Dry?
Sun?
Warm?
All these things have been a vague and
far off memory for the last four days. I've woken up shivering three
days out of four and put wet socks into squelching shoes and
saturated shoe protectors. I've slipped on cold soggy gloves, donned
my sodden raincoat and rolled up my dripping tent and strapped my
sleeping bag to an increasingly drenched set of panniers and sloshed
damply off down the road. North American Camping at it's finest! And
the funny thing is, they seem to think this is normal.
I met a man called Dave at Kalolach
[pronounced 'Clay-Lock'] beach. Dave was from Seattle and was
thrilled to be camped by the grim rain drenched coast line. He raved
about the view. I huddled by his fire watching yet another rain
squall rushing in to engulf us, I wondered if I was missing
something.
Sure it was pretty. If only it wasn't
eight degrees...sorry 53degrees Fahrenheit....roughly. But perhaps
this country has affected my thinking as well because I was wearing
thongs. I was at the beach and when you're at the beach you wear
thongs.....even if your toes start turning an unhealthy shade of deep
blue.
Ah but I seem to caste a pall over my
great and marvellous adventurous adventure.
Because it actually has been
marvellous. I have learned things....such as there really ought to be
more emphasis placed on the word 'rain' in the compound word 'rain
forest'. Someone said they get three meters of rain a year in the
Olympic Peninsular. I think if I'd wrung my shocks out I would have
found at least half of that one of my shoes.
I also found that when embarking on a
bike trip it probably isn't a bad idea to know how a bike works. So
that when it stops working you can make it work again.....but I'm
getting ahead of myself.
When last you heard I had crashed out
in a Hostel in Vancouver. Since then I got on a train and a bus and
then a ferry and found myself in Victoria.
I know I know, I cheated. I didn't
cycle to the Twassen ferry terminal, I didn't cycle from Swaltz bay
Ferry terminal on Vancouver Island to Victoria. I was having a break.
I got the really cheap public transport, threw my bike on the front
of a bus and inside a train.
Leave me alone. You try it if you think
you're so damn clever!....I don't even like your face!
So there!
I got to Tom and Jade's place in the
adorable Victoria. The sun shone, the grass was green. There was no
snow! There was flowers in the gardens and puppies and bicycles in
the street. The trees were pretty and sun dappled. The people were
friendly. I wanted to stay.
Tom and Jade let me in the door at 6pm
and promptly herded me back out. We were going to the pub to watch
the Vancouver Canucks get their bums beaten by Nashville. Hockey
playoffs....it is very serious if you live in Canada.
Some hours later after sitting around a
camp-fire at the beach with several people I'd met there and then we
made it home in a taxi. There followed two exceptionally lazy days of
sitting on Tom and Jade's couch doing very little and savouring every
minuet of it. God Bless Tom and Jade! I love them. And their Couch.
Then I got on another boat. Was asked
serious questions by intimidating boarder security people and found
myself in America.
On the way over I meet two young
Canadian boys who also had bicycles with panniers and a things
strapped to their steeds. I thought to myself: gosh they're so
organised, they must know exactly what they're doing. So I wandered
over and stuck up conversation. Ryan and Geoff were in fact as
clueless as I am....was....are? The difference was they had a book.
The book was a complete guide to cycling the Pacific Highway to
Mexico from Port Angeles. They hadn't actually read the book....but
they had it. As I didn't even have a map at the time, I was in awe.
We found out together that if you have
a bike with stuff on it, you must be prepared to get advice from
total stranger whether you want it or not. An older man who had
obviously been around the block...or thought he had, informed us that
we needed several hundred small and vital things that none of us had
ever heard of. Such things as, stoves that ran off petrol and chain
breakers. We did a lot of smiling and nodding an exchanged mystified
glances.
Port Angeles greeted us, dark and grim
with a chilling wind. It was 6pm. The two boys disappeared up the
road eager to find their first campground some ten ks up the road.
Feeling like a cop out, I went to my hostel.
The Hostel 'Thor's Hostel' was
adorable. It was a converted old school barn undergoing several
decades of renovations. The family downstairs ran the joint and two
dorms a bathroom and kitchen made up the top story. I spent the night
chatting to two French girls and a US coast guard.
The French girls told me about a woman
they had meet down south who had taken to shooting Mexicans
attempting to enter the States. The French girl rolled her eyes and
said: “You know, jis take up knitting, buy a pet! There are better
hobbies to have!”
Then I knew I actually was in America
and Not Canada.
The following morning I pedalled off
down the road and had a thoroughly pleasant day cycling through
countryside. The sun while not terribly strong was at least warm. The
hills were green. The trees were covered in moss and every other
kilometre streams gurgled happily beneath the road over lichen
covered rocks. Business as usual in this part of the world.
Everything was so very very very GREEN.
Grass, trees, tree trunks. That is the trade off of being constantly
sodden, you get to see soft gentle green everywhere you look.
I cycled to Forks that day. Which in
Imperial is 51 miles. The best part was going past Lake Crescent a
big blue basin of water with cathedrals of mossy trees lining it's
shores. The verge is narrow and the road winding. As a warning to
motorists cyclists get to push a big button that sets a light
flashing and lets people know to look out for you. As well as being a
clever and considerate thing for the Washington government to do, it
was also cool because I got to push a big button that made a light
flash! It's the little things.
The road left Lake Crescent and decided
to go straight up a riolly riolly long hill. It went forever and I
spent half a year in my lowest gear swearing at it. Then I shut up
because I ran out of air.
Once I'd conquered that there wasn't
much excitement until I got to Forks. By which time it was pouring.
For those that don't know, Forks is the
setting of that oh so popular series of books by Stephanie Myer.
Twilight....I only know because someone told me.....ok fine I might
have read one of them....ok two......fine....the whole darn series.
It's about vampires, werewolves and a stupid useless girl who falls
in love with a vampire. Yes I know I'm still disgusted that I read
them too....and liked them. Anyway it is a tiny town the population
is 3621 or something. And every single business in the area is
cashing in on the series. Ever pizza menu has 'Twilight' options,
bars have 'Twilight' drinks the tiny sight seeing airport has a come
up with a brand new marketing slogan: 'vampires aren't the only thing
flying around here'...I don't think anyone has told them that
vampires don't fly....at least not the Forks vampires.
Forks also didn't have a place to stay.
The RV park didn't allow tents. It was a campground that did not
allow camping. That made absolutely no sense to me. The next State
park, I was told, was a further twelve miles down the road. I knew I
didn't have another twelve miles in me because I didn't even have the
energy to figure out how far twelve miles was in kilometres. I was
tying my bike to a fence to go get some food when the woman from the
RV park, who had followed me two blocks just to tell me that the
woman at the motel allowed campers sometimes.
The boys had gotten to Forks ahead of
me and sure enough the sweet old lady running the motel at the end of
town let us pitch our tents behind the buildings. For three dollars
we got a shower.
All in all it was a pretty good deal.
That was Forks. It rained all night.
Then all the next day. I rode to Kalaloch. That was more like a swim
than a ride. The rain came down the entire day. I got drowned. The
forest was pretty in a wet sort of way. Lots of dark green towering
cedars and Douglas fir trees looming either side of the road. At half
two I reached Kaloloch and debated continuing simply because it was
too wet to do anything other than freeze as soon as I stopped moving.
The boys had been leaving as I'd pulled in. But in the end I decided
that I'd try to dry some clothes out in the bathroom. There was no
showers.
I met Dave and chatted to him about
various things between torrential downfalls and lighter patches. He
was very happy to be there by the sea. I would have been too if I
wasn't soaked to the skin with no way to dry out or thaw out.
And of course being Australian I
couldn't help but think that our beaches were about ninety times
better looking, not to mention that I could swim at an Australian
beach without turning into an iceberg and becoming a shipping hazard.
But we don't have drift wood. Sure we
have twigs and the occasional branch. North Washington has trees that
washed down the rivers and ended up in the sea then landed on the
beach. Big piles of giant logs. Those that do brave the surf...in wet
suits, have to watch out for great big logs hitting them in the back
of the head.
I almost prefer sharks.
Anyway that night I went to sleep
listening to the surf boom on the shore. It was a good sound. At 3am
I woke up shaking with cold...again! I rummaged around in my pannier
and found the emergency blanket that Melissa gave me three years ago.
Wrapped it around me, not too much because I've been warned that if
you put it over a sleeping bag then your sweat can't escape and you
wake up drenched. Ewwwww! But after that I slept warm.
So thank you big sister! For the
emergency blanket:>
Oh boy, this is probably too long
again. Darn it! Plus it's getting late. I'm not used to going to bed
after 9pm these days. Or getting up later than 8am. How things
change.
Yesterday was a good day. The sun
shone. There was rain but it was patchy. Then of course just as
everything was going splendidly and I was finally beginning to feel
slightly fitter, I heard that unhappy hissing noise emanating from my
back wheel. Praying I was hearing things I pulled over and found that
not only did I have a puncture, I also had a hole in my back tyre.
I had a spare tube. I did not have a
spare tyre.
I think it was one of those things that
know-it-all guy on the boat said I would need.
So I swapped my back tyre with my front
tyre put in a new tube and spent a horrible afternoon freaking out
that I was going to go flat in the middle of nowhere. By the way,
that whole swapping one tyre with the other took an hour and a half.
Because my Dad is a bike mechanic he changed pretty much every flat
tyre I've ever had. Making me about the most useless bicycle
mechanic's daughter ever. It didn't help that my right hand dried out
due to the wet and cold and all my finger tips split and bled all
over everything.
I arrived at Quinault Rainforrest just
as the place was living up to its name and raining down on the
forest.
The campgroud I had intended to stay at
was shut until the end of May. Unwilling to wait around until the end
of the month I limped sadly into the visitor's information centre and
looked pathetically at the woman behind the desk. Because I did such
a good job of looking totally defeated, drenched and miserable she
said I could stay in the closed campground a mile up the road.
It. Was. The. Best. Campground. Ever!
I had a secluded nook amongst the trees
on well drained pebbles looking out over the lake. And it was free!
And it stopped raining! All night!
Quinault Lake is forever awesome in my
memory.
Oh yeah, I got a new tent, it is a
million times better than the Walmart variety. It should be it cost
me $200! But practically puts itself up and has enough room to fit me
and my stuff in. Mountain Equipment co-op people! It has got freaking
everything!
Which brings us to today. Nice ride.
Until that hole in my front tyre came back to haunt me. The tyre went
down. And stayed down. Twelve miles from Hiquiam I was once again on
the side of the road doing the bike equivalent of CPR. I'd just
wrestled the tube out of the wheel when a big hairy man on a Harley
did a U-turn and came around and pulled up behind me.
'People on two wheels', he said,
'should look out for one another.'
His name was Dion Johnson. He also
happened to be a mechanic.
I was doing pretty well but I hadn't
checked the tyre to see what was stuck in it. Dion did, and found a
shard of glass lodged in the rubber. If I'd put my tyre back on I
probably would have gone the grand distance of two meters before the
tube went flat again.
God Bless Dion Johnson.
He gave me his cell number and said
that should I get unstuck down the road he might be able to get a
mate in the area to help me out, or failing that google the nearest
help.
Then he went North and I went South.
Now I am here. At this blissful
beautiful RV park by the Hoquiam River.
When I was putting clothes into the
dryer I felt like diving in after it. Now I have dry gloves, dry
socks, dry shoe protectors...sadly damp shoes remain but the out look
is still up. The manager here was ridiculously helpful.
God Bless America!
