Something happened to my
week. I lost track of it for a moment and suddenly it was gone.
But I'm taking that as an
indication that I'm having fun. Because time only flies if you are
doing so.
I stayed in Hoquiam for an
extra day and lay around in my tent and was extremely lazy, something
I was very happy to do.
The next day it rained
again but I had decided to ride on so that is what I did. I cycled
in the cold wet morning through the grey industrial area of Aberdeen
then up a riolly riolly big hill on my way to Raymond.
Raymond, someone had told
me was half an hours drive in a car......which isn't a helpful piece
of information to someone on a bike. On the map it said 25miles.
I'm actually starting to
think in Miles instead of Kilometres. The reason being that I am
having trouble convincing American's to change all their maps and
road signs just to suit me. They are being quite stubborn about the
whole thing to be honest with you.
So until they wise up and
change to Metric like the rest of the planet I'm stuck in Miles.
25 miles is not so bad, I
thought.
Except that it was 25
miles of up and down and wriggling around. It had lots of those hills
that keeps going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on
and every time I got around a bend thinking 'it has to be the top' it
was still going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and
on.....
and on.
If you got sick of reading
'and on' imagine how sick I got of seeing more upward inclination.
Plus it was raining.
I got cold again. Three
hours later I reached Raymond entirely fed up with rain and hills.
Raymond was doing what any other self respecting rural town does on a
Sunday and had shut down for the day.
All except the Carriage
Museum. The Carriage and Coach Museum had a very helpful awning under
which one bedraggled cyclist sat and gnawed on a sandwich.
Then because I was
shivering too hard to deal with cycling straight away I went in to
the museum and paid $3 just to warm up.
The women there, Kay, was
sympathetic and she gave me a tour of the place. There followed an
entertaining hour where Kay and I looked at; granny coaches, nanny
coaches, the family station wagon, chick magnet coaches [olden day
Ferraris] a morbid looking hearse, a black Cabbie [The type Sherlock
Holmes always got about in] and I found out that I was averaging the
same speed as a Stage Coach. [ten miles an hour].
It was interesting to see
all the old types of coaches and how similar some of the interiors
were to modern cars.
Then Kay showed me the
olden day clothes that visiting children are allowed to dress up in.
Which was probably a mistake on her behalf.
Soon I had tried on every
bonnet and cap and raccoon skin hat offering and insisted that Kay
try stuff on as well.
Then we sat in the back of
a wagon and imagined we were crossing the American wilds.
Or at least I did. I don't
know what Kay was imagining.
When I finally exited the
the little museum I felt that I had in fact, learned something. Plus
I was warm. A thing never to be underestimated.
The scenery changed from
forest and timber towns to swampy coastal fishing towns. South Bend
greeted me with a gust of salty rain and the smell of sea food. The
rain blew around a sign that read; 'forget spring, bring on Summer.'
I couldn't have agreed more.
Some twelve or so miles
down the flat swamp girt highway I found Bruce Port.
Bruce Port is a tiny
little state park. It was up a hill over looking a big bay. Looming
cedars shadowed the empty camp sites and as always everything was
green and damp.
But there was a covered
picnic area. The kind of place where a saturated touring cyclist
might attempt to dry out, cook dinner and otherwise take advantage of
a non wet spot to place a rump.
Not surprisingly it was
occupied.
A couple of bicycle
tourists were spread out over one of the tables, gear everywhere and
various bits and pieces hanging off the railings in the breeze.
They waved me over.
It turns out I had camped
across from them in Kalalock, only it had been so wet and cold no one
had ventured out of their tents to meet one another.
I have discovered over the
last few weeks that just because I'm a bicycle tourist does not mean
that I will automatically have lots in common with other bicycle
tourists. Sure, most folk are good for a chat and a 'where you going?
I'm going...' conversation, but often that is all there is. And often
couples don't feel the need to include a stranger, having all the
company they can handle.
Jen and Jy were different.
They are living on their bikes, and so rather than being in any great
hurry to get somewhere they were happy merely to dwell. Having meet
lots of people on a mission to get from one place to the next with
all emphasis on speed and distance travelled, I found this attitude
appealing.
We spent the evening
chatting about all sorts of random topics. They turned out to be fans
of both Monty Python and Dr Who. And much of my time spent with them
included putting on accents and reciting favourite lines from both
shows. Jy and Jen seemed to think that cycling could be frivolous and
silly. I'd been beginning to think that I was the only one who rides
along arguing comfortably with myself using three different
personalities. Jen assured me that she does it herself. Jy was
perfecting an Irish/Jamaican accent to greet strangers with, just to
see their reaction.
They had spent the winter
on a mountain snowboarding after touring on bikes last summer. It
sounded slightly familiar. I forget the exact type of bike they rode.
A Peace 9 or something. A big mountain bike with disc brakes, huge
fat tyres and a tiny lowest gear, necessary when towing a trailer
full of every and any type of food known to man. The things that came
out of the panniers was a constant surprise: A whole package of
flour, a kilo of cheese, a spice box and of course a coffee grinder.
At first I did wonder, but
as I got to know their way of travel it began to make sense. They
were on the road for the long haul, not the mad frantic dash the rest
of us poor fools undergo, but the slow happy ride of people who don't
need to get anywhere abruptly. Weight is not an issue for Jen and Jy,
life is.
I rode to Cape
Disappointment then next day, with the loose agreement that they
would be along the next day. It was a sultry day with a slight head
wind, thankfully no rain fell [that was the first day of the entire
trip that I had been dry all day]. And I made it the 40 or so miles
down through the marshy swampy inlets to the bottom of Washington.
That night as I was
cooking dinner at yet another state park I heard a woman's heart felt
yell; 'Jason NO!'
A black tailed deer
bounced through my camp site looking slightly perturbed. I watched it
pass me curiously. The woman continued to cry out from behind the
trees and then a dog came shooting around the shrubs fully intent on
a veal dinner.
I laughed when I saw it,
fully expecting a wolf sized hound to emerge, I almost missed the
miniature dachshund as it raced towards the forest. It was the type
of dog that would need a stepladder to take on my ankle.
But the woman seemed
terrified that he would vanish into the trees, rejoin his wild
brethren and be forever more known as, 'Death Snarl'. So I yelled at
him and told him to 'git back'.
He did, the woman
reclaimed her precious 'Jason' and the camp ground descended once
more in to tranquillity.
The only thing I did the
day after that was wander up to the information centre and learn
about Lewis and Clark. I went in thinking that it was a tv show about
Superman. [I'd watched it was a kid, 'Louis and Clark'] But when I
came out I knew stuff.
Lewis and Clark went from
East to West across the top of America in 1803 to 1806. The idea was
to open up more land to the US. They were greeted warmly by pretty
much all the five hundred or so Indian tribes they encountered.
In return for that
hospitality they mapped the crap out the terrain which over the next
40years meant that the US came in and displaced the Indian people.
That was Lewis and Clark.
Seeing sights that 'no civilised man had seen'.
It was interesting. But it
did seem a shame. The Indians should have killed them, then it might
have taken them longer to get wiped out.
In the evening Jy and Jen
turned up and we had fun sitting around not getting rained on. But as
I have discovered, the world can never be entirely devoid of mild
trials. The absence of rain created a 'camping discomfort power
vacuum'. Mosquitoes with a distinct lack of competition rose up and
filled the void. They attacked in droves.
Fortunately Australian's
never seem to be that appetising to North American mosquitoes. As
long as I've other humans of differing nationalities nearby, I tend
to be left alone. While Jy and Jen were madly slapping themselves and
cussin' I wandered about largely unmolested. Apparently I'm a 'last
resort' meal, only to be sucked on when all other better tasting homo
sapians have been sapped.
We all went for a ride
without panniers the next day. By rights I should have been lots
faster than them, I have the hybrid with the skinny tyres. They have
the mountain bikes with the big fat tyres of doom. But no, they are
just too strong. Soon I was trailing along behind trying to breath.
It is a good thing I think, that I don't cycle with others. I have a
definite inclination towards the meander.
We went out through the
forest then jumped on the coastal bike path and wove and wound and
wiggled along the coast up to Long Beach. There we had a burger at an
all American Dinner [complete with American flag and tinny country
music] then we went to the pub and had a beer. The bar was full of
old fat sailors who talked by yelling at one another and waitresses
with huge eighties hairstyles. Our waitress carded me, [that's
American for 'asking for ID']. She spent at least five minuets
staring intently at my Canadian driver's license. So much scrutiny
did she subject me too that I began to wonder if I was in fact old
enough to have a beer.
Twenty one, twenty two,
twenty three....surely I'm the legal age in every state by now....?
I thought, while wearing a slightly strained smile and trying not to
blink. Eventually the enormous eighties style hairdo and it's
associated head decided that my 'fake id' was too good for their
collective intelligence and got me a beer.
The next day we carried on
to Astoria. I carried on sooner than Jy and Jen simply because I
didn't need to grind any coffee beans before I got going. I am glad
coffee is one addiction I have thus far managed to avoid.
North American's are
INSANE about their coffee. Every day, without fail, no matter if I'm
in the middle of nowhere or the middle of a city, I will pass several
espresso booths[tiny buildings, generally stuck out in a car park by
themselves that sell coffee].
To get to Astoria, the top
of the state of Oregon, I first had to pass through a tunnel and then
spend four miles on a bridge. It is sort of like weeding out the
weaker cyclists. The tunnel was not particularly fun. Merely because
it was dark, there was not much room to ride and the noise of the
traffic was amplified a gazillion times so that it felt like I had
nine million cars sitting on my back tyre all angry and hungry from
my blood. I burst out the other side of the tunnel in a cold sweat
feeling shaky.
Free of the tunnel I next
faced THE ASTORIA BRIDGE. According to some random people I met on
the road, it is the longest bridge of its kind in the world. Though
what kind that is exactly I'm not sure. All I know is that I was
happy it had road works going on when I crossed. The road works meant
that the cars and trucks and buses were going slower and they were
held back often. Essentially leaving my lane traffic free for about
half the time I was on the bridge. Thankyou Cycle God:> There was
a minuscule verge that was made even smaller by the amount of gravel
and glass in it.
I made it across and was
immediately confronted with Astoria.
I had been assured that
Astoria is a marvellous spot full of marvellous people. What I hadn't
been told was that after the quiet sleepiness of rural Washington,
Astoria would be altogether too swift and noisy.
There were cars on my
road!
There were lots and lots
and lots of cars on my road!
And people everywhere.
Talking and walking and basically getting in the way of my bike.
Feeling put out I peddled
on to the bike shop and retreated from the swarms of humanity.
At a place called Beyond
Bikes I met Pat. Pat was that all American boy that I'd seen in comic
books and on the side of milk cartons. Tall, broad, wholesomely good
looking with blue eyes and open friendly grin. It was hard not to
like Pat.
I told him that I was sick
of getting flat tyres. In six days I'd had four. Asides from the two
I've already told you about I'd had a further two.
On the day I'd gotten into
Cape Disappointment my back tyre had gone down just outside the
grocery store. Tired and angry because I only had five miles to the
camp ground and the stupid tyre refused to stay up until then. In a
fit of frustration I ate an entire block of chocolate while pulling
off the back wheel. Chewing aggressively on a now grease covered
piece of chocolate, I got my tyre levers working and was soon
inadvertently eavesdropping on the family behind the fence some
meters away. They weren't difficult to overhear.
The child, probably around
four or five was singing along to Bryan Adams, or someone who sounded
a whole lot like him. I admired the way the kid knew ever single word
and the tune. The mother came out and started screaming at him. For
the next half an hour, while I worked on my bike I listened to the
woman roaring at her offspring to 'stay in the yard, don't go near
the pond, be a good boy.' Occasionally there would be moments of
respite where she would be calm only to explode into greater
apoplexy. I felt a certain amount of amused sorrow at their
predicament.
The next day my front tyre
had gone down overnight.
So, fed up with sitting on
the side of the road wresting tyres off wheels, I asked Pat to give
me the thickest, toughest, roughest, meanest, ugliest, steel plated,
kevlar reinforced, bullet proof, glass resistant, bump durable tyre
he had. And I asked him if he could please stick the darn thing on my
back wheel!
And then I asked him to
put a rack on the front. I got panniers as well. My reasoning being
that if I shifted some of the weight from my back wheel to my front
wheel I'd get less punctures.
All of which he did.
Cheerfully.....he really
was like a young Captain America....before he got frozen in an
iceberg. [I know you lot don't read comic books, don't worry the film
will be out in July and this comment will make more sense].
Whilst he worked on
Caribou I wandered around Astoria. It was a nice enough spot, but I
was put off by the yuppy populace with their designer dogs and
fashionably old fashioned clothing. There was, in my travel stained,
reflective jacket wearing opinion far too many 'manicured hippies'
and philosophy spouting college students. A town of abundant
education with little life experience too match. I had a cup of
'Mexican hot chocolate' at a place where you pay extra to be treated
with the same respect as a Jew in Auschwitz. The waitresses and
coffee makers were rude, sarcastic and I felt like pouring hot coffee
down their immaculate aprons.
It would appear that four
flat tyres and five days of constant rain washed away all my
tolerance.
Pat got everything working
on my bike and I was happy. I left town as two tall sail ships were
firing blanks at one another on the Columbia River. I don't not
entirely sure why they felt that having a staged battle amongst the
cargo ships was a good idea, but it looked like fun.
The eight miles to Fort
Stephen was horrible. Straight into a headwind, surrounded by
aggressive traffic I reached the camp ground feeling stressed out.
The noise of traffic and the roar of the wind I've found can be more
wearing than the moving of pedals.
Luckily Jy and Jen were
waiting for me at the State park and we had another mosquito filled
evening of discussing the days ride.
Jy [being a bike mechanic]
showed me how to tune my gears, because I'd discovered that every
time I'd taken my back wheel off, my gears start clunking off their
chain rings. There are few things more irritating than climbing a
steep hill and nearly knocking yourself out when your bike skips a
gear and drops you, chin first onto your handlebars.
Jy pointed out the knobs
to twiddle to get the bike back in tune. He tightened my brakes up.
They hadn't really been working so well, and considering that I am
daily hurtling downhill at 35kph on a narrow verge in the company of
logging trucks with several kilos of gear speeding my decent....well
lets just say having brakes that work is a good thing.
He also told me to stop
oiling my chain.
“But chains are supposed
to be oily.” I protested.
“Yes but there's so much
on it that it's picking up all sorts of dirt.”
“But oiling is good.”
I said stubbornly.
“But too much oil isn't.
Look at your chain, then look at mine.”
I did, his chain was a
clean fresh looking thing that gleamed in the evening light.
I returned to The
Delinquent Caribou. My chain was dark black and gritty.
I stopped oiling my chain.
He also trued my back
wheel. To those that don't know, truing a wheel has something to do
with tightening and loosening spokes to make a wheel that is warped,
straight again. Jy did that thing that people who like machines do
when they are working. He sort drifted off peering, hmming, fiddling
and twiddling and forgot that Jen and I were there.
“Every bike.” He said
when he emerged from his bike fixing trance, “has a soul of its
own.”
I nodded agreement for he
spoketh truth.
I left Jy and Jen the next
day. I had a long way to go and unlike my American cycling friends,
only so much time to do it.
Riding away from Jen and
Jy hurt. I meet a lot of people on the road and mostly I part ways
easily, I've travelled enough to know that I'll meet more good people
down the track. With Jen and Jy it didn't matter, they are good
people and I didn't want to leave.
So it was a heavy heart
that I rode on to Nehalem some 47miles south.
The morning was easy as it
often is. The sun shone, I had a tail wind the scenry was pretty. If
there was too many cars on the 101 again I ignored them. Found myself
in a place called 'Sea Side'.
Sea Side was fascinating
for the first five minutes and terrible for the next twenty.
If McDonald's ever built a
town it would probably look a lot like Sea Side. A cardboard cut out
place full of gimmicky shops, plastic entertainment arcades, and at
the end of the street a weird round about where people sat around and
stared at the sea. The beach was lined with tall apartment buildings.
And it was occupied by the brand of American's that give the rest of
them a bad name. Fat and loud!
I ate an egg sandwich and
watched them in horrified curiosity.
I hid my reflective vest
so I wouldn't attract attention to myself. I didn't want to get
stampeded by a herd of obese tourists thinking my bright orange
jacket was something good to eat.
I left my bike outside
when I went to the bathroom. I wasn't concerned about theft, as I
doubted any of the inhabitants of Sea Side would know what to do with
a bicycle.
Down the road I nervously
entered Cannon Beach terrified that it would be another Sea Side. To
my joy I found a small quaint village. Relieved I had lunch in the
playground, listening to the well trained fathers obey their
children's every whim.
Nehalem..... I discovered
later was on the other side of two enormous hills. A situation I was
blissfully unaware of as I left Cannon Beach. Fifteen miles, I
thought, no worries.
Then I started going up. I
continued going up for just over half an hour.
“That was a load of
crap!” I gasped when the road finally began to descend.
I clung to the handlebars
on the swift plunge down the other side and was happy to find that
having front panniers stuck me firmly to the road. Balance eh!
Then the road went
straight back up again.
For another half an hour.
Climbing for that long at
the end of the day does something to a woman's soul. Three quarters
of the way up and I pulled over lent against a sign and had tried not
to cry. I've come to call it 'wrecking' or 'hitting a wall'. And it
isn't so much that my body gives up, it's more a mental thing. My
mind simply doesn't want to keep going. It says 'Kym this is
bullshit! You know its bullshit, I know it's bullshit and there's
nothing either of us can do but keep going.'
I got to the top of the
darn hill.
“Oh look.” I said to
my bike. “What a great F*#*ing view!” Oregon was spread out below
us, a big white rind of hazy coast stretching away into the dark
green hills. The 1000 foot cliffs plunging down into the booming
Pacific Ocean. I was angry at that 1000 foot cliff, it had hurt me, I
didn't want to be impressed. But it was impossible not to be.
“Stupid view.” I
growled while photographing the snot out of it. Then I coasted down
the other side, feeling that I really would feel better if there was
more than foot tall wall between me and that cliff edge.
I spent the night at
Nehalem amongst the company of no less than four other bicycle
tourists. None of whom were as awesome as Jen or Jy.
To be fair there has been
an awful lot of stuff between then and now. If I type about it all
you'll probably get bored. If you aren't already.
So I'll sum up.
I've ridden from Astoria
to Reedsport which is about 201 miles but a little extra because of
various detours. In the last week I've camped by the ocean,
cycled more ridiculous
hills,
maintained a strict diet
of trail mix and cream cheese,
bought bread which is
baked by an ex-drug addicted con,
helped two teenagers find
a bathroom,
got kept awake all night
by an classic rock radio station that was being played at full volume
by an old hobo from Tennessee,
finished my fantasy novel;
full of sex, pagan gods, war and blood sacrifices,
was given a new book about
fruit which is surprisingly full of the same themes,
did my laundry at a bike
shop,
found another bike shop
that also sold guitars [because while riding one should also be
strumming.....?]
caught an elevator down to
a sea cave and met sea lions,
climbed a sand dune that
inspired Frank Herbert to write the Dune series,
was given a cup of tea in
a public restroom,
had three people in one
day call me a Kiwi and considered homicide, [Do I SOUND like a New
Zealander?!]
hit a head wind and got
tired,
talked to Kevin who had
just cycled across the country and figured he had nothing better to
do than simply cycle back,
talked to Gavin who
averaged 105 miles a day,
met Mike who owns a bamboo
bicycle,
listened to Herb who rode
around the Grand Canyon got tired, brought his fist down on his seat
and broke it, pushed his bike to the bus stop intent on selling it
and getting a bus ticket home, after five days he got back on his
bike [with it's broken seat] and cycled home,
wondered why James was
heading across the country on a down hill mountain bike,
declined to join Todd and
Charlie on a acid trip,
spent a nervous night in
torrential rain in Honeyman State forest hoping my tent wouldn't
float away,
saw a man touring on a
fixed gear bike and thought he was silly,
rode through glorious
farmland, many small fishing villages and rugged forested coastline,
Got here, decided to treat
myself to a real bed at Reedsport Economy Inn
Will now sleep.
