OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2016
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2006
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
“Being involved with Citizens Climate Lobby, we need policy, federal policy that puts a price on carbon,”
Mindy Ahler said before she and Ryan Hall began their bike journey from Seaside to Washington, D.C.
Why ly cross-country
when you can pedal?
OLOVANA PARK — If
Forrest Gump crossed the
country running today, he
would have no lack of sponsors.
On the irst day of summer, Bob
Quick, from Roy, Utah, stood along
the Paciic Ocean in Tolovana Park
before mounting his bike for his
second cross-country ride. Quick,
the only known cross-country rider
with 16 heart stents and a deibril-
lator, hopes to raise awareness for
health and itness.
Quick irst made
the cross-country
trip in 2013 in 91
days, starting in
San Diego.
Last fall, Tom
Baltes of Camas, Washington,
started in Seaside and cycled an
incredible 4,000 miles to Portland,
Maine to ight rheumatoid arthritis
and promotes physical itness.
In Cannon Beach, employees
of Bristol-Myers Squibb launched
their Cycle Coast 2 Coast 4
Cancer earlier this month for can-
cer research.
They left from Tolovana State
Park last week, aiming for Hood
River the irst day. Eighty riders
will pedal a combined total of
2,800 miles.
Mindy Ahler and Ryan Hall of
the Citizens Climate Lobby began
their ride from Seaside at the end
of August, destination Washington,
D.C., to raise awareness of their
organization’s carbon-fee strategy
to reduce global warming. A
rangy young woman from Edina,
Minnesota, Ahler is a veteran of
hundreds of long-distance bike
rides. She sees climate change as a
message worth taking to the road.
“My goal on this bike ride is to
spread hope and possibility in the
face of this daunting problem,”
Ahler said. “Oh, and I also have
a passion for biking and have set
a goal to cross the country before
I’ve reached the age of 50. Since
I’m 47 now, I igured I might as
well give it a try.”
T
Book by Clatsop County Historical Society’s Liisa Penner.
“Somehow we have from time to time received the accounts of the
disasters to ishing boats in the dangerous region beyond the Desdemona
Sands and the consequent loss of life during the season, with little emo-
tion, seemingly accepting these untoward events as a matter of course.”
— Astoria Daily Budget, Aug. 11, 1893
Death was a matter of course on the lower Columbia River in the late
19th century, when thousands took to the dangerous waters in pursuit of
the prized salmon that put Astoria on the map.
Those tragedies were chronicled in the city’s newspapers — The Daily
Budget, The Daily Astorian and others — in accounts that ranged from
gripping epics to one-sentence notices.
Combing through three decades’ worth of the publications, Liisa Pen-
ner, archivist for the Clatsop County Historical Society, has compiled
many of those articles in “Salmon Fever: River’s End — Tragedies on the
Lower Columbia river in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s.
Georgia-Paciic employees and local and state government
oficials dug into decorated cakes with gardening spades on
Friday in a symbolic groundbreaking for Wauna mill’s paper
machine Number 7.
A crowd of about 80 mill employees hollered and applauded
as the plan to expand operations with a new $200 million
through-air dried paper towel machine became oficial.
The Astoria City Council took a irst look Monday night at a small
pamphlet called a “User’s Guide to Transportation Improvements in
Astoria.”
The draft copy was presented by Theresa Carr, a program manager
with CH2M Hill, an engineering irm with a regional ofice in Portland.
“This guide boils down what’s in about a foot-high pile of documents into
16 pages,” Carr said.
Conspicuously absent from the pamphlet is any emphasis on the Asto-
ria Bypass, a concept that has been under discussion for decades.
50 years ago — 1966
Paint contractors on the Astoria bridge have moved out
from shore to the tower on Pier 169 and are working there and
to the northward, Oregon Highway department engineers said
Monday.
This is expected to end the rash of green spots on parked
cars in Astoria that has caused much furor over the past sev-
eral weeks.
“It looks like a tremendous opening.” “Fishing was good along the
entire river.”
These statements were made by an Astoria packing company spokes-
man concerning the irst deliveries of salmon to processing plants after
Monday’s opening of the fall gillnet season on the Columbia River.
Rep. Julia Butler Hansen, D-Wash., said today “There are
strong indications that an oficial reply from Moscow on the
problem of Soviet ishing vessels operating off the Paciic Coast
might be forthcoming in a matter of days.”
It appears there are more silver salmon in the Columbia River this fall
than the hatcheries and commercial ishermen can handle, local packers
said.
“The silver run this year is about twice as big as last year,” an Asto-
ria packing company spokesman said Friday morning at close of the irst
week of the fall gillnet season on the Columbia River.
75 years ago — 1941
Submarine mines were to be planted in the Columbia
River southeast of Sand Island, to remain there marked by
three cylindrical spherical buoys until September 23, it was
conirmed today by headquarters for harbor defenses of the
Columbia River.
In the wake of the great fall salmon run it was learned today that Peter
Heikkinen, Brownsmead gillnetter, Friday caught the biggest ish that got
away during the 1941 Astoria Regatta derby.
Heikkinen caught the ish in his net off Brownsmead Friday and deliv-
ered the Chinook to Wallace station, operated by the Union Fishermen’s
Cooperative Packing company.
It was a 51-pounder, six pounds heavier than the big ish with which
Oney Empo, former Brownsmead resident, won the $500 grand derby
prize this year.
In the mouth of Heikkinen’s 51-pounder was a spinner and a short
whisker of line. The spinner is heart-shaped, known as a red lasher. It is
very much like the one Empo fed to his $575 ish.
Mapping the way
The Adventure Cycling
Association offers route maps for
the long-distance cyclist, starting
at a mere 250.5 miles from Santa
Barbara to Imperial Beach,
California, to the 4,228-mile
TransAmerica Trail from Astoria
to Yorktown, Virginia.
Ahler and Hall mapped their
coast-to-coast based on the associ-
ation’s Lewis and Clark route.
The road from Seaside retraces
the expedition route and ends
in Hartford, Illinois, and is
described by Adventure Cycling
as “made up of paved roads, bike
paths and unpaved rail-trails,
with occasional short sections
of gravel roads. Conditions vary
from rural to urban and include
windy stretches lacking in
shoulders.”
The journey roughly follows
the 1804-05 path of explorers
Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Capt.
William Clark along the Missouri
and Columbia rivers and Clark’s
1806 eastbound return along the
Yellowstone River in Montana.
“Occasional rough roads, narrow
to nonexistent shoulders, and
sparse services make this one of
our more challenging routes,”
advises the association, a nonproit
whose mission is to inspire bicycle
travel.
If a route has historical signif-
Submitted Photo
Bob Quick joined a 9/11 ceremony in Suttons Bay, Michigan, on his
cycling trip across the country. He started in Cannon Beach.
Submitted Photo
Six teams are riding nearly 2,800 miles in 21 days from the Oregon
Coast to the New Jersey Shore in support of Stand Up To Cancer,
whose collaborative “dream teams” of scientific researchers are
working together to accelerate cancer research and to provide inno-
vative treatments to patients.
‘You are the
driver of your
own life. Don’t
let anyone steal
your seat.’
Bob Quick
He started his cycling trip across the
country in Cannon Beach
icance, it is somewhat easier to
plot, the association’s communica-
tions director Lisa McKinney said
in an email.
“For example, on the Lewis
and Clark Bicycle Trail, we
already knew where the route
would go,” McKinney said. “We
just had to decide which side of
the Missouri and Columbia rivers
had better bicycling conditions.
And we knew where to go once
reaching the Rocky Mountains.”
Adventure Cycling’s staff con-
tacts local cyclists or cycling clubs
to “road-truth” alternates.
“The philosophy we use as
a guide is our routes should be
designed to follow ‘corridors of
attraction,’ i.e., scenery, cultural/
historic points of interest, varieties
of geography, terrain, and inhabi-
tants,” McKinney said.
Plan on around three months
(give or take) for the crossing —
more if you want to sightsee.
On the road
Cyclists Ahler and Hall cycled
out of the Nez Perce Clearwater
National Forest in Idaho; they
were in Missoula on Sept. 12.
They plan on celebrating their
arrival in Washington, D.C., with a
bottle of Oregon pinot noir.
On Sept. 5, Bob Quick posted
photographs of himself along Lake
Michigan. He observed 9/11 with
irst responders in Suttons Bay,
Michigan. He still has a way to go
before he gets to his inal destina-
tion of New York’s Montauk Point
Lighthouse.
Tom Baltes, who rode 4,000
miles last year, is planning to do it
again this fall. This time he’ll take
the southern route. He is currently
riding in the seven-day Annual
Bike Classic Oregon a 363-mile,
six-day bicycle tour from Astoria
to Brookings.
I can make it to Brookings in 7
hours, 22 minutes in my 2004 Audi,
according to Google maps. But then,
I might be missing something.
“You are the driver of your own
life,” Quick posted. “Don’t let
anyone steal your seat.”
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and
editor of the Seaside Signal and
Cannon Beach Gazette.