July 22, 2025
Whiskey Hill
Today is the latest in a series of rides in the mid-Willamette Valley paired with visits with friends. This morning I'm off to Whiskey Hill Store, a small cafe southeast of Canby that I passed by last month after meeting with Carl in Aurora. I'm meeting with Carl again today, but I'm fitting the ride in first while the morning is still cool enough for enjoyment. By the time I head north in midafternoon we'll be up in the low nineties again.
I make it out the door by 6:15 and enjoy reasonable traffic all the way south. I'm definitely going the right direction, because the northbound traffic is horrendous - bumper to bumper, moving at a crawl all the way south past Wilsonville and nearly to Canby. Later while listening to OPB on the drive home I'll learn that it's because of a road maintenance project that has I-5 North throttled down to a single lane. The backup is so severe that many folks are missing their flights at PDX, with some people jumping out of their cabs not long after turning off to the airport and running past all the stalled cars in a desperate attempt to make their flight.
I get my timing right and Whiskey Hill Store is nearly empty when I walk in just minutes after it opens at 7. Almost from the moment I step inside I get the sense that this is a Mennonite establishment, clued in by the characteristic plain clothing and bonnet the woman who greets me wears. It reminds me of a Mennonite family Carol and I were close to when we first moved to Salem half a century ago.
I collect a sausage and egg roll and my first cup of coffee and take a seat at one of the few tables in the shadows, sheltered from the bright glare of the sun that beams in through the north windows. And then I educate myself a bit about this place: first from their website and then from a new source: the Ai result that comes back as one of the responses when I pose a simple, fact-based question - in this case, by googling "Whiskey Hill Store History". Here is the Ai statement:
I have some strong misgivings about Ai and the uses it may find, but for some purposes this feels like an effective research tool, similar to having access to an online dictionary or thesaurus. I've begun using it for other mundane research tasks, such as to find out where we can stream the original 1965 version of Ladykillers, starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.
I won't however be using it for anything beyond that, such as to create drafts of posts or write poetry that I can pass off as my own or even to generate ideas of what I might decide to even write about. That way lies madness or at least stultification, in my opinion.
An hour later I've just finished my second cup and it's time to hit the road because I'm time boxed. I've got a 29 mile loop planned, and I'm due back here at noon to meet with Carl. Should be no problem - 29 mostly flat miles in four hours should be no problem at all.
The potential problem though comes barely two hundred yards later when I pass the Pacific Northwest Mennonite Historical Society, which gives this description for itself:
We are the only repository for historical/genealogical materials pertinent to Mennonites west of the Rocky Mountains and between British Columbia and central California. Our library of 3,800+ titles includes Mennonite history books, Anabaptist, European, Canadian and American as well as conference and congregational histories; genealogies and family histories; and books by Mennonite authors (or published by one of our publishing houses) on a variety of topics.
This is obviously a spot worth exploring, but not today. For now I'll just make a note of it as a possible reason for another ride here someday.
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The next mile east on fairly busy Whiskey Hill Road is probably the most difficult one of the loop. I'm biking straight into the sun, and it's still low enough above the horizon that the glare and contrasting shadows make vision a challenge. There's a good shoulder and drivers are courteous and give me the space I need but I have to take it slowly to make sure there's nothing hiding just ahead of me.
That all changes when I come to the turnoff for Barlow Road. For the next eleven miles I travel more or less straight south on a succession of quiet roads that take me right to the heart of Mount Angel and the midpoint of my loop: Barlow Road, Needy Road, Farm Road, Ostler Road, Meridian Road, and finally College Street take me right to the base of the steep climb up to the summit by the abbey. It's theoretically fast, easy riding - especially today when I've even got the wind working with me - but it's not because one thing after another brings the train to a screeching halt while one of the cameras gets hauled out.
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3 weeks ago
So my time budget is already pretty badly compromised when a biker, the first I've seen for the past hour, pulls to a stop while I'm checking out another barn. He stops to make sure I'm OK, but fifteen minutes pass before we both start moving south again and he quickly disappears from view. We start out by agreeing on what a fine day it is to be out here today, but it's not long before I feel comfortable enough to inquire about his accent. It's Russian, learned growing up in a household of Old Believers. He's still fluent in Russian, the language of the family when he's back in the old household.
Ivan was born an Old Believer, but now he's converted to a newer faith. About ten years ago he discovered bicycling, and now he's dropped seventy pounds, has given up alcohol, and most days in good weather he's out riding this wonderful network of peaceful, empty country roads. Today he's on a longer ride, a loop that will take him through Mount Angel and then further west to Saint Paul before doubling back toward his home.
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I've biked to, around and through Mount Angel many times over the last fifty years. My earliest visits were to the Octoberfest Festival, to check out the booths but especially to watch the criterium races that spun through the heart of town: an oval of roughly a half mile that began on College Street in front of the Catholic Church, rounded the bend just before Main Street, and then doubled back east and uphill on Taylor before crossing back to College on Acadamy for a fast downhill race to the starting line again; and repeat X number of times, depending on the classification. College Steeet was lined on both sides by crowd controlling barricades, and crowds behind them were lined up solid, slapping their hands on the face of the barriers to urge their champions on. At each corner were strategically placed stacks of hay bales to collect riders who missed their line on the turn, as some always did.
Mount Angel's was one of maybe a half dozen criteriums running in the region when I first moved to Salem. Newberg had one I biked out to a few times, and Salem itself had one that ran the loop between the State Capitol and the Transportation Building, an event I even entered myself once.
Years later, Mount Angel was a regular break point for Rachael and me for overnight loops between Salem and Portland. Occasionally we'd take the time to pull off from College Street for the climb up to the summit beside the abbey. It embarrasses me now to realize that today is the first time that I did more than give a sideways glance to the series of shrines lining the path to the summit because my main focus was just making it to the top of the 9% climb.
Today's experience was different though, because since we were here last we visited Orto San Giulio (again, on the 2021 Road to Rome tour) and walked up to its nearby summit along its Stations of the Cross path. That was the first Stations of the Cross site I'd ever seen or even heard of, so I looked at the stations with a different understanding today.
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And after I'm home and have the time I read up on the abbey and its history and am reminded of what an exceptional spot this is to find right in our own back yard. From their website:
The monks of Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon form a Benedictine community founded in 1882 from the Abbey of Engelberg in Switzerland. We maintain a monastic tradition that has been a vital part of the Roman Catholic Church for more than 1,500 years.
Since 1889, Mount Angel Seminary has sent thousands of priests to serve more than 11 million Catholics in nearly 100 dioceses and religious communities around the world. As the oldest seminary in the western United States, Mount Angel is the only seminary in the West that offers a College of Liberal Arts, a Graduate School of Theology, and a Doctor of Ministry degree program.
Designed by the famous Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto, the modernist-style Mount Angel Abbey Library is home to one of the most significant theological libraries in the Pacific Northwest. Used by the entire Abbey and seminary community, the library is also open to guests, scholars, and the general public.
So yes, I should definitely come back some day and take the time to look around. But for today though I've totally blown my time budget and have only about 75 minutes to make the final 14 miles back to Whiskey Creek without holding up my friend. Fortunately it's almost all downhill or flat, so I resolve to just put my nose down and the camera away and make tracks, stopping only for truly essential shots. Which keep on coming, so in the end I arrive ten minutes late. Not too bad really, but still. I'm lucky Carl didn't give up on me and get on with his day.
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3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
We have an excellent visit and are just winding down when it's time for me to head north if I want to avoid the rush hour traffic. I collect all my belongings and step out the door, but I'm still quite vulnerable to out-of-sight-out-of-mindedness and nearly screw up badly as I'm startled to see my bicycle in my line of sight when I step out the door. Roddy, what are you doing here? I don't know for sure, but it's easy for me to imagine getting halfway home before remembering that I'd been on a bike ride.
Today's ride: 29 miles (47 km)
Total: 259 miles (417 km)
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3 weeks ago
Just in case though I do have them along, and we have a set with both bikes again. One of the sets landed in the storage unit somehow when we switch apartments.
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