for a new blog, that is.
thought i might share some of my trips since gra is always asking about my "adventures" on the west coast. so here's my bike trip...er, tour, of the olympic peninsula, preceded by a
really amazing music festival in anacortes, washington.
the bike. all suited up with some extra stuff on top at the moment... looking a little chaotic, i suppose.
i craigslisted myself a ride and met a fun filmmaker who talked art, music, and politics with me for quite a long time. she had a toyota van for touring (with around 300,000 miles on it!) and a cute dog that was really scared of people.
the week before i left there were a lot of bees out around portland hanging around this particular plant.
a political sculpture in seattle. the cig is some found object addition, i reckon.
made it to beautiful anacortes!!!!! lots of really welcoming people in this here town. and among the archipelago. got a nice tip that the "canadian san juans", the gulf islands, are perhaps even more enjoyable than the san juans when it comes to bike touring.
the san juans / geumes island near sunset.
behold mountainous whoops!!!!
an eagle! a baldie in the marina??? i reckon.
big boats and bigger boats and cranes and piggy backing rust buckets and anchors and stuff.
anacortes in all its refined glory!!!!
sailing class. uhoh!
the festival's main venue was just a few feet above the water it seemed. there were a bunch of people smoking pot beneath it the first night. odiferous.
mount eerie was good. lots of recycled stuff. much more beautiful music and some metal to boot.
mount (e)erie again. when i was headed out of town, this here little hill presented quite a rugged ascent and a real screamer on the way down - yeehaw!
me. fluorescence! with mt e(e)rie behind.
i had hoped to see some phosphorescence in the channel between fidalgo and whidbey islands, but i got a little worked up and left the festival early. this turned out to not be ideal, as i got chased by a rottweiler at dusk. on the flip side, this exchange provided quite a kick of energy on the way up a mammoth hill. glad to know i can still yell, too. i ended up biking in the dark for a bit, which i didn't prefer since i was so cold, so i was in a rush to get to a campsite and i attempted to briefly ask a random guy for directions. he didn't speak great english he kept saying, so he got me a map from his restaurant across the street. and then insisted i come in for some warm tea. and then showed me lots of good maps. and then gave me some awesome, so good, so, so delicious fried rice. all for free. with lots of love. fifteen minutes later, i was seeking out a campsite and waiting for a shower while munching on scrumdiddlers – woowee! i gotta yelp the guy.
the next day i took a ferry to port townsend, a cute little town where one of my coworkers lived in a shack for a while. i think that's a paper mill in this shot. they tend to be stinky, but i avoided it by taking a ridiculously long and dull route.
prior to that regrettable excursion, i stopped by this coffee shop where they make each cup individually, drip style, kinda like philz in the mission, but lacking the variety. nonetheless, quite good. so.
these are the eaglemount rockeries, cement recreations of famous structures and natural wonders. they're maintained at a strange little hotel nestled on a bay. those are the olympics, btw.
i biked through sequim, where kyle and holly (erica's, rachel's, and my friend) got married last year in holly's hometown. unfortunately i got stung by a bee down the shirt (right in the sternum – yikes) and that persistent rattle-y scrape got a lot worse when i hit mountain biking trails. stinkers. i had it checked out in port angeles (a twilight hotspot, with numerous tours available - jenny would have loved it) and the guy thought my free hub was on its way out. shoot. at least i bumped into some more absurd stuff to cheer me up.
anyway, i kept on and managed to get myself a photo of some of the actual olympics. that's the western edge of hurricane ridge in the background, i believe.
i cried when i last left there, at age ten. this was such an intense hill to battle up. there was a sweet man who offered to share his campsite six miles behind me, but i needed to be tough and make it to some hot springs and primitive camping – how could i take a ride there? i regretted declining. i had to cross a few streams and one involved balancing on a log, so i had to disassemble my whole rig and then stick it all back together on the other side. kinda a lot of work. cursing helped. just kidding. i later ended up in the same spring with this guy and his whole family, plus some people i met while retrieving random bike parts and bags from one of the crossings. the world was feeling small, but then suddenly pretty big when i saw a bunch of shooting stars. i was pretty excited to use a bear wire that night...
the next day was a scorcher. first time dealing with lots of logging trucks, but they gave amazing berth. the few people who didn't were jerks in the olympic wilderness earlier in the day. they came up for a photo of the ridge, turned around and zipped by me as i got paranoid and ran into a pile of rubble, sending my bike down. granted i was also fiddling with some odd gearing stuff, but i was pleased that i just walked off my bike rather than sprain a wrist or worse. anyway, speedy ride out of olympic – felt great. especially after eating a corn dog before some mammoth hills. unfortunately, once i got over the hills, it still felt like i was ascending due to a monster headwind. poop.
and what a strange house we have here in the middle of logging country! nice view though, i imagine....
arrived in forks totally exhausted. long hours in heat = not so great on the butt. yet another twilight zone, i guess the majority of filming was done around forks (what a head count!)
the next day i was kinda pooped and bummed from taking a cold sponge bath with my water bottle, but i was pleased to find myself in familiar coastal weather – fog. no sun. felt like home, was good for the butt, and got to wear all my gear so i felt pretty pleased to be enjoying it all. well, except for my booties.
so i didn't get many photos of the fog, but i believe the film's aesthetic did justice to the land. though not so many clearcuts in the movie, i suppose. if you look closely, you'll see that the young shall inherit the earth.
for now.
i missed some awesome photo ops of the hoh. too rushed to get good shots of its milky texture & slate tone - i guess from glacial runoff.
tried to get fruit at a bunch of different places. no can do in the rural rain forest areas, i guess. so, back through the park. properly stowed gear this time. and look! a helmet!
seemed that beaches were very much like oregon's, though lots more logs, cairns, and tourists enjoying some forts in the logs.
coffee at the coast. yum. good scenery.
ok, so evidently every coastal town has a “big cedar” and i misread my directions and took a turn a few miles early, biking several miles into the woods towards this big guy only to hit rough gravel, knock a pannier off, and then turn around. later, found the right road and it was simple as pie. my pants are making a funny bulge in this photo. ha.
is this a shake mill? not quite sure, but lots of mattresses here, looks like travelers and riff raff.
ended up at quinalt lake, where i enjoyed doing my laundry (ie, getting all my clothes stained, covered in sand, and shrunk), some very short showers, and all the quirk of twin peaks as frank sinatra blared in the local lodge. strange. felt cheap after all that series of unfortunate events and i didn't want to pay for a campsite surrounded by drunkies, so i stealth camped. what a mistake. took a lot longer to bring all my gear in, then i didn't have a secure spot for food. didn't want to set up the tent for fear of reflecting back at the road, so just used it as a bivy sack. couldn't sleep from the proximity of the mosquitoes. then the fog came in and the condensation began dripping. i swear it sounded just like something rummaging through my food. i freaked. grabbed my leatherman, with blade extended, and my flashlight in the other hand. sneaked some peeks at my panniers as some cars went by. and saw a big, hulking grizzly butt sticking in the air, its nose buried deep in my panniers. shoot. never mind that the nearest grizzly would be hundreds of miles away. it came all that distance for my food and me and i was going to have to stab the sucka. later realized it was just a stump. oh well.
mosquitoes again in the morning. here was my view on waking. lots of condensation on the lens and everything else. no more rainforest stealth for me.
this spot was right off the highway a few miles down the road. it offered free camping – not so bad. might have considered it, but appears to be a pr stunt for the local lumber / timber management company. hm. instead, i lunched there, eating tuna, peanut butter, bread, and a banana. i still have the peanut butter, though there may be some fishy goodness in there...
kurt cobain's hometown. got tar all over my wheels, then lost a bag due to a pothole generated by construction, bag brought me to a fishtailing halt and threw the wheel far out of true. poop.
this statue is in a car garage, the owner was doing some exhaust work, torching pipes to smithereens, but invited me on in for a gander. evidently his wife made it, but nowhere in town to make it more public!
the city does have a little park dedicated to the bridge kurt hung out under as a kid and told people he lived under. it inspired some of the lyrics of something in the way. there's evidently a campaign here to remove the fbomb from a public plaque of kurt's quotes. strange. spoke to a newspaper reported about it and an older guy with an “unf*ck the world” t-shirt.
and boy is the wishkah muddy.
i enjoyed a monster ride after stopping to internet downtown. took a shortcut to avoid the headwinds and hit the hills instead. awesome, superfillingtilialmostpukedmexican in a tiny tidewater town, which claims to be the oyster capitol of the world. smelled like it. nice sky though.
cool mud flats (so,so glad for the flats) & some awesome misty rain as i biked towards – koa! “screw that stealth camping, screw the local county parks, i'm going commercial,” i said. should have washed my clothes and showered there... unlimited showers were well-received. and exploited. ha.
anyway, the next day i talked to a cyclist i bumped into at one of the county parks, the only person i'd seen touring the whole time, and i gave him my extra foodstuffs and booked it to the columbia. i liked looking at oregon from washington. lots of decaying stuff around the washington shore, including some abandoned wrecked boats i'd never seen.
stopped briefly in astoria to lunch, coffee, write, be sad, and recuperate from the scariest part of my trip - crossing over the five mile bridge was intense! very little room, constant traffic with huge rv's and trucks, good amount of debris (including a thigh-high boot!), all combined with a super rough climb. the one good thing that came out of that experience was an all new high speed for this bike - 38.2 miles on the decent.
sitting around astoria was brief since i knew i had a long ride ahead of me, with some mondo hills and a pretty good heat wave cooking me. i hammered hard until getting over the hills at rainier, where i then assumed i would be in portland any minute, so i took some time to snap photos of longview, washington, with mt st helens hiding out.
so. portland is just around the corner from rainer, right? um, no. not when that corner is the columbia river. i should have taken a look at my map and not gotten my hopes up, because shortly after coming into rainier, i hit the wall, since i refused to eat again after astoria. i was holding out for mcmenamins hamburgers, tots, and beer. i guess those comforts were just motivation to get myself home quickly, since they would not likely help me cope with the intense heat. so i stopped only for water and to moon passersby by periodically pulling down my drawers on the side of the road and lubing up with some butt'r. i had lost all shame in this absurd goal of making it to portland and think i should probably have reconsidered doing the 140 miles in one day. oh well.
finally, i saw the st john's bridge and met my coworker, kristen. and was oh so happy to be home again. even if excessive time on the saddle left me with only half a butt and a numb toe. nerves. who needs em.
lessons learned: concentrate. breathe and pad well. limit riding to daytime and to 90 miles, which was my usual. secure bungee cords - i've never seen so many littering the highway. stealth responsibly, but only if able to enjoy stench, dirt, and ridiculous fears. laugh in the face of misery. cry in the face of joy. ha.
