.  Initially I planned on going home a different way that would use side streets, but I opted for the Springwater because I wanted to ride fast.  I'm no roadie, and I wouldn't consider myself a fast rider, but every once in awhile I like to put some speed on the machine.  Granted, I basically kept an 18 m.p.h. (30 km/hr) pace--no scorcher me, but fast enough.

Good thing I decided to ride Tuesday--Wednesday's weather was crap, and it doesn't look that good for the future.

*World's most boring Wikipedia page?

**God bless urban sprawl and postwar development!

***At least it isn't Estacada, or as it is infamously known, Incesticada.