After the first week had finally finished here at OSU, Dereak and I made a semi-spontaneous decision to bike down to Eugene. Dereak wanted to hangout with some old high school friends and go to a concert known as "Life in Color", and I wanted to meet up with Kylan and hangout for the evening. Well since we are college boys, plans never really go accordingly. Our expected 7 am wake-up turned out to be 9 o clock, and we were about an hour and a half behind on departure (not that it really mattered). The total bike ride was going to be 50 miles, and we were following Siri's instructions and focused on taking backroads instead of major highways in the area.
The first long stretch was probably the worst part. We had about 18 miles or so on highway 99, and it was hard to get started because the miles were ticking away ever so slowly. I was also pretty relaxed during the trip and failed to hear Dereak's turn command or recognize his turn signal (The real reason was that there were sheep on the side of the road and I was "Baa-ing" as I passed by). So Dereak turned down a road, and I had to wait for it to clear before biking pretty hard to catch up.
The road we turned on was a really nice back country road of about 8 miles. It reminded me a lot of Silverton backroads, and was pretty awesome since we only saw 3 cars take the road we were on. We took silly videos on Snapchat, and Dereak sent one in to Snaporegon where we got featured, so he was pretty stoked on life when we decided to take our break. We stopped in the shade at a little house on the side of the road, and got some water. Taking a break is probably one of the worst ideas because starting back up seems a hundred times harder. We took about 20 minutes on the side of the road before tackling the last stretch of the backroads which lead us into Junction City.
In Junction City, Dereak and I wanted to find a convenience store to get some fresh cold water at, and we were almost out of the city when we found a tiny shack on the side of the road. It's one of those things that looks slightly sketchy, but you give it a shot anyways. Turns out it was really good because we got bottled water that tastes like mango for fifty cents. We took another 15 minutes here for a break before biking along the highway for another 8 miles.
Once we got off of 99, it became much more turn oriented as we were lead to bike paths in Eugene. This part was absolutely brutal because our thighs are already sore, my hips were tight, and my hands were raw from the uncomfortable handlebars.
Once we made it to Dereak's friends' apartment, we split up and I went to find Kylan and meet his friends. We had an awesome time catching up, I got to meet many new people who were equally surprised that I was a beaver and that I biked down from Corvallis. Admittedly, U of O's campus isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The feeling of being in a major city isn't appealing, but I loved the food there. Being a runner, it was like heaven when I heard that Ky's dorm (Carson) had an all you can eat buffet.
After staying up all night playing Risk and watching movies, we had the brilliant late-night idea of building a fort in the commons. We used the sofas and put bedsheets crossing over from one to another, and put chairs on the sofas to hold down said sheets. It looked really cool, and once we added the bed mattresses quite comfortable too. However, once it became noon and an RA walked out of her dorm, it was another story. The UO students all got written-up, but I was under the care of Ky so there wasn't much they could do about me. So that was a win on my part.
Dereak and I decided that that trip was freakin' awesome, and so we're looking to continue doing spontaneous biking trips. I don't know where we'll go next (Silverton? The Coast?) but I'm totally pumped for another adventure.
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