Bodensee, with Company

Number of kilometers: 381

A few days before AniMOVE summer school ended, my partner Melissa showed up on my German doorstep, all the way from Seattle (not unannounced, of course). She planned a trip to be here for a week, with enough time to explore Germany by bike with me for a few days, and to do some of her own sight-seeing. At least, that's how it should've worked. Instead, Melissa was promptly floored by a nasty virus (no doubt introduced from the plane ride), and spent her first few days here feverish and bed-ridden. I was happy that I could provide her a bed in which to convalesce, but I did not feel optimistic about us climbing on our bicycles and riding 50 miles a day.

In the meantime, I finished up my classes. On Friday, I was one of six lucky students who were randomly chosen to go up for a ride in the Institute's research Cessna. We strapped a pair of antennae to the outside of the plane to radio-track some UHF-tagged ducks, and went up in the air to "gather some data", which basically amounted to a scenic tour of the area.

Wheeeeeeeeeee!

On Saturday, we had a morning of presentations on our individual projects, followed by a relaxed day of frisbee, card-playing, and napping. By evening time, Melissa was feeling just well enough to make it out of bed for the goodbye barbecue, which lasted far too late into the evening for my own good. I woke up Sunday morning bleary-eyed and hung over, and not too enthusiastic about starting a long bike ride. Nonetheless, the Kazakh vodka that contributed to my suffering was probably the very same vodka that delivered the final kick in the rear to Melissa's sickness, so who was I to complain? After nearly 60 hours on death's door, she woke up spry and fresh, and ready to hit the road. 

We headed down to Konstanz (her by bus, me by bike) to rent a bicycle for Melissa. A simple enough task in it's own right, but due to a cancelled train (her) and getting a wee bit lost (me), we both got into town about fifteen minutes after the bike rental shop closed. We instead spent a few hours sleuthing around for any other place in town from which we could acquire a bicycle, which was no small feat, given that it was a Sunday, and, once again, nobody does ANYTHING on a Sunday. We ended up finding an underground bike shop in what must have once been a subway station, run by a couple of guys rocking out to what can only be described as porn metal. Point is, we got a bike, and we were off! Several hours later than we wanted, but off, nonetheless.

Lake Constance from 1000 feet.

We planned ourselves a ride around Lake Constance (known in German as Bodensee), comprising a pleasant, flat, and well-traveled 140-mile loop. Bodensee is situated in the northern foothills of the Alps, defining parts of the borders of northern Switzerland, western Austria, and southern Germany. Bodensee also provides the beginning of Germany's portion of the Rhine River. It is far removed from the bustle of city life, instead buried deep in quiet, serene farm country. Our nights were mostly spent camped on the edge of a field between orchards and forest. 

A typical portion of bicycle trail around Lake Constance.

Tourist attractions abounded: the scenic island town of Lindau, Germany, exemplifies Bavarian architecture and culture. The opera house in Bregenz, Austria, is located quite literally on the water, and builds an unbelievably sophisticated new stage for every performance. (I'm also told it was featured in a scene in one of the newish James Bond movies, Quantum of Solace.) The spires of the Münster St. Nikolaus and Konstanz Minster churches dominate the landscape for miles.

The Bregenzer Festspiele's production of Bizet's Carmen.

Mishaps also abounded: during the middle of our very first night out, an unidentified bug crawled its way into my ear while I was sleeping. It woke me up immediately, but instead of panicking, I tried to just lie still until it decided to come back out. That never happened, so after about an hour of lying in the dark listening to its little legs scraping against my eardrum, I decided to wake Melissa for help. Fortunately, the simple act of me talking seemed to scare it out, and it made a hasty departure before she could even grab her flashlight. Ew.

Tuesday afternoon proved to be a wet one, with rainclouds rolling in unleashing their contents at unpredictable intervals. We dodged the major downpours throughout the day by ducking under awnings or into a restaurant, but just as we were picking out our camping spot for the evening, we got hit by a torrent. In the five minutes it took to ride from our field back into town, every little bit of us was soaked, right through our rain gear. The bike paths quickly turned into creeks, and it was not a difficult decision to hightail it to the nearest hotel. We spent a luxurious evening drying out our shoes with a hair dryer and sleeping warmly.

We got back into Konstanz earlier today, where I said goodbye to Melissa. She headed back to Zurich to catch a plane tomorrow, and I headed back up to Radolfzell to stay one more night in an inviting bed before hitting the road in earnest. I've spent two and a half weeks in Southern Germany now, and it's time to start making my way toward Amsterdam. The real biking starts tomorrow. Next up: the Black Forest!

AniMOVE

Before starting to explore Europe by bicycle, I arrived in Germany with two weeks of class ahead of me at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, located just outside of the town of Radolfzell, on the northern shore of Lake Constance. I came to take part in AniMOVE, a summer course focused around animal movement, remote sensing, and species distribution modeling. The program is truly international in flavor: I am one of thirty participating students, who collectively represent eighteen different countries.

But why am I here? Animal movement encompasses some of the most awesome and powerful biological forces on our planet: from the annual 44,000-mile migration of the arctic tern; to the unparalleled size of a caribou herd; the stunning flocking behaviour of a starling murmuration; to the unpredictable impacts of invasive species. These phenomena and countless others have a profound impact on our environment and our lives, and scarcely any of them are currently understood. If we want to protect an endangered species, for example, how can we do so without knowing its movement patterns and habits? Crops are suffering across the globe because bees are dying, but why, and how? We're running out of fish in the ocean, but will they come back, and if so, where? These types of questions are addressed in part by learning how different animals move, from the individual to the global population, from a day-to-day basis to patterns seen across centuries.

Starlings in flight.

This branch of the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, hereto referred to as MPI, is small, but astonishingly ambitious in its research. It promotes and emphasizes collaboration and data sharing through a fledgling but highly successful, freely accessible standardized worldwide database of movement data. (In this age of "big data", making sense of the glut of information out there is an onerous to impossible task, and the importance of standardizing information so that it can "talk" to each other cannot be overstated.) MPI collaborates with governments and NGOs such as NASA, National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and the National Science Foundation to conduct research as sophisticated as launching their own satellite. As a student, I benefit from the enormous wealth of knowledge and experience from the professors and researchers here, and get to rub elbows with some bigwigs in the science community as well.

Now, prior to my arrival in Germany, my German lexicon consisted of the following:

• bitte
• danke
• bier
• Reinheitsgebot
• schlagsahne
• kartoffelbrei

Suffice it to say, not quite enough to get by. Fortunately for me, AniMOVE is taught in English, which has severely softened any culture shock I may have otherwise experienced.  Instead, AniMOVE reminds me of a summer school I might have attended as a kid, except with a lot more work and a lot more beer. The days consist mostly of lecture and labs, but the atmosphere is relaxed and casual, with a healthy amount of time for play. I've spent most every afternoon and even some mornings (I'm not known as a morning person) swimming in a nearby lake (I'm also not known as a water person); the evenings are spent enjoying communal dinners, beer, and general camaraderie. The thirty of us students are housed in respectably luxurious guest quarters, with a spacious community building in an old renovated mill just a short field's walk away. Adjacent to the mill is an ancient castle occupied by a scarcely-seen baron, who I can't help but imagine staring down at us from behind his parapets, scowling through his monocle with a watchful, disapproving eye, but this is probably not an accurate reflection of reality.

Konstanz architecture.

This past weekend allowed time for a couple of fun forays: Saturday took us into the nearby town of Konstanz, a place filled with beautiful architecture, ancient churches, and European charm. On Sunday we took a trip to the Swiss Alps to climb Säntis, at 8209 ft (2502m) the highest peak in the region. The climb to the top featured sheer cliff faces with metal steps and hand cables hammered into the side of the mountain, and the descent was enjoyed from the luxury of a dizzyingly high cable car, that stretched more than two kilometers across jagged peaks and alpine pastures.

The view from the top of Säntis.

All in all, I can scarcely believe that I've already been here for ten days. I've been kept tremendously busy, but I'm having a wonderful time in class, and have absolutely loved the people I've met here.

Me with a classmate "in" traditional Swiss garb.

I've gotten a surprising amount of work done on my graduate research over the last week, but've still had time for frivolities like frisbee. I'll be sad to go in just a few days' time, but am just as excited for what lies ahead when I'm done here.

I hit the road on Sunday! I hope you'll stay tuned.

An Exciting New Adventure

Guten Tag!

It's been a little over two years since my last entry here, and not without good reason. First and foremost, I haven't had the time for any notable bike trips; instead, I've been frittering away the months in graduate school at the University of Washington. I'll soon be starting my third year in the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management program, where I'm currently studying how climate change is affecting species' distributions in the Pacific Northwest. It's been a lot of work so far, and there's an awful lot more to come, but I love what I'm doing, love what I'm learning, love the people and the university environment. And despite the hard work, it's not without its perks.

Case in point: as I type this, I'm currently sitting in class at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Southern Germany, nestled in the foothills of the Alps. Last fall I learned of a two-week course on animal movement being taught here that was directly related to my research. I applied and got a scholarship for the class, my advisor paid for my plane tickets, and BOOM!, just like that, a (mostly) free trip to Europe!

Of course, having never been to Europe before, the way I figure it, if I'm going to fly all the way out yonder, I should probably go ahead and make it worth my while. That's why I decided to take an extra couple of weeks after my class is over to explore the area. And of course, what better vantage could be found than the seat of my bike? After two years of relative physical lethargy and neglect, it's time to dust off the old saddle and venture out once more! Never mind the ever-growing pain in my ailing knees caused by previous bike tours, never mind the fact that I'm out of shape and haven't ridden more than twenty miles in a day in forever. When the road's a callin', this guy heeds the call. So here's the plan: I scheduled my travel so that I fly into Zurich. From there, I travel to Radolfzell, Germany, for two weeks of class. After that, I have eighteen days to make it approximately 650 miles to Amsterdam by bike, to fly back home. As far as I'm concerned, anything and everything that happens between here and there is pure gravy. Now, before I get ahead of myself (since I'm already here in Germany), let's bring you to speed:

I had never flown with my bicycle before, and was pretty anxious about the process for a few reasons: the only prior experience I had checking precious cargo on a plane resulted in a thoroughly destroyed instrument case and a missing (read: stolen) pocket knife, so I didn't have a lot of reason to trust airlines to take good care of my bike. Furthermore, airlines are notorious for shaking down bicyclists with exorbitant fees, and I was flying with Delta, widely regarded as the worst offender.

Every town in Switzerland of more
than 20 people has one of these.

In order to package a bike for flying, you need to compactify it a little so that it can fit inside of a giant narrow box, mostly just by removing the pedals and turning the handlebars sideways. I wrapped many of the more sensitive parts of my bike with newspaper and masking tape, used my sleeping bag and Therm-a-rest as extra padding, and used copious quantities of packing tape to ensure the box wouldn't lose its contents on a tarmac in transit. The box arrived pretty thoroughly beaten up and with a couple of small holes, but the contents were no worse for wear, and, most importantly, nothing was missing. In order to avoid the baggage fees associated with four panniers' worth of gear, I took advantage of a suitcase I found in an alley in my neighborhood just a week or so prior to my trip. I was able to fit all four panniers and their contents inside of the one suitcase, and then I just abandoned it with a free sign on it after I arrived in Zurich. Once I got off the plane, I was able to find my luggage and reassemble my bike and gear all inside of an hour.

From there, I set off to ride from the airport to Radolfzell, equipped with a laughably complex set of directions printed out from Google Maps, and a map that didn't show enough detail to be of much use. After several false starts in the wrong direction I eventually found my bearings, despite the fact that I couldn't find any of the roads mentioned in my directions. After I made it through the first couple of towns, I realized that my directions really weren't needed; as long as I knew which town I wanted to head to next, I could just follow the signage without too much trouble. I took some wrong turns here and there, but for the most part it was smooth sailing.

The area between Zurich and Radolfzell was mostly scenic farmland and gently hilly forest. Every single township was connected by a bicycle path that guided me away from roads and instead through fields of crops and sheep and along forest borders, restricting my interactions with traffic to passing through towns. Any other day of the week this would've been the most wonderful thing in the world, but it didn't make much of a difference to me; the roads were almost completely deserted, presumably because it was Sunday, and apparently nobody does anything on Sundays here. Every town I passed through featured ancient clock towers chiming for no one, echoing off of shuttered businesses. Bucolic public wells continually replenished babbling cisterns with drinking water on almost every street corner. I saw lots of cyclists out enjoying the countryside, but most of them were either families or adorable old couples.

One of many many charming public wells.

Unfortunately, I didn't end up sleeping much on the plane from Seattle, so I departed from the airport for the 90-kilometer ride when my body was telling me it was 3am. By the time I got to Radolfzell, I had been awake for close to thirty hours, and I was more than ready to collapse into a bed. As it turned out, I arrived about eight minutes before the orientation began for the class I am attending, so I ended up quietly nodding off in a chair for a bit instead.

And that more or less brings us up to speed. I'm far from caught up on sleep yet, but that'll happen in due time. Until then, I'm in class here for the next two weeks. I have always strived to restrict this blag to be about bicycle travel and only bicycle travel, because I never wanted it to devolve into a pathetic, ignored and unread exposition about my personal life. That said, I won't be hitting the road to explore Europe for a while yet, but I still plan on writing something here occasionally; it's a whole new world I'm experiencing here, and even if I'm not actively cycling, it's all part of the same trip in the end. So one way or another, stay tuned, there's plenty more to come.

Glad to have a reason to be writing here again!

A Break, for Now

Hi folks,

I've had a feeling growing inside of me for quite a while, and I think it's reached the point where it's grown large enough so that I can no longer ignore it: I'm tired of maintaining this blag, and taking the time during my travels to find a computer, sit down, gather my thoughts, and fiddle with technologies. It's been a great joy to get some of my thoughts and experiences down in words for others to share, but what should be a fun and light-hearted endeavour is coming to feel like more and more of a chore for me. I think this struggle is reflected in my writing, both in quantity and quality, and in earnest, I'd rather just not write than do it so half-heartedly. Thanks for tagging along with me thus far, and I'm sure there will be more stories shared here at some point (like when I'm finished with this trip, and am back in front of my own computer with time to spare). Until then, I'm signing off for a spell.

(A brief update: I made it to San Francisco yesterday, after a pleasant, scenic, and sunny-but-not-too-hot few days down Highway 1. I'm staying here with my friend Alan, who is working on a postdoc at Stanford (I previously visited him during another bike trip through Providence in 2009, where he showed me how to dissect fruit flies.) I've never been to San Francisco before (except for a brief high-school band trip that really doesn't count), so I'm planning on taking some time to explore the city before continuing on.)

Much love to all,

Scott

The Lost Coast

Number of miles: 555

It's hard to travel with vegetables. It's a sad, sad fact of the road, but, for the most part, they just don't keep in a saddlebag. As a rule, anything leafy that cannot be consumed on the spot, does not get consumed. I do my best to mitigate my lack of fresh food by gorging on greens whenever I can, but the opportunity never presents itself as much as I'd like. When I departed from Orleans, though, I left with a thoroughly rejuvenated colon, cleansed with the bounty of a growing season a good month or two ahead of what I'm accustomed to; the gardens are already raging here, in all their cruciferous splendor.

In between the produce stands, I've been pleasantly surprised to find the coast liberally dotted with breweries I've long ago come to respect. This has a tendency to impede my process some, but also provides an excellent escape from the midday heat. Lost Coast, Eel River, Mad River, Boonville, Lagunitas, North Coast, the list goes on. I can't visit them all, but I'll be damned if I can't try. Who's ever heard of a BUI, anyway?

A ways south of Eureka, I decided to split off from the 101 for a spell, to take in a stretch of rural coastline known as the Lost Coast. The California highway map I have didn't go into enough detail to actually show the route that meanders through tiny, forgotten towns, but I had heard mention of the trail, and at least knew the start and end points, and figured that was good enough. It was, to the extent that I made it out alive, but I would highly discourage any cyclist from following that route; in the end, it was the most taxing and difficult day of riding I've ever done. The road was pleasantly free of traffic, but miserably pock-marked, potholed and crumbling, and outright unpaved for many stretches. Mountain after demoralizing mountain appeared before me, making for endless climbing. These were the steepest grades I've ever seen, literally impossible to ride up in some places, my front tire lifting off the ground with every pedal stroke from being pitched back so far. (I later found out from a local that that stretch of road was the steepest paved road in the entire state.) The weather was miserably hot, and water was scarce; three towns in a row provided no services, their water all unpotable. I stopped frequently to eat, rehydrate, cool off, and fortify myself in any way I could think, before continuing on, only to stop five minutes later, thoroughly exhausted and discouraged. My inadequate map told me nothing of where I was going, or how much further there was to go. I walked and pushed my bike up a lot of gravel, it constantly sliding out from under my grip. At the end of the day, I gave up more than thirty miles short of where I expected to be, unable to muster the psychological or physical strength to go on. I slept in a wooded cemetery that night, along with every mosquito in Humboldt County.

I kept trying to find silver linings in my misery, but all I could come up with were ways in which things could've been worse, like getting flat tires (knock on madrone), which is hardly a silver lining at all; things could always be worse. Lost Coast, as far as I'm concerned, you can stay lost; your scenery is weak by comparison, and in the end, just not worth the trouble. While I was riding along the water, I stopped for a spell to explore what certainly would've been tide pools in Oregon or Washington, but here were strangely devoid of life; all I could find was some seaweed, a few pelicans in the distance, and some strange giant barnacle/jellyfish-like thing, but may have just been half of an old papaya, I couldn't tell.

Animal or vegetable?

I'm in Garberville now, visiting another friend of mine from Seattle, who is down here working on a farm for the summer. I've been lending a hand where I can, planting, watering, and mulching the day away until it's too dark to work. We went swimming in the Eel River yesterday, during the heat of the afternoon. It was an unbelievably refreshing reward to wash off the compounding layers of sweat, sunscreen and dirt, but I slipped on a wet patch of moss and cracked my tailbone right on a jagged rock sticking out of the sand, an unpleasant popping sound made on impact. I don't think I broke anything, but a day later, it's still pretty damned tender, and very painful to sit down. I have yet to try climbing on my bike to see what riding is like, but I'm really hoping it doesn't interfere with the rest of my trip.

On a final note, and as a brief aside, happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there, and thanks for everything you've done to raise your children as best you can. Keep it up.

Sleeping in Trees

Number of miles: 377

One of the unfortunate consequences of moving immediately prior to starting a bike trip is that my belongings are all inaccessible, or at least in a state of severe disarray; I often have trouble locating what I need to bring along with me, or just outright forget to pack something. In this case, I ended up leaving Eugene without soap or towel; no major consequence for me, per se, but I pity the person who finds themself in close proximity to me for the next few weeks, between my infrequent bathing. Far more significant, though, was my neglect in packing a sun shirt, which protects me from the relentless evil rays of the afternoon, and, as a bonus, protects me at dusk from mosquitoes, with too tight a weave for them to penetrate. Compounding this problem was the bottle of sunscreen that I set off with, it having expired about three years ago. Now, most everything comes with expiration dates these days, and some matter, and some really don't. Turns out they matter for sunscreen. I lucked out during the first few days biking, with overcast weather, or cool enough temperatures to warrant long sleeves, but on my fifth day I got royally torched on my arms, shoulders, and tops of my legs, making everything, even sleep, a painful and difficult task. (Everybody do yourself a favour: watch this, and act accordingly.)

But I get ahead of myself. The ride from Eugene to the coast was splendiferous; I followed the Smith River, a well-maintained, but utterly forgotten scenic backroad through the Coastal Range. The Smith River lazily carves its way through towering cliff faces covered with sword, bracken, and delicate maidenhair ferns, past waterfalls and moss-carpeted cascades, on its way out to sea. The forests were rife with wildflowers, with wild irises, foxgloves, and giant cauliflower heads of hogweed bursting from every surface. It was an excellent time and place for foraging: fiddleheads, miners lettuce, oxalis, and salmonberries were in abundance, with thimbleberries not far behind. Even crawdads could be found in great numbers, if I were ever brave/desperate enough (I'm not). In the forty-mile stretch along the Smith River to Reedsport, I was passed by four cars.

Sunset at the Oregon Coast.

The coastal route of southern Oregon was largely forgettable until Gold Beach, where the highway starts following along cliffs overlooking the ocean. The powerful coastal winds were at my back for much of the day, and pushed me down to the state border with relative ease. I was hoping that the border between Oregon and California was a latitudinally arbitrary measure of statehood, but in fact, the landscape changed within minutes of crossing, the public beaches of Oregon giving way to miles of nothing but heavily-farmed agricultural fields. It stayed this way until just north of Crescent City, with small stands of forest giving a glimpse of what lay ahead.

Roosevelt elk grazing in Redwood Creek valley.

Redwoods! After spending a day biking through, walking in, and sleeping in, the redwood forests, I am convinced that no amount of prose, measurements, statistics or comparisons will do justice to describe the humbling experience and grandeur of standing in the middle of a redwood grove. They are truly a marvel of nature, simultaneously difficult to comprehend but easy to accept. And, um, big. Really big. (I read a sign about a particular tree, appropriately named "Big Tree", that told a story of an early settler in the area who wanted to cut it down so he could make a dance floor out of the stump.) To illustrate: I got caught in the middle of a long, steep ascent out of the Redwood Creek valley late in the evening, with both sundown and rain imminent. I stopped and wandered into a stand of redwoods, and found a tree, hollowed out by fire but still very much alive, with ample room for my bicycle and rolled out sleeping bag. I slept dry and peaceful that night, nestled snugly inside of a tree, insulated on three sides by four-foot-thick walls, the fourth opening to a sloping hillside of forest shrouded in mist.

Redwoods embraced in fog.

I awoke the next morning with the fog still clinging tightly and thickly to the mountainside, obscuring visibility to just a few metres, with many miles of a winding, 20% grade climb still before me. The mist dewed up in my sorry excuse for a beard as I strained and sweated my way above the clouds, and up many more miles of desolate, sunny dirt roads, to finally descend into the next valley over. I quickly left behind the lush and damp old growth for a drier and much hotter, but equally beautiful, climate: the Klamath River watershed (cue the aforementioned sunburn).

Morning mountain dew.

As luck would have it, my debilitating blistering coincided with my arrival in the tiny little town of Orleans (population 600), to visit my friend, Stormy, for a couple of days. (Recuperation is far easier with an abundance of reliable shade, aloe, a soft bed, and some goddamned functional sunscreen.) I first met Stormy in Pittsburgh two summers ago, during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh. An activist and media specialist, she works here in tandem with the local Karuk tribe on issues such as resource management, dam removal, and native harvesting rights.

It is easy to see here, more than other places I've been, that water is the fundamental life source of the region. All life is centered around the magnificent confluence of rivers in these mountains; the hills are a dry, prickly, forbidding place, but every gully, fold or valley is burgeoning with creeks or tributaries or outright raging rapids. In the afternoons of summer, everybody's work stops early, and folks spend the rest of their day at the river. It has fed and sustained populations here for millennia, and the forest itself seems to flow down the mountains along the same gradients, orienting itself in the direction of the water. Its importance is even reflected in language: the Karuk word for "good-tasting", I'm told, more literally translates as "pretty close to salmon". I was hoping to get out in a raft or kayak while I was here, but the rivers are all dangerous torrents of snowmelt right now. Another time.

The confluence of the Klamath River and Bluff Creek.

The weather has thus far been incredibly accommodating; the days have been mild on the coast, the nights pleasant, and I've only needed to roll out my tarp once. (I love sleeping without a tent, but it's funny how many times I've woken up in the middle of the night with a squirrel or chipmunk crawling on my head. Seriously. It's a thing.) It's much hotter inland, though still quite bearable. I set off again in the morning, though, back toward the coast, where cooler temperatures prevail, at least for now.

The Great Jefferson Adventure

Hey folks, summer is here (read: it's not raining every day anymore), and you know what that means! It's time to wipe the winter deposits of road grime and grease off the bike and hit the road for adventures unknown.

In keeping with vagabondic tradition (the fourth year in a row, now), I've officially moved out of my house, shunted all my crap into my parents' house (thanks, Mom and Pops), and have readied myself for a summer's worth of bumming around. Regretfully, the summer is shaping up to have much less opportunity for bike trips than I would like, but that bitter pill is sugar-coated with the very reason it's true: at some point this summer, I will be moving back up to Seattle, in time to start graduate school at University of Washington this fall. It will be a dramatic departure from my current lifestyle that can satisfy capricious whims such as, say, hopping on a bike for a month, without repercussion; I'm very excited to be returning to Seattle, though, and even more excited about starting my program. The new direction that my life will soon take is a welcome one, whatever the consequences.

But in the meantime, onward! I have just under a month between now and when I need to be back in Eugene for the Oregon Country Fair, and I'm going to do my best to utilize it. I'll be making my way west to the coast, down to the nether regions of Our Great Republic, and into the great State of Jefferson. I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Jefferson, but have seen almost none of it in my adulthood. Likewise, I've never biked any of the coast south of Florence. Redwoods and gold country and foreign coastlines and mountains await me, in all their unknown splendor. I can't wait, nor need I.

Please join me here, once again, as I bumble my way forward.