Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
“Let’s get going!” bellowed Cohen Velazquez as his dad, Brian Velazquez, readied his bike in the bright Sunday morning sun on the tent-covered Sweet Home High School baseball field.
Cohen, 3, was riding his tiny bicycle around the family campsite in anticipation of a road trek, riding in a trailer behind Dad with his own bike strapped on top in case he would get an opportunity to do a little riding himself.
They’d done 26 miles the day before, riding from Sankey Park to the intersection of Berlin and Bellinger Scale roads, next to Mallard Creek Golf Course, and back.
Cohen’s mom Christy had done that ride, but she was going to volunteer for the Bike MS: Covering Bridges event today.
The Velazquezes were part of some 500 riders and volunteers, from as far away as Seattle and San Francisco, who crowded into Sweet Home Saturday and Sunday for the 24th annual multiple sclerosis fund-raiser.
They camped on the athletic field and ate their meals at the high school cafeteria and showered in the gym. They rode in packs or alone to raise money for MS, for distances ranging from the family ride, which ran up North River Road to Foster Dam and back through town, to the 100-mile “century” ride, which included stops at five covered bridges between Sweet Home and Stayton.
Virginia Silvey of Portland, president of the Oregon Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, said she expects this year’s event to raise about $15 million for combating MS. The ride is held nationally, at various spots around the country, during the summer, while a separate walk is held during the spring.
“It’s huge,” Silvey said.
Multiple sclerosis, which affects more than 400,000 people in the United States, is a condition that interrupts the flow of information from the brain to the body and can cause symptoms ranging from numbness and tingling to paralysis and blindness. The Oregon chapter works with some 7,000 clients, including some in Sweet Home. For reasons that are unknown, the rate of MS is five times higher in Oregon, Washington and Minnesota, than in the rest of the United States, Silvey said.
Nearly 90 percent of the riders in the weekend event were from Oregon, the majority of them from the Portland and Clark County, Wash. area,
Carter Oster, 47, of Oregon City, completed his first century Saturday and was getting ready for another outing Sunday.
“I’m planning on doing the 55 (miler) today,” he said. “100 was a long ride, needless to say. I was very happy with how I did it, happy that I didn’t dehydrate or run out of calories.”
He estimated he drank “somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 quarts of liquid” on the ride.
Oster said he particularly remembered one of the five bridges, the Gilkey Bridge near Jefferson, on the century ride because he grew up in Albany and “I knew a guy named Gilkey.”
The ride attracted participants with a wide variety of experience, from established corporate teams loaded with seasoned riders who do the event each year to casual bicyclists – and even a pair of in-line skaters.
“People on our team have done it for 15 years” said Brian Valazquez. “It’s a great event. We have 12 riders and six volunteers. We have a lot of dedicated riders.”
Kristi Smith of Aloha, who was getting set to ride nearby, said she’s participated in the event off and on for 10 years. This year she rode with her brother-in-law, Kurt Austin of Tigard. Sunday morning, she said she was planning to ride out to Crawfordsville to see the bridge there, then return – a 19-mile trip.
“I ride a commuter bike,” Smith said. “I’m not above walking up a hill.”
Shannon Thayer, an Oregon Jamboree employee, volunteered at the aid station on Berlin Road from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, said she was surprised at how many riders came to the station, which offered toilets, food, water and a medic crew from Lebanon. Thayer’s husband Justin, a mechanic, spent time traveling the route, helping broken-down bikers, she said.
“A lot of the people who have MS (themselves) come to this stop, then go back,” Thayer said. “I couldn’t believe how many people came through here, the amount of food we went through.”
Silvey, the chapter president, said riders are giving her good feedback about their experience in Sweet Home.
“I haven’t had any complaints about people in town,” she said. “On some of our other rides, people have come out and yelled ‘Get your bike out of here.'”
She said that, other than a dog on one route Saturday that enjoyed chasing cyclists, traffic was light and bicyclists had not problems.
The only other glitch was when the sprinkler system on the high school athletic field turned on in the middle of the night, soaking some tents.
“We had to call 9-1-1 to get it turned off,” Silvey said.
She said the meals provided by the high school cafeteria staff were excellent and noted that leftover food from the event was to be donated to SHEM.
Though she said the turnout was a little lower than some former rides, possibly due to fuel prices, Silvey said the riders want to come back.
“People are saying don’t move it,” she said. “It’s wonderful.”