Extras: Riding Up The 101

Stefaan drove us into town for a last breakfast with Terry and Jessica before we split ways — forty-nine miles today, easy by our standards, but it didn’t feel that way saying goodbye. Terry — the Ter-Dog, the Tasmanian Devil, depending which nickname stuck that week — had ridden with me since the far end of Virginia, and after that many miles together a goodbye carries some real weight, the same as it had with Joe and Cooper before him.

Me and Wim were headed for Stefaan’s place in Portland, and Siemen had meant to skip the ride there entirely — he was short on time and wanted to see his own friends — except Stefaan was driving a two-seat convertible with no room for another bike. So Siemen resigned himself to riding with us, at least until he could talk his way into somebody else’s car.

Heading north up the coast meant headwinds, strong ones, but the scenery more than made up the difference. Everyone talks about Big Sur — I’d seen that one from a car window — but the Oregon coast held its own against it, every bit as rugged, every bit as beautiful.

That sea air gets into your lungs out there. You sleep well on a night like that.

We skipped the sea lions — fifteen dollars a head felt steep for animals that, frankly, we’d been smelling from the road for free.

Siemen’s hitchhiking campaign wasn’t going well, so he decided what the situation really called for was a sign. He taped one to his bike — “I need a ride to Portland,” blunt and to the point — while me and Wim watched on, unconvinced, having already told him plainly that he was riding the whole way with us whether the sign worked or not. At one point a car actually pulled onto the shoulder ahead of us. By the time we reached it, it had pulled away again. We still laugh about that.

Fog rolled in by afternoon and the temperature dropped with it. I didn’t mind — there was something almost nostalgic about riding with a runny nose again, like being back home cycling around Newcastle in the cold. The sign at South Beach State Park said FULL, but we knew better; there are always sites set aside for cyclists, and there was one waiting for us. I stood under the hot shower for a good fifteen minutes and didn’t feel even slightly guilty about it. Portland was still two days off — we’d decided to spread the miles over three easy days rather than take the rest day in Florence we’d once talked about.