HRM Aggravation and a MTB Ride

Today was fraught with aggravation.  Fraught, I say!  My ancient heart rate monitor needed to be replaced since it showed me as being dead about 20% of the time when I was wearing it.  Jim recently bought a Garmin FR70 which he liked very much.  So yesterday I bought one at REI.  Today we both put them on and they didn't work.  Jim's worked last time we rode, WTH?   Our theory is that they can't be close to each other because each watch tries to receive from the other sending unit and gets confused.  Once Jim took off his sending unit, mine worked fine.  I'm not happy about this, and it seems to be unduly stupid.  So anyway, during the course of trying to trouble shoot/debug the issue, we changed chest straps to see if it helped (no).  As I rolled up my jersey, my camera fell out of my jersey pocket.  We continued out to Benham falls with no camera, because I didn't realize it was missing.  So, no pictures of the falls for you.  I wouldn't call them falls, they're more like big rapids.
After returning to the pickup to put Jim's chest strap in the vehicle, I realized the camera was gone, and Jim figured out where it had to be, and went back and lo and behold it was in the grass, undamaged.
We headed out the Deschutes River trail towards Sunriver.  To get there, go to the parking lot at the end of the pavement, immediately look left and there is the trail entrance.  Go up a little rise and you are on your way.  On the way back (it's out and back), look right just before going down that little rise, and notice the sign for the Visitor's Center which is 4.5 miles away.  That is also a nice trail, and we did that as well.
This is where the trail crosses the railroad.   That is a steep little push up.  I was a girl and Jim came back and pushed my bike for me.

 

The trail goes along about 3 miles of lava flow.  It's pretty dang impressive.  If I were a better blogger, I'd find out when the volcanic eruptions stopped, but so far I have not discovered that information.  There are slightly more rocks and some climbing, but nothing serious.  After you arrive at the visitor's center, you can return to the parking area via the road.  We got a total of 17 miles, which was enough!

 

We saw this when we returned to the park.  That's an ancient Mini Cooper with right hand drive.  That car is so cute it hurts me.

 

We got mail today for the first time since Bishop.  I hate when mail accumulates.  It's amazing to me how much paper the American healthcare system generates.  Time will be spent on the phones tomorrow.