In May 2005 my wife and I moved from the Chicago area to Oakland, Oregon. We are both now retired and chose this idyllic small town in rural southwest Oregon to be our new home. The local biking is wonderful in this area - great scenery and almost no traffic. For the first two months we were busy getting settled in the house.

By August I was free to go on a bike tour so I decided to meander around my adopted new home of southwest Oregon. The route took me along many rivers, down the southern Oregon coast, and up to Crater Lake National Park. The route is mostly on paved roads but it has two unexpected long gravel segments.

I ended up doing the tour in two segments because I got sick in the middle. The first route is 8 days in the Coast range west of my house. At the end of this route my wife picked me up in her car and drove me 45 miles home.

After recuperating at home for 3 days I began the second half of the tour, starting and finishing at home. This 8 day loop is east of my house in the Cascade range, much higher elevation.

For this tour I researched a detailed route and identified several points of interest to visit. But unlike my previous tours, this tour does not have a rigid schedule. I'm retired now so I don't have to get back to work on a certain day or catch a flight on a certain day. This is my first tour in many years to have an open-ended schedule.

Some of my informal objectives are to stop often to swim in rivers, take photographs, hike to waterfalls, pick blackberries, and enjoy a slow pace. Read on to see if I actually achieve the goal of a leisurely 'retired man's tour'.

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Charmaine RuppoltI've biked in Oregon and saw lots of the wild blackberries the state has. :) My biking friend who joined me stopped to eat many of them along the way. :)
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This was my 10th tour on my present touring bike, a 1998 SPEED ROSS short wheelbase recumbent. It was my last tour with the 2 rear pannier setup.