This time I moved to Corvallis, Oregon.
Corvallis is a peaceful, sleepy little village full of pale-faced college kids and pale-faced natives.
It sits next to the Willamette (dammit) River, which looks like a creek compared to the Mississippi.
The river runs the wrong way; that is, it runs straight north.
I went to the river yesterday just to witness that for myself. It seemed so wrong!
This town is not the most exciting motorcycling town.
But it doesn't matter the least little bit.
Why?
Find Corvallis on Google maps... then zoom out... !!!
Mountain-ish hills to the west, real mountains to the east, real MOUNTAINS further east.
One of the best ocean-coast highways in the world less than an hour away.
The "high-desert" or Mount Hood a "good warm up" ride away.
More terrains and biomes within a day's ride than I have time left in my life to explore.
Practically year-round riding temperatures.
Conclusion?
I am in paradise.
Wife and I love Newport. It's not a touristy town, it's a real fishing town.
The breakers looked big enough to surf on... to surf for a few feet, anyway.
I expect I'll be posting articles and photos here more frequently than I have the past couple of years. Where I lived in Missouri the best riding was right around my home. Once I'd written about that I'd pretty much covered it.
But in Corvallis I have to "leave home" to reach the good stuff, and there's different good stuff in every direction!
UNFORTUNATE UPDATE:
Oregon was a bust. Their ecology was ruined a generation ago and good motorcycling roads were much fewer than anticipated. A lot of the twisties on the map are just old logging roads lined with rubble and surrounded by identical species trees and nothing else. It's like corn country, only with Douglas firs instead of cornstalks.
I started out on the twistiest highway from Corvallis to the coast but turned back after awhile because the road was far more dangerous than fun. The pavement is crap from snow chains and spikes. The lanes are barely big enough for two vehicles to get past each other and drivers cross the line at every blind curve. The edge of the road is immediately followed by a rockface or a chasm. The curve banking in the twisties is so exaggerated that it just makes navigation worse.
Willamette Valley was as flat as and even boring than Central Illinois. At least in Central Illinois you saw wild animals. I could stand in the middle of the valley sometimes and scan the sky from the Coastal Range to the Cascades and not see a single bird. Creepy.
Most of the "wildlife" I saw in Oregon wasn't very wild. Most towns have resident half-tame populations of blacktailed deer (many of them crippled by SUVs) and a particularly stupid variety of turkey wandering the streets. Most towns also have an equivalent population of homeless people.
I do miss Newport, though. Sea lions, whales, crabs, sea birds, tidal pools...
