The clouds ran me out of Lincoln City, glad to get moving I set the navigation for the Guzzi garage in Portland over two hours inland and got my head down. Literally, the pain in my neck, from holding it against the wind of my own making can be eased by resting my chin on the tank bag, peering between the top of my glasses and the rim of my helmet just over the small screen to the road ahead. Eventually my hips joined in and we pulled into a popular burger chain outlet for rest and breakfast, pleasant enough and aviation themed I hitched a ride on their WIFI and emailed the garage (their phone number wasn’t working) about tyres over a scoldingly hot coffee. James replied and called me on another line to confirm that they had my cable delivery. “I’ll be with you in an hour or so” I told him, I was wrong.
James had asked me where I was and I checked the breakfast receipt, MCMINNVILLE it read. The more retentive amongst you may recall my intention, now eclipsed by the need to get a working speedometer, to go see the Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes’ magnificent vision. Turning left back onto Route 18 and immediately passed the Evergreen Aviation Museum, that rang a bell, I had the address but had never looked up the location, I turned back. James could wait.
There she was. Beautiful realisation of one man’s obsessive dream, built and flown despite the nay-sayers who denied him precious war resources like aluminium (hence she is wooden) and skilled workers (he trained his own) and not for profit ($5 million of his own money went in). The sheer scale of her is breathtaking, inside her cavernous belly a full sized manakin looks like a toy.
Dwarfed under her tail sits a sister flying boat and object of my aviation fantasies, the PBY Catalina. I blame the Donald Sutherland film ‘Steelyard Blues’
The hour that I spared and this meagre blog cannot do justice to the museum and its veteran guides. If you are in the McDonald’s next door for breakfast then definitely don’t pass it by.
Route 18 was closed and I diverted onto the freeway for the ride into Portland where the nice guys at Aprilia Moto Guzzi Portland made me welcome and went the extra mile trying to locate tyres for me. Two or three days was the lead time on getting some in so I fitted the speedo cable and phoned around tyre places to the east. That all took an age but eventually Randy at JMR in Boise Idaho thought that he could get some for Thursday. The sat-nav said 8 hours 24 mins on the other side of the Rockies, I set off into the rush hour traffic, on a bike that now refuses to idle, to see how far I could get.
The signs read ‘Snow Zone’ and ‘Snow Chain Area’ and I could see brilliant white peaks up the road. A little afraid, I stopped in the drizzle at an outpost and searched for ‘Motel’, the nearest was 63 miles away on the other side of the mountains, oh well. At a gas station that was just closing for the night the attendant gave me a coffee and told me that I’d get cold, I togged up and went for it.
As it happens the pass on Route 26 is at about 4000 feet and the road well below the snow line and well maintained, over the top and the sun came out low in the sky behind me. My lengthening shadow raced ahead on a road that straightened onto the high plains, spectacular and pierced with canyons like the one that lead down into Madras.
I took a room at the Budget Motel and beers at ‘Madras Pub & Deli’, that used to be a gas station so the washrooms are outside, where I met Will Bowen (a real life ‘Biggles’ now working as a ‘Fire Bomber’ flying DC-7s and, PBY Catalinas!) and Scott (a hazardous materials truck driver). We talked about life, travel, planes, divorce and my route to Boise. They had stern warnings about filling up before leaving the towns of Bend or Burns and recommendations for a more scenic run through Prineville, both gave me their cell numbers to call if I got into difficulties.
Le Mans man 