Is it just me or have I spent far too
much time sitting in public bathrooms playing on my laptop recently?
It does tend to startle people who
wander in and find me huddled on the floor with my electronic device
sucking power out of the wall.
Where else am I supposed to charge my
laptop?
Besides, Oregon State Parks have such
comfortable amenities. I've had hot showers ever night since I've
been here. The bathrooms are unfailingly clean and well designed.
Hanging out in them isn't as unsavoury as it sounds. And it does beat
spending an afternoon in a little tent trying to keep warm as yet
another storm batters the vinyl.
Oregon really does a good job on it's
state parks [like our National Parks, except well, State]. Asides
from having great facilities most of them also have a section set
aside for hikers and bikers. Known as 'Hiker/Biker sites'. Generally
it is the crappiest part of the park, being on average, nine miles
from the bathroom with nothing but lumpy ground to camp on. They are
often also right next to the 'dump station' where Rvs dump their
toilet contents.....hurray!
Despite this they are fantastic for two
reasons. One is that as hikers and bikers we are quarantined from the
rest of the Rvs and campers. Probably because we smell awful [it's a
fact: exercise makes you stink! I recently made the mistake of taking
my shoes off while my tent was closed, only the instinctive reaction
of jerking the zip up saved me from passing out.]
No one wants to camp next to a smelly
person who looks fitter than them. Meaning that when the entire camp
ground is packed and everyone else is squished cheek to jowl in the
regular sites, we've got acres of space.
The other advantage is price. Hiker
Biker sites are about $5 a night, if you get charged. Often I've
escaped paying entirely. My approach to paying in camp grounds is to
do so only if asked directly, or if I find an envelope with the
details filled in, tucked helpfully under my bike rack. Then not
paying is churlish. But if I'm left alone, then its free game.
All in all I have to say that Oregon
Coastal bike Route is probably the best place in the world to do a
first bike tour.
For one thing this bicycle tour route
was initialised in the 1970's. To me that translates as forty years
of 'traffic training'. For forty years the local traffic has been
taught that bicycles have a place on the road. In the month I've been
on the 101 only two people have honked aggressively at me. And I'm
going to give Oregon the benefit of the doubt and say that they were
from out of State [heck they probably came from Bunbury].
I've crossed bridges, gone through
tunnels or down sharp declines and the cars have been patient and
given me room whenever the verge drove me onto the road.
Touch Wood.
Many of the people I have met are so
used to seeing cyclists that they call it the 'annual migration
route'. After hearing that, I had a brief vivid image of spandex clad
humans clustered together on a rocky shoreline in southern
California, clutching bicycles and making nests, like migratory
geese. Though more likely they'd be clumped in up-scale cafe's
drinking frothy lattes.
[I read in the Whistler's Pique that
the average bicycle tourist earns over $60 000 a year. Making towns
and cities eager to accommodate cycle tourism. I am obviously not an
'average bicycle tourist' as I think I made about $8000 last
year....it was a pretty good year.]
Oregon also publishes a map designed
especially for bike tourists. The map shows State camp grounds
stating all their facilities, it also shows the gradient of the road
so that no hill can surprise you. And it has alternate detours that
are prettier or less congested than highway 101.
And is it pretty?
It is glorious!
The road rolls up and around the cliff
lined coast. Dark sandy bays littered with enormous piles of drift
wood, stained silver white by the elements. The raging, grey blue,
Pacific hurls itself against giant offshore 'stacks', towering
islands of brown and green, reminiscent of South Australia's Twelve
Apostles. In the late afternoon the shy sunlight peers through the
hazy sea mist, gusted inland by the wind.
When me and my little silver and black
steed are hidden from the sea, the road winds through rainforest. It
is forest like I have never seen before in any part of Australia.
Giant straight cedars, conifers so wet they are coated in a soft
green moss that in places weeps down from the branches. If I manage
to stay on my bike until late afternoon and if the sun comes out,
then the road becomes a dappled golden path. The yellow/gold and
green canopy drips honey sunlight. Up or down, in head winds or tail
winds, sunlight or rain the Oregon coast is beautiful.
The farmland is lush and green filled
with fat black cows, who are always very happy to stop and stare
balefully at me as I pass. The birds sing in hedges. The buzzards
wheel high above the highways. The squirrels dart along the ground.
The further I ride the more I want to
ride. Every conquered hill, nervous decent or arduous headwind flat,
fuels my desire to cycle more.
At night I lie in my tent snug in my
sleeping bag [and emergency blanket] and listen to the surf booming
on the shore, the rain dripping on the tent, or the wind rushing
through the trees overhead.
Last night I camped by a waterfall.
[Though this did mean I woke up with an even greater urgency to find
the bathroom than usual].
Emotions flow through me every minute
of the day. From rapture to despair and back again.
I sing on the descents, rant on the
climbs, swear majestically at my underwear. [One day I made the
mistake of yelling; MY BUM IS SORE! In a small fishing village, then
caught sight of an elderly woman looking at me with strong
disapproval.] Yelling relieves pent up tension even if I am now
slightly more cautious about when I vent. Occasionally I wonder what
the people in the cars think when they pass me apparently deep in
conversation with myself.
On another day I got out of my tent in
an incurably bad mood. Nothing I thought could shake it. So I decided
to go with it. Before I knew it I was insulting the verge, 'Good for
nothing narrow, bumpy glass filled shoddy thing'. I cursed the
weather, roared at the hills, was deeply offensive to the bridge and
scornful of state of Oregon in general. After several minutes of this
I found the whole situation amusing and my bad mood floated away with
my laughter.
The only thing I would have done
differently on this trip.....well other than a long list of technical
details, is to find that bloke who operates the weather switch and
beat him around the head with a sopping wet sock. See how he likes
it!
I really did think that May would be
good weather. I expected rain in Washington. But I was told that I'd
get more sun and a tail wind as I went down the coast.
In the past four days I have had meters
of rain and a head wind that made cycling much like trying to
roller-skate underwater through wet concrete.
It is almost summer. Where the hell is
the sun? In Australian terms, it is the equivalent of November 30th.
November 30th is hot! But here I am every night still
wearing all my thermal underwear and sleeping wrapped up like a
potato in my emergency blanket.
It's an Outrage!....I'm outraged.
To add to my vexation that 'prevailing
tail wind' I'm supposed to be enjoying buggered off! For the past
week I've had one day of a tail wind. As for the other days, well
that guy with the weather switch has blessed me with a head wind that
almost blew back up the coast to Port Angeles. Coming out of
Port....Oxford, on Monday I headed around a sweeping bend and was
promptly gusted off the verge and onto the highway. Only a very alert
guardian angle and a lull in the traffic stopped me from becoming a
touring pizza. I fought my way back to the side of the road and then
spent an unpleasant hour forcing my reluctant pedals to turn.
Fourteen miles later I decided that a two o-clock was not too early
to call it quits for the day.
I'm glad I did. The next day was one of
the best of the trip. Forty-five miles of sunlit forest and the type
of scenery that inspires people like me to write terrible poetry.
The sun shone, albeit intermittently.
The forest sighed with a soft head wind. The road was only a little
busy.
I've stopped a few tourist traps
recently. I made a brief visit of Oregon's Safari Park. I'd heard it
was a big zoo where people could interact with large cats like lions
and tigers and bears....Oh My! From what I'd been lead to believe the
cats had large fields within which to roam. Sadly the reality fell
short of the advertising.
I paid my entrance fee and found a
petting zoo with all sorts of deer and goats chasing small children
around in search of food. The big cats were in bird aviary sized
cages staring listlessly through the wire.
The black panther or as I knew him;
Bagheera, sat on a log with nothing to do but lick his paw and blink
and the passing prey. Two black bears wandered up and down the fence
in a rabbit run. As did the cougars. Back and forwards in unnatural
agitation. The tiger paced around and around an enclosure that looked
like some sort of children's swimming pool area, letting out
plaintive growls.
I am not an animal activist. But seeing
those magnificent creatures ensnared in such small dull cages. It
enraged me.
Two Bengal tiger cubs were being
displayed in another pen, people were allowed to play with them and
take photos under the careful supervision of their handlers.
The handler was speaking about humans
destroying the tiger's natural habitat and the necessity of breeding
programs to preserve them 'for future generations to enjoy'.
I felt a certain misery at his speech.
Preservation of these agitated, tamed cats seemed to fall short
somehow. An animal isn't a painting to be kept safely in a museum. If
we cannot preserve their wild natures then we'll do something worse
than making them extinct.
I rode away feeling disappointed.
The other tourist trap was more fun. I
zoomed down a hill and almost hit a dinosaur.
T-Rex was making a bee-line for the
highway so I doubled back and went to look at the herbivores.
The Brontosaurus was chewing on a red
wood. The dodo was wandering around freaking out a group of German
tourists. The stegosaurus wasn't the easiest to photograph because he
kept threatening me with his spiked tail but I got the picture in the
end. I was taking a photo of a triceratops but had to move pretty
swiftly to stop it from taking a bite out of my helmet. I suppose it
looked like a a juicy bit of fruit.
Feeling like a ten year old I ran
around the rainforest photographing the crap out all its prehistoric
occupants. The owner was a beautiful woman who's grandparents had
started the garden in the fifties. Back then they had only four full
sized dinosaurs [imported from a few million years ago]. Various
breeding programs and working with other dinosaur parks has bought
their total up to about sixteen or so.
All in all I found it wonderful to see
these ancient beings wandering around freely in their natural
environment. Though I did wonder how many small children they lose
every year.
Sadly I'm about to end my Oregon leg of
the trip and head into the unknown wilds of California.
Catch you on the other side.
