Highway lessons from the seat of a bicycle

Last of a two-part series
When Brent Jennings embarked on a long-distance bicycle trek through northern Oregon and parts of southern Washington to his home in Eagle, he knew that there would be physical and mental challenges along the way.

He had planned carefully for this ride and knew that as each mile passed by, he definitely would complete the trip.

Astoria is a big starting point for bicycle treks headed east. Jennings planned to roughly follow U.S. 30 along the Lewis and Clark Trail as much as possible.

The second night out found Jennings in Corbett, Ore., where he finished a challenging uphill ride. His plan to camp in an RV park was stopped abruptly by a sign with two simple words – "No Tenters."

“Luckily, while talking with a local store clerk, a guy standing in line at the store heard my plight and offered his place for me to set up camp,” Jennings said. “There, I practiced a form of ‘stealth’ camping.”

Jennings’ host said, “He’d done this kind of bicycling 25 years ago and wished he could do it again.”

“Maybe I inspired him,” Jennings said.

Averaging more than 50 miles each day, the rest of the trip was relatively uneventful for Jennings, who traded camping for a cheap motel or hotel room every third or fourth night.

“A week before the trip, it was all rain,” he said. “When the trip started, it was perfect weather.

Special moments
Jennings enjoyed Pacific Northwest forests from Astoria to about Hood River, near Mosier (Ore.). There, his route entered more familiar terrain – high desert.

At Biggs Junction (Oregon), on U.S. 97, he crossed the Columbia River into “sparse” southern Washington.

He camped in Roosevelt, a little hamlet with a state park. There, he met “my three retired buddies.” The three, in their 60s to 70s, were on a cross-country bicycle trek, too.

Despite the group’s “circle of protection,” automatic sprinklers came on at 1 a.m. and provided a drenching, “Bikers just can’t get shook up,” Jennings advised.

“I rode with them for a day before we split up at Umatilla. They were headed north, and I turned south toward Hermiston.”

Jennings kept on trekking, sightseeing and meeting new people along the way.

When he reached Baker, Ore., he had already decided it would be a hotel night because he had something important to do while in the area ...

Finding solace
The next day, at a point 10 miles east of Baker on old U.S. 30, Jennings found a spot where a blind curve headed toward an underpass.

It was a place he had identified through research where two of his grandparents were killed in 1949 in an early-morning, head-on crash with a pickup truck.

His mother’s parents, who he never met, were in the front seat and died. Other relatives – his other grandmother and two aunts – were riding in the back seat and were injured.

“I wonder what might have been if today’s safety technology had been installed in their vehicle,” he confided.

The car was hit by a pickup truck with a driver and two passengers. Jennings said that it was determined later the occupants of the truck were drunk -- a behavior he combats daily as manager of ITD's Office of Highway Safety.

Jennings continued his eastbound journey on old U.S. 30 into Huntington, Ore., “where I was ‘accosted’ by a newspaper reporter who interviewed me for about an hour.”

“That night, I stayed in Farewell Bend State Park where I bumped into seven or eight members of the Boise Astronomical Society who just happened to be set up for star-gazing with their telescopes,” Jennings said. “Each had to tell me about astronomy until 2 a.m. But, they let me look at Saturn and four of its moons – that was fabulous.”

A journey’s end
Jennings’ last night on the road was a Saturday night in Parma.

“I was going to stay at a nice little city park in Parma, except for the interruption of Fort Boise Days,” he said. “It’s a huge deal with lots of people and noise.”

So, his last night out actually was in a Parma motel with no towels. No problem, he has towels. There also was no remote for the television. Problem.

“By now, I was tired and just didn’t want to get out of the chair to change the channel,” he confided.

Throughout his bicycle odyssey, Jennings made a point of stopping at every roadside memorial he came upon and leaving a business card with a simple message of condolence written on the back.

“In a car, you whiz by these things at 50 to 60 miles per hour,” he said, adding that the memorials “remind us of the responsibility we have as motorists to be good highway safety partners.”

“My next trip is to bicycle across southern Idaho,” he said.

Someday – and it will happen – a cross-country bicycle trip is planned that will start in Anacortes, Wash., north of Seattle, and end in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Just not tomorrow.


Photos: Jennings’ Trek bicycle with its “BOB” trailer is shown packed and ready for travel (top); the three “bike buddies” who accompanied Jennings during part of his ride through Washington were photographed later in Montana. Jennings found this picture (upper right) online and noted that; “At least I know they made it to Missoula;” Jennings passed a number of roadside memorials like this one (middle left), that mark the location of a fatal crash; a picture of Oregon’s Multnomah Falls was hard for Jennings to pass up while on his bicycle ride home to Idaho. (bottom right).

Published 8-2-13