OTT Day #9- July 21, 2018- Sacandaga Campground to OAKRIDGE!

We all left Sacandaca Campground around 9:00. The rest of Middle Fork Trail was so great, mostly downhill, and full of greenery. The final 15ish miles on the road around the reservoir to town was a bit tedious, but not bad and we. were. almost. there.

Karey had taken the road back into town. With a couple of injuries over the past two days and a bike needing a part, she headed to the Oakridge Bike Shop. Here she made the difficult decision not to continue our trip. Without the desire to go on solo, I decided that I would be done as well....

While at the bike shop, Karey met fellow OTT rider, Evan. He has his own set of bike issues, having hitchhiked from Chemult to Oakridge and was getting himself sorted out. We all met here, chatted with the shop staff, bought some t-shirts and celebrated our finish, along with Evan, who we adopted into our group right away.

Off to the Brewers Union Local 180 for burgers and beers... and ice cream for Bill.
 Carina and her wife, Jenn were also in town and met us. Somewhere in the middle of beer #2, Bill and Evan got to chatting. A plan quickly got organized for Bill to take Karey's resupply food and supplies and the question was posed, "Well, why don't you keep going, Heather?" No reason not, so Carina followed me back to the bike shop to drop off my sled for a quick brake adjustment and look over. She gave me a ride back and just like that, I was going to keep going 5 more days with just Evan and Bill. With a finish of our beers, we left in jolly spirit.

The next part of the plan was to check into The Blue Wolf Motel. I've stayed here a few times and for the price, it's a great no-frills, yet clean joint. It turned out that I made our 2 room reservation for... the next evening. As I was starting to stress out, the manager, Candis sternly said, "You just take a deep breath and let me figure this out." And did she ever. She gave us 3 rooms for... an undisclosed, amazing price. She wanted to get the rooms occupied for the night and head out to the music festival. Thanks Candis.

After 6 thorough showers, and donning our brand new t-shirts and clean underwear, Abra came to pick us up and take us to Westifr for the ever-famous MBO (Mountain Bike Oregon Festival) luau. More beers and wine and beer and wine and pizza and beer were consumed. It was also fun to see friends from various mountain biking aspects of my life- racing... riding... my roommate Forest.... To be honest, it was a little bit of a social overload, being in the woods for over a week. So the beer helped.