I was as anxious about this trip as for my very first trip in 1980. While I had done quite a bit of road testing of my Avatar outfitted with cross-country gear, I would still be a long way from home if unforeseen issues arose on the Avatar’s maiden journey. Fortunately, it performed flawlessly.
The bike would travel as checked baggage on the airline. Due to its long frame, it required a lot of disassembly and careful packing the week prior. At the time, I found the airline-supplied bike boxes were a little larger than bike boxes from a bicycle shop. Therefore I obtained a box several weeks earlier from the airline and reinforced it with strategically-located pieces of Styrofoam. When completely packed, it could have been dropped out of an airplane without coming apart; I had so much fiber-reinforced tape running in all directions!
All went well on the flight to Portland, OR. The view of Mt. Hood coming into the Portland airport is about as magnificent as it can get. I remember having previously researched motels in the area (in the days before the Internet!) and picking one. When I told the taxi driver the name of the motel, he very bluntly told me I really didn’t want to stay there. I quickly understood what he was trying to tell me. My choice was only geographical. So, I let him decide and he took me to a decent place very near downtown.
I spent the rest of the day carefully assembling the bike and had everything ready to go at the crack of dawn. My route took me right through downtown Portland, but at that early hour it was actually a quite unique experience and I felt perfectly safe.
My brother had begun an annual vacation regimen of driving out to the northeastern quadrant of Wyoming and staying at a ranch. As a base of travel and camping, he would use the pretense of “varmint hunting”, but it was mostly to just “get away”. This afforded me a great opportunity to solve the problem of getting home. (I ended my 1987 trip here as well, and for the same reason.)
Overall, the weather cooperated throughout the next three-plus weeks and I linked up with my brother and nephew as scheduled in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming.