{"id":23027,"date":"2025-07-18T11:37:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T11:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/?p=23027"},"modified":"2025-07-18T11:37:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T11:37:16","slug":"biking-gap-road-a-sad-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/?p=23027","title":{"rendered":"Biking Gap Road: a sad story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the hot weather broke from low 90s to mid 80s, a good bike ride was top of the list, especially after the miles my feet and knees captured last week at Diamond \/ Crater Lakes<\/a>. Salsa bike only had frame and handlebar food bags – a light gear kit compared to photo below. Gap Road is a favorite ride and an OR scenic bike route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Route<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ate breakfast at home waiting for 60 degrees – so at 8:00 departed out Coburg road to North Coburg to Priceboro (where the fire from several years ago is hardly noticeable now) and then finally Gap Road. I took Gap all the way to the last hill decline, turned around and retraced my steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wind was a minor factor on the return with some headwinds. During the ride, only 1 other biker and that near the town of Coburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the ride<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Raptors were plentiful the entire ride, especially turkey vultures who were out in numbers, but only 1 smaller raptor appeared – a Cooper’s hawk twice. Roadside flowers were thick with Queen Anne’s lace and purple straw flowers. Farmers were bailing straw from the grass fields and a bit of hazy air covered Willamette Valley. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I was going down one of the hills on Gap Rd, movement caught my eye. At first, I couldn’t tell what it was given only a corner of eye and moving >20mph on a bike … stopped to grab camera and was surprised … a mother and her child nursing in the middle of a farmer’s lane. Baby’s spots still visible even in a poor photo (apologies)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sad Story<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On the return on Coburg near the aggregate plant, another Cooper’s hawk was struggling and flapping around at the side of road. I road past, stopped and returned slowly. The bird was definitely injured but I couldn’t see any external injuries. As I approached the bird hopped and struggled to the ditch and off the road. I prayed that the bird would recover and human intervention not required. To help my guilty feeling of leaving the bird, I called Cascade Raptor Center and gave them the info and location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a tough decision to intervene (save the animal) to leave it alone and let Mother Nature do what she does best – survival without humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data Geek Cellar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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As the hot weather broke from low 90s to mid 80s, a good bike ride was top of the list, especially after the miles my feet and knees captured last week at Diamond \/ Crater Lakes. Salsa bike only had frame and handlebar food bags – a light gear kit compared to photo below. Gap…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-23027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bikepacking","tag-gap-road"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/goatbells.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/DSCN1315.jpg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23027"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23035,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23027\/revisions\/23035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goatbells.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}