Note from CO 15: The phone company involved would not let CO hook the phone trailer up to their lines this year. However, there were pay phones available in some of the towns we rode through (and camped in). Most of the towns that CO visits are too small to have many pay phones and the more remote areas do not have many cell phone circuits or no coverage at all. Do not count on having phone coverage on any given day.

Rox Heath

Does anybody know if either cell phones or pagers will work in the pristine untouched wilderness of eastern Oregon where we will be in on CO? Are such devices banned by the Politburo as being just too counter to the CO ideal? I know in the past they have a trailer with pay phones, but it seems so "old technology" if you know what I mean. Eh?

Mark Dukas

For the most part, cellphones work OK. - - with the proviso that SOME campsites are not in cell antenna view. You probably can forget using one on the actual ride route, but sometimes they work there too. Service gets better each year.

Curt Coleman

I do not know if the pay phones will have data ports, but I do know that the lines are long and continuous and I would expect that anyone who plugged a laptop into a payphone would be inviting a lynching by the 20 people in line trying to call home. Telephones are always in short supply and you will rarely see one without a line; even during the day on the ride. Cell phones generally work, but a few years ago the cellular company in Southern Oregon used $2 per minute roaming charges and made you give them a credit card to bill it to. That has not been a problem in Cellular One service areas. Finding a place to recharge the battery is a problem and I have carried a number of spare batteries and avoided that the last few years.

Frank Conner

CO has had 4 pay phones at the camp site – for 2200 people. Remember you are out camping in the wilderness, somebody’s farm, or a friendly small town and there will be very little in the way of local available phone circuits for us to use. Cell phones may or may not work. Last year (CO 12) someone digging in the ground out in a field somewhere (nowhere near us) cut the fiber optic cable for NE Oregon. My cell phone didn’t work for 3 days.

Calling home is an iffy and time-consuming business.

Rox Heath