Isn't Being Outdoors Fun

Pulling shift today at the fire department you get to see the other side of folks using the outdoors...  Rafting down the Rogue River he decides to dive off one of the many rock outcroppings that line our famous river.  We help pull him from the water with his back broken in two spots and a huge lump on his head. At least this guy wasn't drunk like so many before him.  How I have managed to avoid serious injury while doing some of the crazy adventures I have had is beyond me.

One weekend several summers ago I decided too again ride up the Happy Camp Road but this time I planned on going all the way over the top of Page Mountain on my bike.  Turn left at the small logging community of Happy Camp and head up stream along the Klamath River.  I'd ride all the way to I-5, then take another left turn and ride north on I-5 over the Siskiyou Mountains before gliding down into the City of Ashland.  I would then follow an old highway through Medford, Jacksonville and Williams where I would hook into Highway 199 for the final round trip leg back home.  Two days, 230 miles, sounded simple to me, while maybe not too sane...

...it was a beautiful bright blue summer day this time though.  About 4:30 in the afternoon I was pedaling upstream along the rolling Klamath River.  A nice breeze was starting to develop helping cool the afternoon making my ride even more pleasant then it already was.  Suddenly I hear something moving in the bushes down near the river.  Looking closer, it is a big brown bear facing away from me.  I pull my bike to a halt on the roadway to watch nature in action.  This big bear was setting on his haunches in a huge blackberry bush growing along the rivers edge eating ripe blackberries about 50 feet from the road.  Not like we eat berries though, one at a time.  This big bruiser was taking a whole prickly vine in his huge paws and stripping the leaves, berries, and all, pulling everything into his chomping mouth.  I stood there with one foot on the pavement and other one still hooked into my toe clip on the bike, almost Captain Morgan like.  For a few minutes I watched this Marlin Perkins moment unfold in front of me.  Suddenly without warning the bruin stands, whirls around and looks right at me.  At the same moment he lunges forward towards me and delivers an enormous grunt in my direction. Why, when your being charged by a pissed off bear, does it take so much effort to take and put your other foot back into the toe clip on your bike and quickly sprint away? (or as Erica would say, "Bounce") 

Though the bear didn't actually attack me I was a bit disconcerted by the fact I had one even lunge at me, snorting slober.  We all know, if there is one bear there might be two, or for that matter a whole herd of bears, if they come that way.  The point being, I was going to ride as far away from this bear as I could before darkness fell. Eight-o-clock quickly turned into nine-o-clock as evening began to fall over the narrow remote valley. 

By 9:30 it was dark and now I couldn't see to find a safe place to pull up for the night, so I kept riding forward.  The few cars that were driving on this deserted stretch of country road that evening were having trouble seeing me pedaling along the edge of the roadway because mountain bikes don't come with frivolous things like taillights and headlights. It's now 10:00, and it's really dark, I'm in trouble, when far off in the distance I hear music playing and see a shimmering light.  As I drew closer I determined it to be banjo and fiddle music as the lights from the approaching village obscured my night vision.  As I am slowing down to see what kind of festivity I had stumbled onto a man stepped out in front of my bike and said "Hey buddy, stop for a minute" scaring the crap out of me.  Continuing he said "I am a volunteer fireman from here and when I just drove by you on the road I almost accidentally hit you because I couldn't see you".  I jumped into his arms from my bike seat, and cried "Brother".  He couldn't stop laughing after I told him my story about being a volunteer fireman too, about the bear siting, riding as far as I could to get away, it getting dark, then being too scared to stop.  He slapped his knee and laughed some more before he told me about a good place to hold-up for the night. He pointed "ride a mile further up the road.  Cross over the bridge, then walk your bike down to the small creek that feeds into the Klamath River.  There is a nice sandy beach there where it will be safe to spend the night".  I ask, safe from bears?  He says well, I'll be driving by there in the mid morning, I'll check to see if your bike is still there when I do.  If it is I'll stop and try and find where the bears have drug you off into the woods and buried you.  I'll also notify your department back in I.V. that they lost another good fireman if I find you chewed up and dead.

Man you've got to really enjoy that fireman humor, don't you.