Dave rides his bike to school

Above: According to the locals, this marks the beginning of the 50 most beautiful miles of coastline in the world.  You be the judge…   (Note: I didn’t get many good pictures today because of the cloudy weather)

  

 

Sunday, 6/4 9am
Location: Gold Beach, OR
Coordinates:
42.3877 N
124.4196 W

Yesterday’s mileage: about 65
Today’s destination: Bandon, OR

One of the things that I was looking forward to on this trip was the adventure of riding to Chicago on my own, unsupported.  Well, Fate responded loud and clear: “If adventure is what you seek, adventure is what you shall get.  Beeyotch.”

Saturday started off well enough…  I woke up in the Best Western feeling nice and refreshed.  It was still completely fogged over, but to my surprise, the ground was dry.  I grabbed my free breakfast buffet and hit the road.

About a half hour into my ride, I got my first flat of the trip.  A staple went straight into my tire.  No problem, I got that taken care of quickly enough. 

When I finally reached Oregon, I chatted with two dudes on bikes who told me that the next 50 miles were the most beautiful 50 miles of coastline in the world.  With all the fog and cloudy skies, I thought to myself, “Too bad nobody’s ever seen it.”  Once the clouds burned away and the sun peeked out, sure enough, it was a beautiful coastline.  It looks like God sprinkled the coast with massive boulders and rock formations.  Quite scenic indeed.

OK, so lemme get to the adventure part.  I pulled into Gold Beach at about 6pm, set up my tent at an RV park, and asked around about where to get some grub.  The office manager said that town is only about 2 miles away, so I figured I’d just walk there and hit up the grocery store.  It started raining again, and the office manager guy (also the owner, I believe) kindly offered to drop me off in town.  I gladly accepted the ride.  Well, what I didn’t think about was how to get BACK.  I picked up some food at the grocery store and started heading back toward my campsite.  At that moment, if was lightly drizzling, but all considered, I felt pretty fortunate.  About ten minutes later, that all changed.  Out of nowhere, I was in the middle of a rainstorm.  The winds picked up so that the rain was coming down at a angle, inconveniently spraying right for my face.  Of course, by this time, it was also pitch-black, and I was walking down the shoulder of 101 with cars whizzing by at 50 mph, oblivious to my existence. I didn’t have any lights, so I just followed where the cars were coming from.   I tied an extra grocery bag around each shoe, which actually worked brilliantly in keeping my feet dry.  I must have been quite a sight to see: hunched over, my eyes barely surfacing from my rainjacket, with a grocery bag around each foot, and a grocery bag in each hand.  Sorta like a Bigfoot returning from Kroger.

Here’s the kicker.  When I finally made it back to my campsite, I discovered that my tent was now sitting in puddle about an inch deep.  The entire area was covered in standing water.  My tent spikes were more like anchors!  I looked inside my tent, which of course was totally dark, but amazingly, it was still dry inside.  Somehow my tent managed to keep the waters at bay.  I crawled in, left my soaked clothes in the puddle outside, and climbed into my sleeping bag.  Ironically, after my miserable trip to the grocery store, I wasn’t even hungry anymore.

This morning (Sunday), I woke up to rain and more rain.  I managed to get all of my things, except for my tent, into the bathroom of the RV campground. Hopefully I’ll be able to pack everything up in a semi-dry state.  As I type out this blog entry, it seems all too appropriate that I’m using the top of the toilet as a desk, while I descibe this shitty weather…

Random musings:

I ran into 2 pairs of people on bikes yesterday who were all over 65 years old.  The first was a friendly married couple who yelled out, “You’re almost there!  You’re almost to Oregon.”  Next, I passed two men, probably in their early 70’s, who were pulling trailers identical to mine.  There I was, thinking that I was so tough for surviving the rain, the headwinds and the hills, and then I pass by Grandma and Grandpa just cruising along, smiling like it’s Sunday afternoon.  Old folks like that put the rest of us to shame!  Speaking of which, in my last triathlon (St. Anthony’s), if I had competed in the 65+ age group, I would have finished in 8th place.  That’s right; a 66 year-old man beat me by 26 minutes.  Incredible!  My point is just that there are some BADASS old folks out there who completely defy the conventional expectations of how “seniors” are supposed to look and act.  I have the utmost admiration and respect for them.

Tags: Travel

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