Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
maybe six inches up against a curb and the traffic seemed to have taken advantage of the
alert to take aim at me.
Directly out of the tunnel was the day's longest climb, maybe a mile without a bend
in the road, a trying, steady incline, woods on either side, a steep slope up across the
road to the east and a sense of the ocean far below to the west.
Halfway up, I passed two cyclists taking a break, my first encounter with two-
wheeled road colleagues. Both of them were standing just of the shoulder astride heavily
loaded, clunky-looking old bikes, wearing sandals and faded jeans. Both of them were
bearded and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. (Maybe they were joints; my sense of smell
isn't all that reliable on that score anymore.) They said they'd ridden to Yakima, Wash-
ington, from somewhere in New Mexico and now they were going home. I couldn't make
out exactly where that was; they were mumblers. And their attitude was cloaked in sus-
picion as if they suspected me of threatening to pilfer their stash, or maybe to arrest
them and confiscate it. Anyway, they didn't remind me of anyone I'd ever met on a road-
side on a bike before; I left them smoking and ground on.
At the top of the hill, just north of Manzanita, there was a small car park, where I took
a break and was rewarded by a striking view through the pines overlooking the ocean
and a beach curving south into the distance. I was amazed at how high I'd climbed and
the perspective I'd gained with the altitude. For some reason, going up it always feels
like you gain elevation faster than you think you do and going down you lose it more
slowly.
At the rest stop, I met Kevin and Jennifer Hart, a young couple from Battle Ground,
Washington, who were on the eleventh day of a trip down U.S. 101 from the Canadian
border to California. Their bikes were piled high with stuff. They'd done a lot of camping
along the way and, unlike me, were carrying cooking gear and food. Neither Kevin, a
firefighter, nor Jennifer, a nursing student, has ever traveled by bicycle before, but they
are hooked, they said, and they think it is exceptionally cool that I am at the start of a
cross-country jaunt to New York, even though it seems to puzzle them that I'm heading,
at the moment, toward Los Angeles.
We rode the last thirty miles of the day together, to Tillamook (yes, home of the
cheese), their intended destination for the day. Me, I hadn't expected to make it that
far—63.7 miles, according to my odometer—so Day 1 turned out to be a good test and
a bit of a triumph. I owe the Harts for pushing me. Appropriately, the sun was shining
when we pulled into town about four thirty in the afternoon.
I made it in acceptably good shape physically, though I had all the symptoms of a
first-day rider. My wind was short. My control of the bike, loaded with gear, was a little
tentative, especially on long downhills, during which I nervously rode my brakes more
