47.4 mi / 3:27:50 time / 13.6 mph avg. / 2175 ft. climbing
Staying at Bullard’s Beach State Park

It pseudo-rained last night. Enough drops fell on our tents to completely wet them, but it wasn’t exactly rain from the sky, it was fog condensing on pine needles and then shaking off whenever the wind blew. Had to pack up the tents wet, but it wasn’t too big of a deal. The Canadians were first out, then Leslie, then us, with Samantha planning to hit the road at noon.

It was probably the crappiest day of riding yet, but even the crappiest day on the Oregon coast in September ain’t bad. It stayed cloudy the whole day, and there were no grand scenic vistas like we’d had previous days, but temperatures were coolly comfortable and the wind stayed with us.

We cruised to lunch (fish and chips + chowder + beer for both of us) in run-down Charleston. Many of the towns we’ve been through the last few days have been pretty depressed compared with those north.

Immediately after we hit the Seven Devils Road, which nicely took us off the busy Hwy 101, but we had to pay for it with several vicious climbs of 10% or more. There were a lot of (seven?) ups and downs, but I actually love the variety and trying to figure out what gear to be in makes the miles go by unnoticed. We passed three touring cyclists as yet unknown to science (or at least to Joel and I) in this stretch.

After turning into the state park around 4pm, the half-crappy day turned fully-awesome. Again we had leapfrogged the Canadians all day, and again they beat us into the hiker/biker sites. A new guy, Steve, was also set up between us and them. And then, the sun suddenly came out, and it was glorious. What a difference that distant exploding ball of hydrogen makes down here on the edge of the big ocean. It allowed us to turn the tree by our tents into a backpacker’s Christmas Tree, with all our stuff hung like ornaments to dry. We gave our parents a call to wish my mom a happy birthday and to plan tomorrow’s meetup.

By that time Samantha had also rolled in and we made plans to go the couple miles into Bandon together for some food. Joel and I were assuming we’d ride our now-unloaded bikes, but she suggested hitching a ride. Umm… sure… if it’s not about having adventures, than what are we here for? The first day we met, she was gone from her site all night because a family had invited her over to their site for dinner and a fire, and I told her that’s something way more likely to be offered to a lucky solo girl than a poor couple of dudes together like me and Joel. So here was another chance to work her girl-magic at the campground entrance while Joel and I just tried to not look too scary. Just as we were about to give up, we caught a guy who had just been checking out the campground, and who had even done a bit of touring in his younger days. He zipped us across the bridge and into the Old Town where we quickly found a Mexican restaurant. We got our margaritas and pina colada less quickly since the weird cyborg waiter spent at least a minute scanning, processing, and classifying each of our IDs.

Afterwards we walked to the grocery store; I had noticed Steve getting some firewood in camp, and suggested getting real marshmallows for this night. Samantha ran with it and collected full-on s’mores ingredients (including sticks!) to share around the fire. From the store, on about the 10th try Samantha found a slightly-creepier yet-still-friendly guy to take us back to camp in his beat-up Ford Probe at breakneck speeds.

Just as we returned, a new guy, Brian (spending a year weaving around the US), rolled in, and when I said “hello!” in the fading light he immediately said “Chicago?” Turns out he’s not an accent savant, he just thought I was part of a couple from Chicago he had heard about. Anyway, he seemed to immediately take a shine to me… I think? Then Leslie rolled in, and we all spent another good time around the campfire, creating community, as was Steve’s goal when he bought the wood. It’s cool how people are cool. To steal a good line from Joel’s secret-journal entry yesterday as he waxed philosophical, “I’m wondering if at other campgrounds 50 miles north and south there are other groups of bike tourists doing the same thing”. I hope so, because that means they’d be having a pretty good time.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2012 at 10:18 am and is filed under 2012 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.