The Mystery of the Disappearing U-08

August 1, 2025

With only two days left until departure, our time is split between two priorities - getting in some last minute mileage, and making sure we're fully ready for departure. That, and Rachael has an afternoon date for a haircut, an appointment I think she's had on the books since before we scrapped our plans to fly to England. She'll walk to that appointment and back, and also take a walk along the waterfront down to the marina and back. Altogether she nets nine miles and reports that her foot is doing fine as long as she's wearing her new, wider Keens. So that's encouraging.

For myself, I get my usual early start at Ovation, taking advantage of the last morning it will be open at six; and then afterwards I ride down to the Sellwood Bridge and east to the Lents Floodplain for a last birding run, an outing that would have been more successful if I'd remembered to charge the battery in my camera; and if there were any birds out in the first place; and if it weren't so damn hot. I did at least get enough miles in to test out whether I'm ready for more of a challenge now that it's been three days since my steroid shots. If I can fit it in I'll try some sort of hill climb tomorrow, once we've completed final packing and departure preparations.

I like the way that the clouds and reflections give the illusion that you can see through the building. I'll. Have to make a trip back in September to see what a sunrise looks like against it.

Strange, the Amtrak is just stopped here in the middle of the bridge, maybe waiting for a track to clear.

This feels like a fitting time to reflect on the miseries of the Japanese Americans interred at places like Tule Lake and Heart Mountain during the Second World War.

Eryngium giganteum (Miss Wilmot's Ghost).

The Mystery of the Disappearing U-08

One of the many benefits of decluttering our storage unit has been that for the first time in over seven years I can reasonably easily access everything still stored there. This fact, together with the interesting fact that CJ and have started reconnecting through the journal and sharing recollections about the past, has helped me to finally answer a question that has nagged at me for at least 30 years: what happened to my Peugeot U-08, my first ten speed bicycle, the one I bought when Carol and I moved to Bellingham after I was discharged early from the army so I could attend Huxley College?

I don't have a photo of my bike, but this looks just like it - when it was new at least. By the time I parted with it though the Brooks saddle looked like the spine of a dead animal because I left it out exposed to the elements so often.

I really loved that bicycle. I rode it everywhere over the next 18 months, first in Ferndale and then after we moved in to Happy Valley for my final year before graduation. And it's the bike I rode on my first real bike tour, not counting that one night overnight from Seattle to central Washington when I was 14: the ride from Bellingham to Salem with our friend and roommate, Alan Davis.

Fast forward 18 months, and Carol And I are riding in the back of a red canvas-top jeep back to West Lafayette to live in a communal housing situation with friends, an impulse decision when our plans to join the Peace Corps and help set up an air pollution program in Santiago, Chile collapsed overnight when the Chilean government was overthrown in a coup.

And fast-forward another nine months and I'm just setting out on a planned ride back to Seattle, a ride that fell short in Billings - an adventure unusual enough for the times that it netted me an interview and feature article in the West Lafayette newspaper.

This time though, I'm riding a new bike: a Motobecane that I bought back in Indiana:

This isn't my bike either, but it looks exactly like the one I remember except that mine was a silver paint scheme. I loved that bike too, and now a part of me wishes I'd had a garage where I could hoard these two and a couple of other of my favorites - the Trek 520 and Cannondale T2000 in particular.

One thing that has nagged at me for years though was what happened with my Peugeot U-08 when we moved back to Indiana. I've long believed we left it behind in Seattle, but couldn't recall what happened to it. Over time I assumed we must have sold or donated it as a part of our downsizing in preparation for our imminent departure for San Juan, Puerto Rico for immersion language training. But then this photograph from Carol arrived in the mail and caused me to think again about that drive back east in the back of Denny's red Jeep:

Just the five of us, silhouetted on the salt flats of the Great Salt Lake.

Five of us! I'd forgotten that Carol and I weren't just crammed in the back of that jeep for a long drive halfway across the continent - we also shared the space with Denny's sizable dog. Really, those three days hold some of my favorite memories of my life.

Reminiscing about that drive, Carol reminded me of something I'd forgotten - that we were hauling a trailer behind us, crammed with everyone's belongings. And that's the first time that it dawned on me that perhaps we took the bike east with us. And that was just the mental nudge I needed to solve the mystery.

When we lived in West Lafayette I contributed to the budget by biking east across the Wabash River to a job in an electronics plant that manufactured coils, eventually ending up as a fork lift operator. I bicycled throughout the winter, rain, snow, ice or sun. And over time I've invented this story that my earnings from this job were how I was able to buy that Motobecane in the spring, just in time for some serious training rides in preparation for the Big Ride.

And thinking back now, it's amazing that it's taken this long to see the logical fallacy here. I couldn't have biked to work throughout the winter to make the money I'd need to buy that Motobecane if I didn't have a bike already. So of course the U-08 was stuffed in the trailer riding behind us; and I undoubtedly left it behind as a trade-in for the new bicycle.

I love this resolution, which I feel certain is accurate now. I've always felt a little disloyal to have left the U-08 behind without even knowing what happened to it.

Today's ride: 33 miles (53 km)
Total: 401 miles (645 km)

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