The Fanno Creek/Lake Oswego Loop

April 30, 2021

We’re still enjoying a bit of a hiatus from the blog, but today’s ride was good enough that we’d like to remember it. Discouraged by the trashing of many of our favorite inner city rides, we’ve been pushing the envelope looking for new routes or ones we haven’t taken in ages. Today’s loop was a bit of both - something old, something new.

The ride began with another trip south on Terwilliger, and then west on Multnomah Boulevard to the northern end of Fanno Creek. This, with a few minor navigation improvements, is the way we began last week’s loop that continued west to the Westside Trail and then doubled back east along the Sunset Highway to Washington Park.

Today though, we continued south along Fanno Creek for several more miles, to its end in Tigard. Beyond that we dropped down to Lake Oswego, climbed back north through Tryon Creek Park, and then dropped through Riverview Cemetery before returning home along the river front. This is similar to other loops we’ve taken in the past, but probably not since before we sold our home. It must be four years since we’ve looped south to Lake Oswego like this. In the meantime, there have been a lot of improvements - especially at the south end of Fanno Creek, where I think there must be another two miles of bikepaths added since the last time we were out this way.

All in all, a great ride. There’s a lot in bloom now of course, the ducklings are out, we enjoyed miles of peaceful cycling through ribbon parks, and we especially enjoyed an escape from the current gloominess of inner Portland. It’s very strange - if you get more than about five miles in any direction from the urban core, the blight melts away.

In other news

It’s the last day of April, and the halfway point of our two month stay in Portland. There are a few odds and ends to report, all good news.

First, I got my second Covid shot a few days ago, and Rachael will receive hers next week. We both feel really fortunate that we were able to get our shots so soon after returning to Portland. We’re not seeing any reason at this point that we won’t be going ahead with our plan at the end of the month to fly back to Minnesota and bike from there to New York.

Second, the travel news from Europe is starting to sound promising. France announced recently that they plan to open up to vaccinated Americans for tourism this summer, which is starting to give us confidence that when August comes we’ll be able to continue on with the second half of this tour by biking from Amsterdam to Rome.

Third, Rachael has started experimenting with the camera on her new phone, a Samsung Galaxy S21 5G. It’s not broken, like her old phone was, which is the main thing. But it’s also significantly faster and has a notably better camera. The final photo in this post was taken from it.

Fourth, my sister Elizabeth continues to make progress with her driving lessons, and the Raven remains anxious but is otherwise unscarred.

Fifth, I’m feeling great - as my dentist predicted I would when he removed an implant two weeks ago. It’s one I received probably 15 years back, and it needed to come out. He wanted to to remove it last spring, but it it wasn’t possible then after his offside shut down for the pandemic. He said it was badly infected around the base, had broken into my sinus cavity, and that I’d probably been living with a low grade sinus infection for some time. He predicted I might feel an extra spring in my step, and I think he’s right.

And finally, Rachael didn’t have a heart attack after all! She’s been taking an array of tests while we’re in town to diagnose some breathing issues she’s had for awhile, and her EKG report indicated that she possibly had a septal infarction. Dire news, if true; but her physician said that this is a fairly common misdiagnosis with EKGs, one that happens especially with athletes - as it had with the doctor’s husband, a marathon runner.

Rocky certainly doesn’t act like a heart attack victim - she had an especially impressive April, biking 25 days and averaging 43.4 miles/ride, and hiking 40 miles on three of the other days. And my stats for April were nearly as impressive as well - trust me.

Like I said. All good.