Seven Devils

I've kept a journal since I was 11 years old. Its varied from a strict “write every day” regiment to a “write when I'm not studying, which is almost never” schedule. The part I love most about reading old journals is reading parts that I don't necessarily remember. Even on this trip, I've forgotten things as recently as a week ago, but can relive them through my recorded evening rants. My favorite thus far has been my own description of the climb out of Coos Bay, Oregon, called “Seven Devils,” which were just what a biker would expect them to be. “They sucked. Somewhere around the 7^th devil I was about ready to lay down and piss myself.” I seem to have already forgotten about the near laps in bladder control. Better times were certainly to come.

Biking fifty miles per day has been my goal since leaving Portland. Yesterday I set my current record at 75 miles. It was about a week ago that Molly and I had a few tough days when we didn't even come close to the daily 50. The climb out of Coos Bay (“Seven Devils”) took several hours and with most of day gone, we arrived in Bandon, Oregon. I'd arranged a couch surfing host (www.couchsurfing.org) in Port Orford, but at that point we still had another 30 miles to go. As it turned out, our host Kathy, was in Bandon for the day. With a stroke of luck, Molly and I (not being purists) got a ride to Port Orford with our host. We had a lovely time with Kathy and were even able to take a sauna! The dry heat felt great on my sunburned back. The next day we left Port Orford with the intention of getting to Brookings, Oregon. We made it about 25 miles before the headwind got the better of us and we camped in the beach grass just outside Gold Beach, another coastal town. It began to rain in the evening and continued to rain all night. And all the next day. Without much sleep, we “woke” with a very wet tent, wet sleeping bags, wet sleeping pads, and an top of everything, we pitched our tent in the sand. Yuck. We made it a grand total of 15 miles in the wind and rain before we sucked it up and called Doug and Claudia (old friends from Alaska who spend the winters in Oregon) and asked for a ride to their home just south of Brookings. I was feeling a little down for making such poor mileage in the previous days, but once again, a warm shower, food, and a few hours of mindless television cured everything.

Molly stayed with me through a portion of the redwood forest then from Arcada, California, she hopped on a grey hound bus (which I hear was an adventure in itself) and headed back to Portland. It was a lot of fun traveling with Molly and I'll miss her company and our ice cream dates!

About 25 miles down the coast from Arcada, I turned onto California highway 36 going east. Less than a mile up the road a truck driver pulled along side me and said through the open window, “You know this road is terrible, right.” Great. I'd read and heard about the mountains, but I'm skeptical on anyone's word unless they have details to back it up. All the details I'd found to that point said that it was a long windy, mountainous road with little traffic. It sounded pretty easy-going. The mountain part should have been a little more emphasized. The first night in the foothills I camped at the bottom of a very large hill with a sign that read “10% grade next 2 miles.” It went on for much longer than two miles. The next morning was mountain after mountain. There were a few down-hill parts which I savored as much as possible. But there was one particular peak that kept going and going. It was a hot and sunny day, so I eventually tied a bandana to the shoulder straps of my shirt to keep my back from burning again. The best part about an uphill is that there is always a downhill. After peaking at 4077ft, I felt like Superman with my bandana cape flying behind as I dropped 500 feet on the back face. My ears even popped on the way down.

In the third and final day of mountains I passed through a town called Platina. After getting into a conversation with the shop keeper of the only store in town, she pointed out the front windows with her arms at a 90 degree angle and said, “The city limits are there and there.” As far as I could figure, the entire population of Platina consists of the shop keeper, her husband, the postmaster, and 18 Russian Orthodox monks in the St. Herman of Alaska monastery. The last 25 miles into Red Bluff were almost entirely downhill. It was a very good day on the bike.  

First Week-US

Molly and I left my sister Kari's back yard in Portland on the morning of April 11^th. We only biked as far as the Rose District on the east side of the river before catching the train to Hillsboro, where we started the actual trip. Two days later we met two guys on bikes headed to San Francisco who also started in Portland, but decided to bike out through the suburbs and regretted every turn of it. Molly and I were glad for our decision to cheat the first few miles.

The first day on the road was fairly uneventful. It took a good day or two to figure out a better way to balance my load. We climbed the hills towards Tillamook and camped around the 1586-foot marker at the summit. The climb was not the funnest thing I've ever done, but we found a quite place to camp that night and were able to get a good nights' sleep and dry out our clothes from the constant drizzle.

The next morning was an hour of curving downhill straight into Tillamook. Molly and I stopped at the Tillamook cheese factory and watched the cheese assembly line from the viewing deck. It's pretty mesmerizing to watch hundreds of blocks of cheese being cut, packaged, and checked before being set out for their 60-day to two-year fermentations. Molly bought squeaky cheese and I bought a couple of ice cream cones and we were back on the road after our snack. We made it to Neskowin that night. Molly's family has a cabin that is shared and used by who ever is heading that direction. We were especially glad to have a place to stay that night. About ten miles short of the cabin it began to get dark and the rain poured harder than anything I had ever seen before. It stung out eyes and the only way to stay on the road was to double-check its location as the head lights of each car went by. At some point we'd completely given up trying to stay remotely dry. We got to the cabin around 9:30pm and as Murphy would have it, the key didn't work. After about 15 or 20 minutes of fumbling with the lock, I was voted the one to pull off the bulkier of my soaking layers and climb through a 10”x16” window. The hot shower, hot noodles, wine and Tillamook squeaky cheese made it very much worth the few moments of cold rain on bare skin. Instead of sleeping in beds, Molly and I slept in the giant overstuffed easy chairs in front of the heater. It was hard to get up and going the next morning.

Day three brought us through Otis, where we ate at the famous Otis Cafe' and Newport where we ate “Mo's famous clam chowder.” We set up camp just outside Newport and were pleasantly surprised to see that the national park camp sites are equipped with showers and tent platforms.

The fourth day was gorgeous. Hot, sunny, scenic, and we even met another coastal biker. We passed through the first tunnel of the trip and that was probably one of the scariest 90 seconds in recent memory. Echos off the rocks made even a hybrid sound like a multi-ton semi truck. The actual semi's were practically deafening. Dark, narrow, and loud made it hard to ride straight into the rock wall. We survived and will be a bit readier for the next tunnel encounter. We made it to Florence and found another well-equipped camp ground to set up camp.

Day five began sunny and ended very wet. The last several miles into North Bend and Coos Bay poured rain and seemed to be the only area so far that did not have a convenient camping site. After asking around for a hostel or campsite, knocking on a church door, and just about asking a cop to take us to jail for three hots and cot, we found an inexpensive motel. We were soaking wet, fairly cold, a little depressed from the rain, and much in need of hugs. We felt a little better after pulling our bikes in out of the rain and getting something to eat.

We are only a few days from the California border and are getting very close to the red wood forest, which we've been excited to see for quite a while.

Hoping for better weather tomorrow.  

Getting Ready

 I leave Nome in a little less than a week and in slightly less than two weeks my friend Molly and I will be on highway 6, heading towards to Oregon coast. It was Molly's fault for the whole bike trip idea. Some time late last year Molly invited me to bike the Oregon coast with her in April of this year. I had planned on being finished with school by then, so I said yes. About ten seconds later I decided that I really wanted to visit Peru. And the Panama Canal. And Argentina. And I wanted to bike there. And why not?

I've spent probably more homework time than I should have searching the internet for other bikers who have taken the same or similar routes. The Pan-American highway is well traveled by bikers and very few of them have negative things to say about people they meet or the places they go. I met a biker two and a half years ago as he passed through Fairbanks on the second leg of his three-part round-the-world bike trip. Matthew Blake biked from his home in London to Southeast Asia, flew to LA, and bussed and hitch-hiked to Alaska, where he biked from Dead Horse to Ushuaia, Argentina. We've kept in touch with Matthew and while planning my bike trip, I asked him a lot of questions about his. Matthew told me, “You'll do fine.” That's good enough for me.

I finished the final part of my college degree last week in Fairbanks, and now I am in full adventure mode. I've given up on small, loose pieces of papers and have moved to an 11x18-inch sketch book for writing out lists, diagrams, maps, and brainstorms. Almost everything on my lists has been scratched out and one of my final duties in Nome is to track down a bike box that I can use to ship my bicycle half way across the continent to give my self a cheating start from the lower 48. The tentative departure date from Portland is the 10^th of April. The date is entirely dependent on weather and preparedness.