Day 1 - Hillsboro, OR to Astoria, OR
1 September 2004Av - 10.9 mph
Dis - 84.60 miles
Tm - 07:47:24 hrs
‘Here I sit my cheeks a flexin’, giving birth to another Texan’.
I’ve aways like that quote. Interstate rest area graffiti isn’t complete without it. I say this because here I sit, in the Columbia Inn in downtown Astoria, and it’s only my second real day on the road.
Last night was quite possibly the least comfortable night I’ve had since the Middle East in ‘98, but in all fairness those nights were much better.
Seclusion aside, the place I slept was horrid. No, not just a few bumps and valleys and pine cones, but rocks and pits and things I can’t even mention jabbing my entire body. The moon was bright enough that someone standing over me with a four D cell Mag Lite shining in my face couldn’t have blinded me more effectively. The worst part was I wasn’t even tired. Twelve miles and a half day on a plane doesn’t exactly spell fatigue.
Despite all the shortcomings, I did sleep off and on and forced myself awake at 0530. In an hour I was on the road west and making good time through the rolling hills. If only it had stayed so simple.
By 0900 it had begun to sprinkle, and the pristine rolling hills transformed into jagged, mountainous teeth that tore at the ozone. I climbed from thirty-nine feet to over 1600 feet and all I had to show for it was hyperventilation and a GPS altitude line chart that looked like someone was having a heart attack, embolism, or both. That someone must have been me.
This was my first experience with real mountains, and I managed a steady four to five miles per hour up those bad boys every time. I would climb 400 feet and drop 200. Climb 500 more and drop 300. Up and down, up and down, seesawing my way to the top of the Summit Coast Range at 1642 feet. My only joy from the quadriceps splitting effort were the downhills, tucked and coasting effortlessly for miles at speeds hovering around forty miles per hour.
For those unfamiliar with loaded touring, a bike with over fifty pounds of gear tends to wobble between twenty-eight and thirty-five miles per hour, but by God when the magic number forty is reached it cruises like a 1974 Oldsmobile hardtop. It was a good time.
I pulled into Seaside by 1300 and made a beeline for the beach. I ate a full MRE lunch, cruised the strand, dipped my rear wheel in the Pacific Ocean…
Bike meets ocean
…and pushed onward to Astoria within two hours.
My first stop was the Oregon visitor center. I leaned my bike against the glass double doors and walked straight up to the woman behind the information desk.
“First things first,” I told her. “Is there any way to get here from the Portland airport without paying $150 for a metered cab?” I looked exasperated.
“Sure!” She smiled. “We have a shuttle that runs specifically for people coming for the Lewis and Clark trail. I don’t suppose you want their number? It’s a little late for you now.” She kept smiling.
“Yes I do.” I put one hand on my hip. “At least I can pass this info on. You, on the other hand, need to call the jackasses with ground transportation at the airport and fill them in. They had no idea this existed.”
She looked genuinely concerned. “I’ll do that. I don’t know why they’d tell you to take a cab.”
And that was that. I hopped on the internet for a few minutes, posted a note on my website, emailed Dale, my contact in North Dakota, to let him know I wasn’t laying in the ditch with my lungs punctured, and got up to leave.
“One more thing,” I asked her. “Where can I set up camp?”
She looked at me with her same smile, cocked her head to the right and said, “Nowhere in Astoria. We have ‘no overnighting’ laws in this city.”
I guffawed. “So you’re saying the official head of the Lewis and Clark trail has no camping?” The veins in my forehead bulged.
“Yes, but there’s camping in Warrenton, but that’s back where you came from. How about a list of hotels?”
And so here I am. I’m dog tired and mostly drunk after one and half, that’s right, no even two beers from a restaurant down the street. I’m clean, I’m organized, and I’m ready to push to Portland… more or less.
The Astoria Column