“Just because I slept with you last night doesn’t mean I want to ride with you today.”

That was the sign I saw pinned to the back of a woman’s jersey as 2000 riders headed out one morning on a 1980s Cycle Oregon. I still chuckle at that cheeky message, remembering it as part of the raucous, thrilling, inspiring, joyous and demanding endeavor that was Cycle Oregon. 

The adventure began with a 343-mile ride by 1,008 cyclists from Salem through Corvallis, Eugene, Florence, Coos Bay, and Gold Beach to Brookings in September 1988. 

Tomorrow, Sept. 16, will be a sad day because that is when the epic festival will end, 35 years later, with 2023’s 454-mile ride from Albany, through Oregon’s wine country to the coast and back.

According to historians of the event, Ashland innkeeper Jim Beaver came up with the idea of a weeklong ride that would bring people out to rural Oregon. Hoping to drum up interest, he wrote to potential supporters in Oregon. One of those letters went to Jonathan Nicholas, a respected and widely-read columnist for The Oregonian. Nicholas jumped on the idea and with the help of other cycling enthusiasts, got it rolling. Over time he became known as the soul of Cycle Oregon. 

According to The Oregonian, rising costs and lack of interest from riders, vendors and volunteers contributed to the ride’s demise. “There’s just a lot of different opportunities for people to bike nowadays so we’re seeing people not always interested in riding on the road, not always interested in riding 70 to 100 miles at a time,” said said Director Steve Schulz.

My introduction to Cycle Oregon came in early 1989 when I was a reporter at The Oregonian. I was talking about the recently inaugurated ride with my son, Evan, a strong, dedicated cyclist, when he said to me with a smirk, “Hey old man, I bet you couldn’t do it.”

That was all it took. Challenge accepted.

I’d been cycling since I was a child back in the 1940s and ‘50s. That was when kids in a small New England factory town could head out with their friends in the morning, bike all over the town and countryside and return just before dinner without a worry. I still remember one point in elementary school when my dad gave me a black 3-speed English bike for my birthday and I was the king of the hill for a little while. I kept riding as a grew older, but mostly 10-20 mile trips. I was no Tour de France candidate or even, at the age of 45 in early 1989, into touring. 

My son and I signed up for Cycle Oregon II, scheduled for Sept. 10-16, 1989. The 437-mile route would take us from Portland to Rippling River, Kah-Nee-Ta, Bend, Sunriver, Crescent, Fort Klamath and end in Ashland.

About 2000 cyclists on Cycle Oregon II set off at the start from Portland to Rippling River in Welches in the lush coniferous forests of the Western Cascades.

This was no “bowling Alone” crowd. It was a ragtag group of cycling enthusiasts determined to have fun. But wouldn’t you know it; as we stood outside in the long dinner line on the first night, all ravenously hungry, they ran out of food. What a beginning! A group of us had to hike out to a restaurant along the highway where, despite the change of venue, a good time was had by all.

The second day took us to the Kah-Nee-Ta Resort & Spa in central Oregon on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, the third day to Bend and the fourth to Sunriver Resort, giving us a chance to ride up to the Mt. Bachelor ski resort and then come screaming back down the mountain road. Day 5 hit us with numbing cold weather as we rode through lava flows, high cascade lakes and pine forests to Crescent.  Then came roads through dense lodgepole pine forests, a spectacular ride up past Crater Lake and, on the last day, a jubilant ride into Ashland. 

There, Evan, I did it, all 437 miles.

And I still have my t-shirt.

I did 6 more Cycle Oregons in the coming years, all joyful journeys filled with sweat, camaraderie, aching muscles, massive campgrounds, truck showers, nighttime music, wonderful solitude, starlit skies, breathtaking scenery and warm, welcoming people. 

As a reporter at The Oregonian, I pitched in to help write The Cycle Oregonian, a daily paper about the ride distributed to every cyclist each morning. 

I still have vivid memories of the morning on Sept. 11, 2001.

I was walking back to my tent from breakfast and encountered a group of riders listening intently to a radio broadcast. It was describing an attack on the World Trade Center in New York. We were all simply stunned. That night five of us rode to a nearby town to find a television at a bar where we saw the horrible aftermath. The next morning 2000 copies of The Oregonian showed up at camp with the full story, which we pored over at breakfast, while all away from our families. On that day’s ride I wished I had an American flag to fly on my bike.

Then there Twas the day we all woke up in Willamina with ice on our tents and sat outside on logs to eat stone-cold scrambled eggs and toast.

There was the punishingly hot hill-climbing day when I didn’t get to the lunch stop until 5PM. They had to send a school bus out from that night’s campsite to bring in me and a couple hundred other riders who would never have made it to the campsite before dark. 

There was the warm, clear day we all started over some mountains in our t-shirts and later found ourselves shivering as we rode through a snowstorm. At one stop I saw a woman rider take her lunch into a cramped blue portapotty so she could eat sheltered from the wind and cold.

There was a glorious ride through the beautiful Wallowas, a ride on Wallowa Lake Tramway, an overnight in Joseph and a chance to cycle the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway. 

A couple years there was a group of male riders accompanied by a monstrous luxury RV carrying a masseuse who welcomed them each afternoon with a massage.

As of tomorrow, Cycle Oregon’s classic weeklong extravaganza, a true travelling circus, is no more.

Je suis si triste. I’ll miss you.