Steve Lundeberg

… the Gazette-Times in Heppner, that is. April Hilton-Sykes, the paper’s owner, was kind enough to let me use one of her weekly’s computers for a few minutes.
Wednesday we had a fantastic ride from Baker to Halfway to Hells Canyon, but our goal of getting to Imnaha, arguably the state’s northeasternmost town, went unmet. A few miles outside of Joseph, we met a road crew whose flagger, Becky Sasser advised against continuing lest we get our bikes covered with fresh tar (she offered this advice while sharing her umbrella with me in the 97-degree heat, a most neighborly gesture; BTW, also stopped by the flagger was a Toyota Tacoma driven by Monroe High grad Brandee Christensen, class of 1993).
After bailing on the ride to Imnaha (pronounced Im-NAH-hah, contrary to what photographer David Patton says: IM-nuh-hah), we headed for Enterprise, Elgin, La Grande and finally Ukiah. On the 50 miles from La Grande to Ukiah, we saw probably 50 deer in the gathering dusk, and two of them, a pair of youngish bucks, were in our campground this morning.
Left Ukiah at about 8 a.m. for Heppner and had a big cat sprint across the road in front of us (David says it was a lynx, but its tawny color and tale length tell me it was a juvenile cougar).
As we finished breakfast here in Heppner, our waitress’ mother raced to the restaurant to tell her daughter that her son (the waitress’ son, that is) had just been bitten by a rattlesnake and was being airlifted to the hospital in Tri-Cities, Wash.
“See, we do get some excitement here in Heppner,” the waitress, Chris Whalen, said nervously while pulling on a filtered Camel.
Better sign off now as April has work to do, including following this snakebite story.
Thanks for all of your thoughts and well wishes.

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