Day 7: A day of Beautiful views and wildlife
On day 1 when putting the bike together at the airport, I only half inflated my tires. I was tired and told myself I would fix this the following morning. But I didn’t. I only inflated to max pressure minus 10 psi yesterday morning. And yesterday I could definitely feel the vibration more on my wrist and behind. So this morning, after having 2 peanut butter sandwiches and 4 cookies for breakfast, I let a little more than 5 psi from both tires. Not sure if it is just in my head but feel like my wrist got a lot less numb today.
The cycling today was class. Much more hills than the last 2 days but mostly manageable. I did have to walk a couple but that is more of a lack of fitness on my part rather than the steepness of the hills. The views were great today. So many forests and then class clearings with rivers running through them. I kept fully expecting to see bears hunting for Salman in the rivers like you see in those nature documentaries. But unfortunately (or fortunately?) no bears.
Sometimes my Garmin (or probably the GPX route from RideWithGPS) does some weird thing where it will take me off the main road for 50 meters or so and then bring me back on the main road again for no apparent reason. I guess it is preferring the “off road” even if it makes no sense. So I have learned to zoom out a little and question and ignore some of its commands and let it reroute.
One such command today was a left turn down a big hill onto some side road, but only to merge back onto the same main road 3km or so later after doing a big pointless 5km loop to nowhere. A big down hill would mean a big up hill later. And this side road would definitely cost me time. But it was early in the morning and I was in a good mood humming the only 2 lines I know of Californication on repeat. Well, it is 1 line but repeated twice in the song so it counts as 2 lines. Anyway, I decided to obey the all knowning GPS.
Damn am I glad I did. No vehicles at all. And I saw and got pictures of an owl and a deer. They were both so tame and allowed me to get pretty close. Was really cool.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful by comparison, if you can call cycling through picturesque landscape uneventful. It was so uneventful in fact, there wasn’t even a petrol (gas) station or shop or village or anything all day. You know what that means? Yes, Peanut butter sandwiches for lunch!
I arrived in Long Beach in Cape Disappointment after 60 kms where I decided to treat myself to a real bed. It is my first bed in a week and my power bank was down to 10% charge. Also got a good proper shower with shampoo and conditioner and everything. The whole 9 yards. I am learning to never pass up the opertunity for a shower.
So apparently Long Beach is named as such because it has the longest beach. Or at least the sign says it does (pic attached as evidence) and who am I to argue with a sign. It was pretty long in fairness but stranger still is that it seems common to drive cars onto the beaches here in the states. That is madness.
Tomorrow goal is Astoria or Fort Stevens national park. Both in Oregon meaning I will have crossed my first state. The big decision for tomorrow is how to cross a 4 mile long bridge into Astoria. Am I brave enough to cycle it, or will I hitch hike across? Again, a problem for future me.
Anyway, at this point, rambling here is eating into sleep in real bed time.
