ODEL COMES HOME TONIGHT – YAY!

I just got a phone call from Odel – the last leg of his return flight is ready to board, so I’ll pick him up at the airport this evening.  He sounded SO ready to be home!

Ranger Matt is giving us the day off tomorrow – a really nice treat, especially since it means one of the seasonal rangers will need to staff the visitor center.  Odel and I will have a three day weekend together, sharing our oh-so-different experiences of the past week (very unusual for us, since we are normally together 24/7).  After he catches up on missed sleep, we plan to get out on a couple of nearby hikes – Odel said he got exactly zero exercise while in Memphis.

While Odel was gone, I began working on a biking habit (I took this photo from my favorite viewpoint on the trail).  From Scoopy, it is a 45 minute ride to the west end of the tunnels on our trail, with plenty of climbing.  If I am on the trail by 8 am, I can shower and eat breakfast before I need to open the visitor center. 

Part of our job is to be a “presence” on the trail, and I like bike patrolling much better than taking the loud Gator.  With Odel back home, I hope to do this west-side ride twice a day, or to ride the entire trail once a day.  That last mile, through the tunnels and down the big descent to the east trailhead is fast – eye-watering fast – going down, but I climb back up very, very slowly.

Besides biking, kite boarding and windsurfing are the big summer sports here, with the much-easier-to-learn kite boarding (see the colorful, curved kites in the air?) edging out windsurfing.  Driving down the hill on a trip to the grocery store yesterday, I caught glimpses of colorful kites soaring above the water, so made a quick right turn for a trip down to the river’s edge to watch the action. 

The poor guy in the corner of this photo, a windsurfer, was in the water far more than he was on the board.  He’d struggle upright, catch the next gust of wind, lose his balance and splash back into the river.  He gets points for persistence, though!

I can’t believe I have worked in the visitor center for only 5 days while Odel has been gone – it feels like so much longer (shows how long it was been since I learned something new).  I’m comfortable staffing it alone (on a typically slow day), but I would rather be outdoors, patrolling or blowing the trail, picking up litter, weeding.  We staff the visitor center Wednesday-Sunday from 10 am to 2 pm; Odel and I plan to split the shift so we each are indoors just a couple of hours. 

This is the scene that greeted me when I walked down the hill to “work” today: tents, bikes, and lycra-clad riders milling around, grabbing muffins, fruit and water to replenish their energy.  I arrived at 10 am – these bikers had already ridden 25 miles. 

Our visitor center was the midway turn-around point for today’s Friends of the Columbia Gorge’s fundraising fun ride.  Close to 500 bikers participated, so the visitor center was busy all day.  None of the riders (from the Portland area, mostly) I talked with had ever been on our fabulous stretch of trail!

So the good thing was that we (me, Ranger Matt and Ranger Chris) were busy dealing with a happy and interested crowd.  The bad thing is that I was $5 short in my reconciliation of our revenue today (sales of day passes, annual passes, t-shirts and hats).  I’m a too-the-penny type so, though Matt didn’t seem too bothered, it sure bugged me!  Either $5 blew away in the gusts that swept through the visitor center every so often, or I undercharged someone.  :(

Oh, man – the phone just rang.  Odel is sitting in his plane on the tarmac in Dallas, 40 minutes after their takeoff time; the plane needs some servicing.  He started his day in the airport at 7 am PDT; he was originally scheduled to be touching down in Portland at 5:30, half an hour from now.  Our unexpected day off tomorrow will be incredibly welcome.