A Little Bit About Our First Three Days

Greetings one and all! Today is our third day of biking, and the tour is off to a fine start. We've covered about 100 miles in 2.5 days of riding, not a bad effort considering how hilly the coast is (anyone who as ridden the west coast knows that it is not flat.)

Springtime is in full bloom in Oregon, and things are looking good. Oregon Green is everywhere. We ride along past farms and horses and houses. There is so much to hear and see and smell. The sound of our tires on the road--just a whisper compared to the sound of the car tires that thunder past. And then there are the slugs. Everyday for the last three days we have had to dodge slugs. The rain seems to bring them out, and they like to crawl along the right side of the road. If you were riding with us you would hear Janice and I exclaim, "Slug! Slug right. Slug left!" Every so often.

As far as the Megatransect, things are also off to a good start. We sampled trees at our first site, an old growth forest along the coast, and everything went well. This gives me hope that this project will be able to continue as we ride our bikes across the country.

We are in Tillamook now, and yes we stopped at the cheese factory. It was impossible for us to resist the free cheese. Tillamook, of course, also brings back memories of my first tour, summer of 2000's Western Bicycle Odyssey, where Travis, Jake, and myself rode our bikes from Seattle to Vegas. In the time that has passed both the coast and myself have aged 7 years. Riding our old route I've been thinking a lot about coming back to old places, places from the past. My first expectation was to tap into the same magic that was once there, but this, i have learned, is foolish. People and places change. And the only thing it seems for me to do is to find some new magic, for this is a new adventure. But luckily for us the new magic is not hard to find. We ride. We see and hear and smell things. We stop and walk around and talk to people. People see the gear on our bikes and naturally they are curious. We take off our sunglasses and talk, and then we move on. The day flows by like a river and even at night when I am sleeping I know that I am still moving. I'm just a single point on the surface of a spinning planet, a planet that just so happens to be pretty good for bicycle touring.

I will stop writing now, for my library time is almost up and I need to go back and edit this post before i send it out. And even after I edit, I'll want to edit again, and rewrite, but i know that that won't be possible. So I'll send it out as is, and wonder what you will think of this, as you sit in front of you computer, so many miles from here, and read these words off the computer screen. And I will wonder still what you will do after you read these words. I for one will get up, walk outside, talk with Janice, get on my bike and start riding. It's 5:15 out here on the West Coast, and there is a bit more riding to be done.