Bend in the Wind

I arrived in Bend, OR, on Wednesday to stay for a couple of days with James Williams, an old riding buddy from college. While my fitness and abilities have gone down since graduation, he's stayed with it and actually turned pro recently on the mountain bike. Go Jimmy Will! Luckily for me he's recovering from a lot of racing recently and so was perfectly content to ride my speed on a road ride the first day and a mountain bike ride (4th one in 3-4 years) yesterday.

Bend is a cool town. It's the kind of place where the coffee shops show le Tour on tv, 3/4 of the townsfolk own dogs, bike lanes and trails extend from the city center out into the countryside in all directions, roundabouts abound on roads and even trails, you can spend a couple of liesurely hours tubing down the Deschutes River through downtown (which we did last night), etc.

On the negative side, the town has been identified as an outdoor mecca, so it seems to be growing and sprawling with too much traffic; there's a lot of money which manifests itself through expensive houses, the currently "real" downtown transforming into yet another site for luxury condos, and pretentious people driving around in their Lotuses and Lamborghinis; there aren't any grungy, bohemian coffee shops with couches and creaky hardwood floors-- they're all a little too chic; umm...those are all the cons I can think of. Go to Bend. You'll like it.

This morning I'm off to Portland to pick up my brother at the aeroport. We're going to stay in Stumptown for the weekend and then do some backpacking next week before heading down to SF to stay with our sister, her family, and our parents. Vanessa's coming to town, too!