Oregon Coast

Last week Tina and I rode our bikes from Astoria to Crescent City, California. We only had rain on the first day when we were riding from Astoria to our house in Gearhart. After that it was just cloudy in the morning with sunshine after 10 or so.

I've put up pictures in my photo section, have a look see.

I rode with my new Shimano sandals, which were super comfortable and felt as good as normal biking shoes. I ended up carrying my normal shoes as dead weight the entire trip.

On the downhill to Manzanita at 40 mph I was viciously attacked by a killer bee. It ran into my upper lip and clung on to my face with it's stinger. It took me two swiped of my hand to get it off, by which time it had already done it's damage. At the bottom of the hill as snot was running from my nose the pain spread from my face to my teeth. I stood by the side of the road swearing until Tina rolled up and gave me some drugs.

Over the next few days my lip grew to about four times it's normal size. Tina went into stores instead of me because I thought I looked like I had a cleft lip.

We had great views of the ocean as we biked along. I think one of the cool things about biking is that you can stop anywhere and look at things you dont' see from a car. We stopped before Depoe Bay at Whale Cove and saw sea lions hanging out on the rocks.

My wheel died after 2000+ miles in Pacific City when a spoke pulled out a nipple. The next bike shop was in Newport, which wasn't too far to ride on a whobbly wheel (I was too lazy to true up a wheel I was going to throw away.)

That night in Lincoln City we stayed at the hiker/biker campground along with a couple Layla and Jeff. They were pretty cool and were up for ordering a pizza to be delivered. As it was dark, Jeff thought to put out his red blinking light so the driver could find us. I ended up having the pizza delivered to the ranger station and waited up at the campground. A few minutes later a car drove up and a kid jumped out to grab the light.
"Hey what you doing?" -me
'oh, sorry, is this yours?'
"It's not yours. What the hell?"
'I just saw it and said "Score!". Who is it for?'
"Not you."
'Sorry dude.'
And he took off after handing me the light.

Tina made up some kickass burritos while we waited for the pizza to come.

We stayed with Tina's grandma at Otter Rock and used the hot tubs at the condo. It was nice to hang out and not bike - since we had been doing hard biking for 2 days by then.

The next day we rolled into Newport and found the bike shop that had rear wheels. It was a dirty little place that looked like it was a converted apartment. We asked the guy why there was no sign.
"Well, a woman moved in next door and complained about us being a business so we had to remove the sign."
I got the wheel and started to unload my bike to replace the old rim.
The owner ran over, "Hey, you can't fix that here."
I looked at him like he was crazy. My wheel wasn't going to get magically put on. "They take pictures." he said, looking around. "You have to go up to the Library to work on your bike."

So Tina and I rode up the hill to the Library pit stop. As I was swearing at my wheel, Jeff and Layla popped up. They were getting her bike fixed too. We told them about how we had to come up here. Jeff wondered if we had to go to City Hall to fix flats. Tina said we'd go to the the police station to lube the chain.

Later in Waldport we stopped to get some food for dinner (and many snacks.) My back was hurting and I was stretching outside the store when an old skinny man drove up in his car. He started talking to us about the weather and those fu**ing drivers everywhere. He shook his head and looked sad as he complained about bikers not having enough room. He parked and came over to yabber with us. He imitated my stretching and laughed a lot. He even tried to help my back out, which normally I would not want but it really hurt. He was rank with alcohol and cigarettes but was a nice guy. Guess he was our strange person for the trip.

We had more great views of the coast as we biked South into the wind. Normally there is a North->South wind, but this week the wind was reversed. We stopped for blueberries whenever we saw a stand and would order a few pints to munch on.

We ran into another biker, Oliver from Germany, who was on a round the world trip. He was in Seattle and was tired of the bus system and bought a bike to get to San Fransico. He had all of his gear (including hiking boots) strapped to his mountain bike. It was impressive to see this skinny guy ride this bike with all that gear. His tent consisted of a tarp covering his bike with enough space for a sleeping bag.

In Port Orford we stopped at the Crazy Norwegian for some fish and chips. It was as good as I remembered and sure hit the spot. I had a milkshake too, which I should cut out..

In Gold Beach we got a hotel for the night and had microwave pizza. It is a cute enough town, with deer in the yards and a nice view. It's old cemetery is right next to the grocery store though.

The next morning we met up with Layla, Jeff and their friends Tony and his wife for breakfast We rolled over there in Tony's Buick Roadmaster stationwagon. We got to sit in the rear facing seats in the back. It was a little sad to say goodbye to them cos it was fun to run into them on the road all the time.

Our last night was in Brookings where we had a great sunset. I ended up taking like 20 pictures of the sunset - hoping a few looked okay. In town people would ask us where we were going and it was sad to say we were just going to Crescent City 30 miles away. It sounded more impressive when we were near Astoria.

On our way through California (all 30 miles of it) we stopped at a campground for a pitstop and I saw some guy cutting down a branch for firewood. Thought that was a nice touch.

We safely made it to the U-Haul store in Crescent City and picked up our ride back home. It was a little strange to finish a ride at a U-Haul place. The owner called his mom to find out where we could go to get good fish 'n chips and we headed off there for some grub before going home.

We ended up getting zero flats and just had my rear wheel trouble (6 broke spoke and 1 broke rim.) One week was definetly not enough time for a vacation, but it was a nice taste of touring. Hopefully a bigger one will come about soon.

Posted by Sam at August 20, 2003 11:10 AM