Cycle Oregon 2023 Nossa Dream Team

(September 9 – written by Dave)

No, we’ve not fallen off the end of the earth. We’ve just been busy, “heaps busy” as we say in Oz. For us, busy has meant no time for Grand Adventures. Life without adventures is, well, just ordinary life – kind of boring! So tomorrow boring stops, we are restarting the Grand Adventure theme by heading head out on the 2023 Cycle Oregon CLASSIC (COC) bicycle ride.

This is officially our last COC. In fact, this is officially THE last Cycle Oregon CLASSIC (COC). The first COC was in 1988. Our first COC was in 1994. Through the years, the Cycle Oregon team has done a good job reinventing the ride to keep it relevant but over time they’ve gone from 2,400 registrations filling up in minutes with a lottery, to now only about 1,000 riders signing up total. People still do events but interests change and I guess the novelty has worn off with the CLASSIC. In recent years last minute forest fire and pandemic cancellations certainly haven’t helped either. People don’t like events that get cancelled at the last minute – regardless whose fault it is.

We had a big gap without Cycle Oregon when we lived in Australia but came back for the last two COCs as part of the Nossa Familia Coffee team. The Nossa team has been part of COC for almost 20 years, one of the longest serving vendors and the sole purveyor of fine coffee. Being the last COC, Augusto, the owner of Nossa decided to put together a “Dream Team” crew. You know, one last hurrah. Mostly because Nancy is a rock star on the Front of House team, he asked the two of us to join the team. It’s a package deal; you get Nancy on Front of House and for the price, you HAVE to put up with my bad jokes while I’m out back on brewing team – haha – I’m sure the rest of the Dream Team is laughing already. Right? No wait, where did everyone go???

The last two COC I blogged every day. Well, I’m getting smarter. COC on the Nossa crew is really hard yakka, completely sleep deprived work. Super early starts with 4AM alarms, long mornings brewing, serving and then riding every fine inch (EFI as they say) – we love it! But this year, with a wiser head, I’m changing up my routine doing this introduction post and then at the end, I’ll do a summary/highlights post. Posting every day is too much work even with unlimited free coffee giving me a caffeine boost.

Being our third trip on the Nossa team, many readers already know the story. Still I’ll recap it here one more time because, well, it’s a nice story. Nossa Familia Coffee is a Portland, Oregon-based roaster that was founded in 2004 by Brazilian native Augusto Carneiro. Augusto came to Portland to study engineering and play tennis at University of Portland. In spite of his big goal life goals, a deep sense of pride always pulled him back to his days on the family farm, growing coffee in the Brazilian highlands. He eventually decided that bringing his family’s passion to Oregon would be more interesting than other potential career options and he founded Nossa Familia. Early on, all of Nossa Familia’s coffee was imported directly from the family’s farm. Over time Augusto developed relationships with growers around the world. Today Nossa brings specialty coffees from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia, and beyond. They focus on small fair-trade growers. We like coffee and also like the Nossa story – so when asked to be on the COC 2023 Dream Team, how could we refuse?

There are some distinct roles on the Dream Team. There’s brewing (using the giant press),front of house (reserved for those with nice personalities), shots (pulling shots in the van), milk (foaming, frothing, steaming and mixing drinks in the van), runner (mostly taking empty cups to and full cups from the van) and last but not least – logistics. Nancy and I have easy jobs. The weeks of pre-ride prep and post-ride clean up falls on the Logistics team – they (Augusto and Brad) are the real rock stars of the COC Nossa Dream Team. The Dreamers this year include:

Augusto Carneiro  – Shots and milk

Geoff – Shots and milk

Kyle – brewing

Brad – Logistics and pretty much every other job at some point during the week

Devin – shots – the shortest of the shot pullers and the only one who actually fits in the van

Lisa – front of house

Nancy – front of house

Dave (me!) – brewing

Carissa – Augusto’s wife – Joins mid-week, photo to follow

As for the CLASSSIC 2023, the marketing team of COC has themed this year as “Wine. Waves. Wonderland”. We start in Albany in the heart of the Willamette Valley wine region. There are reportedly over 700 wineries in the valley – we may not see them all – but we can try. After a few days in the valley, we shoot over the coast range for some waves and maybe a sunset on the Central Oregon coast. We’ll spend a few days on coast, reportedly visiting quaint historic coastal towns and taking in ocean views. As a bonus on the coast, we get two layover days to enjoy the post Labor Day coastal chill. We like layover days on the coffee crew – we get to sleep in and ride slightly less groggy. After the wine and the waves, I’m not sure where the Wonderland part comes – we’ll have to ask the organizers out on the ride. From the beach we’ll make our way back over the Coast Range to the Willamette Valley and eventually back to Albany. At this point we’ll be exhausted, dreaming of sleep and no doubt, full of more great COC Nossa Familia memories, bring on the Dream Team!

COC 2023 goes like this..

Day 0    Saturday, September 9  Albany  Today

Day 1    Sunday, September 10  Albany to Carlton           74 miles

Day 2    Monday, September 11 Carlton to Cloverdale     54.6 miles

Day 3    Tuesday September 12  Layover Day in Cloverdale – Option up to 65 miles

Day 4    Wednesday, September 13        Cloverdale to Toledo     78 miles

Day 5    Thursday, September 14             Layover Day in Toledo   – Option up to 34 miles

Day 6    Friday, September 15    Toledo to Alsea 74 miles

Day 7    Saturday, September 16                            Alsea     Albany  70 miles

Total mileage: 350 – 454 mi. with options

Climbing: 14,814 – 21,393 ft. elevation gain with options

Sleep: 5-6 hours on the good nights – Sometimes less

And while still on the Grand Adventure theme, four days after Cycle Oregon, somehow, I convinced Nancy that flying to Japan would be a good idea. Yes, we are finally going to Japan. We had tickets in 2020 but Covid killed travel and we’ve only been able to dream of travelling there until this year. Well, good news, Japan is finally re-opened to visitors. Our gravel/light touring bikes are boxed (a condition I had to agree to get our senior editor over the line on back to back adventures). In our sleep derived COC state, we may forget something going to Japan but we’ll sort it all out – remember, life without Grand Adventure is boring, even if you forget your bike shoes when flying out on said adventures!

Yes – I’ll try getting regular blogs out from Japan. We’ll see how that goes.