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.