Day 12

June 3, 2011

Today was the best day I've had so far in almost every possible way it could have been the best. I texted ChaCha (242-242) and asked it for the weather that morning. “50F-61F, Rain.” Great. Having no choice but to ride, I left around 8:30 and headed south. I got out of the trees and saw 2 surprising sights.

The first sight I saw was a dog riding a skateboard. The man who worked at the convenience store was outside with his 2 boxers. He would set his skateboard down and one of the dogs just put his 2 front paws on the skateboard, gave it a push and coasted for a good 20 feet. Then the owner would frantically run to try to make sure the dog didn't run into the bushes and caught the skateboard just in time. It was hilarious and I regret not taking a picture because you guys probably don't believe me.

The second sight I saw was that the weather was great. Blue skies with no clouds in sight. How could this be? The forcast I read was the complete opposite. Surely it would rain later on in the day, but for now I took off my long sleeve shirt, put on a t-shirt and went down the road.

To give you a gauge of how pretty this section of the road was, I took 44 pictures today.

I got a little bit closer to being frustrated about my slow rate due to the frequent picture-taking.

But I didn't actually get upset.

I started feeling guilty when I didn't take a picture of something beautiful.

But then I realized there was going to be something else pretty to look at around the corner.

So the ride was very nice. Lots of pretty views of the beach. I ate my lunch in a town called Yachats and saw a whale very far in the distance. I was very energized the whole day, so it didn't seem very difficult even though it was about 63 miles.

I started noticing that my bike bumped up and down a bit when I started going fast and it happened every time the wheel rotated. It had been happening for a day or two, but I finally got around to looking at the tire to see what it was and saw this.

The rim had cut the tire because it was under-inflated and it was a kind of cheap tire. So I stopped in Florence and bought a brand new tire at a combination Bike and Guitar shop. That's my kind of combination!

I only had a few miles left till I got to Honeyman State Park, where I would stay for the night. I rode into the hiker/biker site and was surprised to see that there were already 6 people there! The most people I had seen at the hiker/biker sites was 3. I went around the site and talked to the other bikers. Some were heading north for various reasons and some were heading south. Later on that evening a couple pulled in whom I had met along the ride, so that made a total of 9 of us at the site. So we all packed into the sites. I didn't get my own personal picnic table, but it was pretty cool to get to meet all those people. I also had the joy of eating 8 hotdogs for dinner (my personal record) along with a beer from some Portland microbrew.

I took some time before sunset to go over to the sand dunes that they had in the park and took some pictures, but my batteries died, so I didn't get many.

So it was a great day with perfect weather, good scenery, and cool people to meet.

I was woken up at 3:30 in the morning because a tree fell down in the woods just about 30 feet from my tent. Scared me half to death.