Canada, Minus One

Number of miles: 799

The layover in Centralasia served a twofold purpose: visiting friends, and giving Shannan's knees a day's rest. They'd been bothering her some, as they had at the start of her bike trip last summer, and she knew from experience that some down time was just what they needed to recover. We set off for Olympia in high spirits.

Just after passing through Olympia, however, they started hurting quite a bit again. We found a place to camp and stopped for the day, and the following morning she hitched a ride up the Olympic Peninsula to Quilcene, where her family has a cabin. This gave her another day's rest while I rode on to catch up to her. The ride was a spectacular one, the highway skirting the edge of Hood Canal much of the way, starfish and dungeness crabs viewable from the literal roadside. Once I arrived, we both took a relaxing day at the cabin together (aside from a brief forty-mile ride to Port Townsend for groceries), picking blackberries, cooking good food and canoeing around Lake Leland.

Lake Leland and the Olympic foothills from the cabin's porch.

When we started out the next day, it seemed clear relatively early on that Shannan's knee problems were not getting much better; despite frequent icing, ibuprofens, arnica salve and resting time, the pain was continuing to flare, and even begin to spread as her body tried to adjust to different riding postures. We had a scenic ride along the Olympic Discovery rails-to-trails to Port Angeles, where we stayed the night while discussing our options.

A trestle through an old-growth canopy on the Olympic Discovery Trail.

The following morning we caught the ferry to Victoria, to spend a slow day in town being ridiculously touristy, as is surely impossible to avoid in Victoria. To paraphrase a not-too-wise lump of clay, though, there was no use prevaricating around the bush; we both knew Shannan couldn't continue on without risking permanent damage to her knees, if such a thing hadn't happened already. She made the difficult decision of heading back home by ferry and bus, while I made the equally difficult decision of continuing on this trip by myself. This adventure had been weeks in the planning for us, and it was more than a little heartbreaking to see it change so drastically right on the doorstep of the new and unexplored.

Victorian Parliament.

But, as it turns out, Shannan was quite right in her decision. My first day's ride out of Victoria was probably the most physically demanding I've ever been through. I am giving my best attempt at following the Trans Canada Trail, a bicycle route that, in theory, goes from Victoria all the way to Newfoundland. (In practice, it is an underdeveloped work in progress, with frequent gaps and detours.) Much of the trail makes use of existing local trailways, abandoned railroad corridors, and logging roads; as such, my skinny road tires are often not optimally suited for the boulderific trails more appropriate for mountain bikes.

The TCT started promisingly enough, right from the ferry's gate, and onto the Galloping Goose bike trail, a splendid paved path out of town that has seniority over all other traffic. It soon ended, though, and then spit me onto the shoulder of Highway 1, hugging hellish hills for hours. The path eventually split off again, and connected to the vast network of Cowichlan Valley trails. Beautiful, flat, isolated trails ran through miles (er, kilometres) of rainforest and rivers. All was well once more, until the sudden appearance of the dreaded Kinsol Trestle. One of the highest railroad trestles in the world, the Kinsol currently touts derelict status, which is unfortunate, given that the TCT is routed right over it. Construction is currently in the works to have it open again by 2011, but in the meantime, I was rerouted through a poorly-marked, backbreaking 10-km bypass, which had me wedging my bike through logging fences, up brutal logging roads, and one particular 4-km stretch of footpath through the forest that was signed as "not recommended for bicycles", which proved to be quite the understatement. Most all of it had to be either walked, slid downhill, or "push-upped" steep embankments, which involved establishing a firm footing, pushing my bike and gear up about a foot, locking the brakes and then taking a step forward and doing it again, frequently sliding backward in the dirt. Three hours, one flat tire, and one comical spill over my handlebars and into the bushes, and I was finally through.

The soon-to-be resurrected Kinsol Trestle.

The road has since been its more forgiving combination of highway shoulders and backcountry roads, and tomorrow I'll be taking the ferry from Nanaimo to Vancouver. It's been a humbling experience here on the island so far, and more likely than not, a sign of what's to come. (I've even seen a bear already.) It's no longer the trip that I planned for, but I'm glad that I have experience with this kind of travel.

The path most simple
is rarely the easiest
but still we go on.

[P.S. I'll try and post some pictures in Vancouver, if I can find some access to a computer that doesn't come with a librarian breathing down my neck.]

A Brief Detour to Central Asia

Nary a man has lived as mightily and magnanimously as my friend and former roommate Francis, of Contrapparatus fame. Having graced the city of Seattle with his presence for the last couple of years, he has moved on to greener and more familial pastures about ninety miles down the road, in the quaint little town of Centralia, or, more familiarly, Centralasia. Though hearts and bodies might move on, the brethrenhood of the traveling Lunies lives on, and it was a quick and easy decision to make the side trip inland to go and visit while we were passing on by on our way up north.

Having traversed our way around the romantically tranquil Willapa Bay, we began what was supposed to be a Rails-to-Trails from coastal-ish Raymond to inland-Chehalis, but turned out to be a mere Rails-to-not-Rails, in that the old railway had been removed, but the trail had not been further developed, and in some places was even still littered with railroad spikes. After a brief attempt at riding through foot-deep gravel, we opted instead for the paralleling Highway 6. It started out promisingly enough with generous shoulders and a minimum of traffic, but quickly went south upon entering 24 miles of highway construction, replete with torn up roads, tar that covered my tires with gravel, and monstrous trucks that preferred to pretend I wasn't there. The return of scorching sun and heat iced the cake to make for one of the worst days of riding I've ever had, but the arrival in Centralasia made up for it all.

Francis lives at Coffee Creek Community and Gardens, a rustic farm nestled in a wooded valley. The lack of running water is made up for in the abundance of produce, animals and kindness that the place and people exuded. We spend a day's rest there, helping out a bit at the Chehalis farmers' market, washing some clothes, and just taking it easy.

During last summer's bicycle travels, Shannan and I stayed at an Mennonite intentional community in Minneapolis that we had found on Couchsurfing. It was a bustling house hopping with activity, and while we were there, there were a couple of other travelers, including a fellow named Seth from Portland, and Derrick from North Carolina. (As it turned out, I ran into Derrick again later that summer in Pittsburgh, during the G20 protests.) Imagine our surprise, then, when, across the country and on another bicycle trip together, we ran into Seth, who now lives on a farm here in Centralasia, and with Derrick, no less. Now, I know it's a small, small world and all, but running into the same person in three random places all across the country in the space of less than a year, with no pre-arranged contact in between? I have to say, it bemusedly blew my mind a little.

A brief moment of terror occurred during the market, when a sudden pair of explosions rocked the vegetable stands and flexed the windows on all the buildings around us. Francis was in the middle of playing music for a festive audience, but a collective silence seized the crowd. We figured it had been some kind of factory explosion outside of town, but it just turned out to be the now famed Obama sonic boom, the jets roaring past us on the way from Portland.

We're all rested up and clean again now, and hitting the road again early tomorrow morning, Olympia-bound, and then up the peninsula. Look out oysters, here I come...

Hello Coast, Goodbye Sunscreen

The first task at hand was to find a route to the coast that didn't involve the relentless pounding of traffic and logging trucks, a task accomplished by simply riding out of town on the friendliest road I knew, and continuing to follow friendly-looking roads in a vaguely northwestern direction. The route took us through back-road Willamette Valley vineyards territory (with tasting aplenty), and quickly up into the national forest of the coastal range, where traffic virtually disappeared. We wheeled our way through thickets of thimbleberries and brambles of blackberries that suffered a surfeit of fruit, and we gorged our guts to gustatory satisfaction. A perfect amount of sun, clouds, and mild wind combined to create ideal conditions for the start of a trip.

Our arrival at the coast was laughably cliché, in that the coastline was tightly enshrouded in thick clouds, visible as a looming grey wall that grew to encompass us as we approached. My map said that the average summer temperature of the Oregon Coast is 58 degrees, a statistic I would come to find impossible to refute. While the rest of the country sweltered through a heatwave, I shivered along miles of highway, wrapped up in layers of long underwear under my jacket.

The Oregon Coast is part of one of the most well-traveled bicycle routes in the entire country, a literal interstate of cyclists from all over the world with all sorts of agendas: I met a family that left their home in Vancouver with their six- and two-year-old daughters, to hit the road for a couple of years, with no previous bicycling experience; a Brit making his way southward from Alaska; an eighteen-year-old from South Korea who is making his way to his first year of college in Vancouver by way of El Salvador; tandems and recumbents; ultra-lightweight speedsters and folks who just couldn't stand to leave their cast-iron ware at home. Everybody is out on the road; I even ran into a friend of mine from Seattle who was on his way down to Santa Barbara. (Hell, I even got passed by my mom in a car somewhere between Cannon Beach and Seaside.) And of course, most every one of them is headed in the opposite direction, as everyone knows that you're supposed to bike from north to south; the prevailing summer winds are said to dismantle a cyclist's spirits in the space of a schoolgirl's wink. As a result, much of the road's shoulders have only been developed one the west side, whereas the northern route contains potholes large enough to pitch a tent in. This, at least, was the word on the street...

As it turned out, however, it was a fine ride. The most tedious part was having to cross the highway traffic every time I wanted to stop and see something on the ocean side. Otherwise, the shoulders are quite manageable, and the wind, that fickle mistress, seemed just as likely to blow with you as against you.

A deceivingly fleeting sunbreak.

Several days worth of beaches, an almost equal number of days of clouds, one astounding Fata Morgana-esque sunset, and one mandatory visit to Rogue Brewery later, we made it to Astoria, last stop in Oregon before crossing the Bridge of Bicyclist Doom, more commonly known as the Astoria Bridge, a four-mile truss bridge spanning the mouth of the Columbia River. I'd previously crossed it twice before, once in each direction, and each time was a harrowing experience, sandwiched in a nonexistent bike lane between reckless logging trucks out for blood and a very long fall to some very uninviting waters. Fortune favours the bold, however; the bike lanes had been doubled in width since my last crossing, and we hit it on a Sunday morning, with a minimum of traffic. Aside from the thoroughly traumatic experience of watching a cormorant fly head into an oncoming car a few feet in front of me, it was an uneventful crossing.

Abandon hope, all ye who cross here...

It'll be time to start heading inland very soon; I'll be curious how long it takes for the sun to creep back out and make me miserable.

That's All, Folks!

Total number of miles: 921
Total number of hours: 81

Oh, right, I'm still maintaining a blag. Funny how quickly the mind moves on.

During my final few days in Tum Tum, I kept a constant eye on the weather forecast, which prophesized endless weeks of rain, all across the dreary state of Washington. It was an easy decision to make: I'd ridden my bicycle, I'd gone the places and seen the people I wanted to; I had nothing to prove to myself about my abilities as a cyclist, and no particular "completist" mentality. And, perhaps most importantly, I had myself a free ride to Seattle, since Katherine would be returning from one home to another soon. I tossed my bike in her car, blew a kiss to the land, and trundled across the state, tracing the sodden path that I would've otherwise pedaled.

I spent a luxurious few days in Seattle hunkered down at a friend's house, avoiding most any sort of notion of responsibility before my inevitable return to the innumerable loose ends that comprise the tapestry of my life. By a rather uninteresting set of circumstances, my car was waiting for me in Seattle, and it was thus a quick and easy jaunt back to Eugene, save for a stopover in Portland for some birthday bowling with the nephews (happy birthday, Eamon!).

And here I am, back to life as usual. Kind of. If there's one thing I've noticed, it's that I don't seem to excel at holding any kind of "usual" pattern to my life; the stream of ideas, passions, inspirations and adventures flow as steadily as time, guiding me ever onward to new horizons and new places. When I first started this trip, I said that it couldn't've come at a better time for me, and in retrospect, it's easy for me to say that it couldn't've served me better; these short few weeks have provided me with no less than two major epiphanies about the course of my life, and I'm returning to the fray with a sense of clarity that has escaped me for months. Perhaps a river would be a more apt metaphor than the simile of time: as Heraclitus said, you can never step into the same river twice; indeed, the life I return to now, the life that is before me, feels ever different than the life I left behind just a short month ago. If I've been carried away in the current of the last half-year, this month I learned how to swim again. This, as much as anything, is what makes it all worthwhile.

Thanks for reading, everyone. You can probably expect another trip sometime later this summer, if you care to check back in. In the meantime, let's all try and be conscious of the long-term consequences of our actions, however small or insignificant they may seem, and think good thoughts about the ocean; it needs some serious lovin' right now, just like the rest of us.

Love,
Scott


View Portland to Missoula in a larger map

La Monteillet Fromagerie

Number of miles: 363
Number of flat tires: 228
Minimum number of pounds of goat cheese consumed: 3

Me and my big mouth. I had to go and say something about how I hadn't had any flat tires. As I rode out of Walla Walla, soon after writing last, a thunderclap announced the arrival of a storm that immediately started dumping down a slurry of frigid sleet and hail. And of course, about five minutes later, I got a flat. I fixed my tube on the side of the highway, drenched from the sleet and the passing trucks, fingers quickly freezing without my gloves. By the time I got on the road again, I could no longer feel my fingers, and didn't have much warmth left with which to heat them up. Looking up the road at the expanse of looming clouds, I knew this would be a long, cold, cold night.

But! Luck was no stranger that day. By the time I neared the end of my day, the sun had returned enough to dry me out some, as had the feeling in my extremities. As the sun was setting and I was looking for a place to bed down for the night, I passed a goat farm that looked inviting enough. I sallied up to the door, and was immediately greeted with an enthusiastic embrace, congratulations, cheese and wine, before I could even say who I was or what I was doing. I was given an AirStream to stay in, known locally as the KyleStream, which had been given to the farm by Kyle MacLachlan, of Twin Peaks and Sex in the City fame (apparently he grew up around here or something). I was stuffed to the gills with wonderful food and saunaed well into the evening.

What passes for dog food at a fromagerie (I'm not kidding).

Monteillet Fromagerie is a gorgeous farm, owned by Pierre-Louis, an endearingly charming Frenchman, and his equally gregarious wife, Joan. Goats, sheep, dogs, cats, geese, ducks and chickens all run under feet around a sprawling, lush tract of gently-wooded grassland in the Walla Walla valley, cut through by the Touchet River. In was an easy decision to stay an extra day to help out some, and get to know the place better. After a day of weeding, plowing, food and wine and playing with animals, several of us drove to the nearby town to what I can confidently say was the best bar I've ever been to in my life. jimgermanbar is the brainchild of its namesake, Jim German, a Seattle transplant who has shunned the city lights and commotion, in lieu of a more low-key and intimate setting, to bring his noble gift to all who seek it: Master and God of the Cocktail. I tried (note: tried) six or seven different drinks from him, and every. single. one. was without a doubt the best cocktail I'd ever had. After my first few tastes, it was clear this was a man who could do no wrong; I didn't even bother picking something from the menu, but just asked them to bring me "something". Wow. If you're ever in the neighborhood, or even if you're not, good lord. It's worth the drive to Waitsburg.

Hello, friend.

I set off the next morning well rested, showered, laundered, and laden with cheese. Monteillet would be an exceptionally easy place to get sucked into (they offered to keep me for the week, and then drive me to Missoula, and I don't think they were kidding), but I was ready to get back on my bike. I had a pleasant, if non-descript, day of cycling ahead of me.

But ugh, today has been the most trying by far. I woke up to rain this morning, and after wheeling my bike out of the field of grass I camped in, found both of my tires completely flat. I spent the next two hours pulling out literally hundreds (I counted) of vicious thorns from my tires, portaging my bike and gear to safer ground, and reassembling. I was lucky (or just smart) to have been carrying two extra tubes with me, because there aren't enough tire patches in the country to have fixed those poor shredded tubes. It's continued to rain nonstop all day, and though I've only made it about fifteen miles so far today, as I look out the window from the familiar comfort of a library, it seems a daunting task to head back out into the dreariness. It helps to look on the bright side, though; at least I have goat cheese.

La Furia del Viento

Number of miles: 254
Number of flats: 0
Number of bugbites: 0
Number of other touring cyclists: 0

Well, starting a bicycle trip in early May is not without its risks. Things started out quite pleasantly, as only a trip along the Historic Columbia River Highway can be. Carving its way along and through cliff faces, past countless waterfalls, and endless forest, this highway is a cyclist's dream; not only are there generous bike lanes abound, but significant stretches of the highway have been closed to cars for decades, leaving the road to just you and a few scattered pedestrians.

The Columbia River, gorge-ous as ever.

A section of the Highway, closed to car traffic.

I've wanted to do this stretch Oregon for quite a while, but after a previous experience cycling in the Columbia Gorge, told myself I would only ever do it from West to East, as the wind goes. And boy, does it go. I had been enjoying a pleasant tail wind, up until my the morning of my second day, which had me crossing the river from The Dalles to connect up to Hwy 14. By this point, the wind had picked up considerably, and continued getting worse as the day went on. I ended up having to walk my bike across the bridge, and for most of the three miles up to 14; when I tried to ride, it took all of my forearm strength to not be pushed off the road, and I had to lean against the wind considerably. Any time a truck would pass me, though, I would fall over, as though a wall I'd been leaning on had suddenly evaporated. Once I got to the highway, however, it was one of the exceptionally rare circumstances on a bicycle where the wind seems to work entirely in your favour. There was one particularly memorable mile-long uphill stretch where I kept a steady 17mph pace without pedaling. Of course, one of the downsides to all the wind was that it made any stopping/resting nearly impossible; there was nowhere to avoid it, nothing to hide behind, and it chilled to the bone, hurt the skin, exhausted the ears. (Lest anyone think I exaggerate, I will report, sans hyperbole, that the next day's Tri-City Herald reported that windspeeds of up to 102mph were recorded in the Gorge, sections of highway were shut down, more than one town declared a civil emergency, and a windsurfer met an untimely end out on the river.

One advantage of going through the Gorge is that it's the only east-west route that manages to avoid a mountain pass in the Cascades, but I was still surprised at how quickly the climate shifted right on cue; within about ten miles, the landscape changed from verdant, mossy firs and ferns, to the familiar and more subtle ponderosas, sage and burdock root of the eastern slopes.

Admittedly, not the best design for a bike path.

It's been pretty cold at night. Anticipating this, I geared up a bit heavier than my trip last summer: more warm clothes, a tent instead of my tarp, and a new sleeping bag rated 15 degrees lower than my old one. Last night was the first night where wind or rain didn't keep me huddled inside my tent all night, and I took advantage of the clear skies by finding a clear patch of ground amidst the sagebrush to unroll my sleeping bag, and got my first good view of the spring stars. It got into the mid-thirties, I think, but was snuggly warm all night long. I've been fighting off a bug that's been living in my sinuses and throat, but, this morning aside, I seem to be winning that battle.

Other than that, it's been a fairly uneventful trip so far. Water has been suprisingly scarce, though much of the dry spell was through a stretch of Washington that simply had nothing there. As I start climbing elevation through the Columbia Plateau, though, I'm sure that'll change. Fer chris' sakes, I can see snow en them thar mountains, I know there must be runoff!

Last Day of Life in Seattle

Dammitall, I wasn't planning on starting this blag until I started my bike trip, but my last celebratory day in Seattle was so wonderfully filled with music and bicycle-filled shenanigans, I couldn't not at least include some pictures.

The day started off with marching in the Seattle Pride Parade with Rainbow City Marching Band. The social context of this could not have been better, Michael Jackson having died just a few days before; we've been playing an epic version of Thriller all season, and the crowds went positively ape-shit when they heard us coming. We even had a dance routine worked out in the middle of the song.

From there it was off to the Wild Rose, where Yellow Hat Band was playing for the sex toys drag race that Hazard Factory was hosting. They were running about an hour behind schedule, so we headed over to Cal Anderson park for an impromptu set in the sun. We took off our shoes and played in the middle of the wading pool near the fountain, and were soon joined by a gaggle of gyrating, splash-dancing onlookers, who, I am so proud to say, unabashedly broke through their Seattle-freeze exteriors to shake their booties with reckless abandon.

After the Wild Rose show (meh), I rode home with some friends to confront Ye Olde Minstrel Cycle, what will surely be proven to be the most genius contraption ever built in the history of contraptions, and ultimately, the whole point of this post. The Minstrel Cycle, commissioned by my roommate Webster, was built by our friend Colin (www.haulincolin.com). He took a 1962 Jeep chassis and hooked up eight bicycles to it to turn it into a pedal-powered parade float of mayhem. (It made its first public appearance earlier in the day as the Madison Market Co-op entry in Pride.) It is controlled with a steering wheel by a driver standing on a giant platform overlooking the pedalers, and has an equally giant lever of a brake (of admittedly dubious stopping power) located at the helm.

Nine of us piled on (including an innocent bystander who jumped on as we set out) and took a tour of the neighborhood, in a glorious cacophony of grinding gears, bicycle bells, laughter and shouts.

Colin, well done, sir. My yellow hat goes off to you. I haven't had such fun since going human bowling with a giant gerbil ball and a stack of 60-gallon oil drums.