Rompingground

I went to sleep last night listing to the bark of sea lions and woke up to raccoons having eaten just about all my food. The tally of things they got to

• 3 bagels
• 2 packages of trail mix
• 3 power bars
• what little bit of ham I had left
• roll of ritz crackers

They were quite noisy while eating all my food but I wasn’t sure what was going on and just wanted to sleep. The other thing I had to ask my camp mates is if anyone had touched my arm the night before, because I swear something grabbed my hand. We all had a good laugh and cursed the raccoons in the morning. Fortunately they didn’t find my oatmeal so I still had some breakfast to eat.

From now on the food goes in the hammock with me.

Damn Raccoons.

I find myself today in North Bend, Oregon once again at a library computer terminal. The plan for today is to make it either to Sunset Beach State Park (which is only 10 miles away so it would be a short day of riding) or to Bullards Beach State Park in Bandon. I think the deciding factor will be how nice Sunset Beach park is.

The last few days have kinda slid by and things are ceartainly moving a bit quicker for me. I tend to get started around 10 now and ride until 5 or 6 at night which makes for some longer days. The hills are not as difficult as before and my average speed is getting better as time goes on. The weather is also playing in my favor for the time being so i’m trying to make as much out of it as possible.

I’ve managed to camp with the same set of people the last several nights. Alastair is a fellow from the UK who started up in Vancouver and is going all the way to the Mexico border. I met up with him on the barge from Washington to Oregon. The other guy is Fernando from Spain. We usually set up camp and share food around a table and talk about the days ride and where the plan for the following day will be.

On the topic of camping, i’ve been doing a lot of it in Oregon for several reasons. It’s cheap for hiker/bikers to camp for only $4 it’s a hard deal to pass up. The other reason is theres so many places to camp it would be foolish not to and the hammock has once again been holding up handsomely. And on sage like advice i’ve refrained from hanging it on trees that also have vines.

I’ll probably be in California in 2 or 3 days, the easy hills of Oregon will soon come to an end.

Just a quick note that I’m in Tillamook at the library. I’m super paranoid that my bike will get stolen as it’s outside. Spent the day yesterday riding in the rain so I decided when I got to Manzantia to get a room and warm me up and dry off my clothes. I really liked Manzantia, it’s a quiet little hollow right on the beach of Oregon. Took a walk on the beach this morning with my shoes off, I must have been the only person without shoes on but I did put my feet in the Pacific just to say I did, quite cold. I can’t believe people surf ocean on this side, I just want to tell them to go to Hawai’i and try it there.

On another note I’ve just about given up on pronouncing Hawai’i and just moving to Hawaii, nobody understands me when they ask me where i’m from. The progression usually goes “Hawai’i, the 50th State, an island chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean” If they still don’t get it at that time I tend to give up.

I’m off to Cape Lookout state park tonight for some camping, I hope it stays dry. Biking is getting a lot easier after getting rid of weight and being vigilant on tire pressure.

I really did write this up on Sunday but it seems that I forgot to hit the Publish button so I’ll just amend to it what i’d already written. I’m currently in Astoria, Oregon. I left on Monday morning and made it here last night in a nice rainshower. I ran into a fellow traveler like me and it was nice to swap stories and compare bicycles and the like. He’s the first I’ve run into the entire trip.

I got on the 10:00am ferry to Bremerton. Steam puffing out of my mouth, a thin layer of water covering the ground and a steady stream of drizzle falling on the ground. An ominous sign after 10 beautiful days in Seattle. The course is set and I can only go forward at this point. It started getting colder a few days ago, a sure sign that it’s time to move on to warmer climates. I’m pretty nervous and excited to get going on this trip, I hope to make it as far as Centralia today and that’s quite the ambitious goal.

Today is also the first i’ve ridden with the bike fully loaded and it’s damn heavy, i’ll have to reconsider a lot of the things I’m carrying. I should have got fenders too, my shoes are already soaked. And the first thing on the list of things I’ve forgotten is a lighter, which means I can’t start my stove.

Once I got through Bremerton the trouble started. I literally broke a wheel, which isn’t to mean that I got a flat tire or broke a spoke. Instead I broke the drive mechanism in the rear wheel. I had a suspicion that it wasn’t up to snuff but it had held together the last 250 miles of riding I did the week previous so I figured that it should be okay. So I hobbled the bike back to Bremerton and found a bike shop where the mechanic told me he never saw a drive mechanism so old, he wanted to save it to show to a co-worker. So I decided it was best just to throw on a new wheel with a new gearset. By the time this was all done it was 3p and I knew I didn’t have a chance to make it to Centralia so I tucked my tail and headed back to Seattle to lick my wounds and try again.

I’ll be leaving Seattle tomorrow for what I expect to be a 20 day ride (that’s assuming I take a few break days.) Plan a has me going all the way to Los Angeles while plan b has me going to Fresno, if Fatty and Janice go to the Fresno – UH game on the 4th I might be able to meet up with them and catch a ride back to LA. I’m guessing I can do about 80 – 100 miles a day hopefully, but we’ll have to see how I do with a fully loaded bike, up until today I’ve just been riding 60 miles with the rear panniers attached with stuff to weight it down a bit. As for accommodations along the way I’ll just be roughing it, which means I most likely won’t be able to update this until I hit LA.

I’ll spend today paring down the rest of my belongings down to the bare essentials which means the laptop finally has to go. I think if I brought it i’d regret the extra weight somewhere in the trip and toss it in favor of a lighter bike. I got my front panniers yesterday so that’s basically the last piece of the puzzle in terms of the bike.

Seattle has been a lot of fun, the house I live in now reminds me a lot of the Frank St. house where we had 10 people living in it at it’s height. Before that it was good food and good beer with Matt and Angie who recently moved up here.

I’ll be leaving Seattle tomorrow for what I expect to be a 20 day ride (that’s assuming I take a few break days.) Plan a has me going all the way to Los Angeles while plan b has me going to Fresno, if Fatty and Janice go to the Fresno – UH game on the 4th I might be able to meet up with them and catch a ride back to LA. I’m guessing I can do about 80 – 100 miles a day hopefully, but we’ll have to see how I do with a fully loaded bike, up until today I’ve just been riding 60 miles with the rear panniers attached with stuff to weight it down a bit. As for accommodations along the way I’ll just be roughing it, which means I most likely won’t be able to update this until I hit LA.

I’ll spend today paring down the rest of my belongings down to the bare essentials which means the laptop finally has to go. I think if I brought it i’d regret the extra weight somewhere in the trip and toss it in favor of a lighter bike. I got my front panniers yesterday so that’s basically the last piece of the puzzle in terms of the bike.

Seattle has been a lot of fun, the house I live in now reminds me a lot of the Frank St. house where we had 10 people living in it at it’s height. Before that it was good food and good beer with Matt and Angie who recently moved up here.