Day 1/17 Bremerton, WA to Westport, WA.
111 miles, 3,891ft elevation.
With heavy hearts, we left our beloved Seattle, and our beloved Seattle friends. It was an early and very hilly start out of Bremerton. Things flattened out after 5 miles but it was a shock to the system carrying all the extra weight in panniers. It would have been the perfect weather for a long first day (grey but no rain), except that there was a lot of standing water which made our chains quite gritty, and a ferocious headwind that started and stayed with us for 90/111 miles....
We stayed off the highway all day and stopped in Shelton for second breakfast, at a Starbucks in Safeway in the sunshine surrounded by homeless people. It was a bit bleak but they were all very friendly and stopped and chatted a while. Lunch was in a town called Elma and was burger and fries - a staple of American diners. We'd become quite the connoisseurs of a good burger over the next few weeks. This was definitely a good one. Places that serve fruit and vegetables seemed few and far between. We went through a town called Aberdeen (Kurt Cobain from Nirvana grew up here) and we reflected that maybe you needed to grow up somewhere that miserable to write music with that much frustration.
At about 95 miles down, Lisa had a moment of fatigue and wanted a rest just after having seen a sign saying ‘don’t pick up hitch hikers, this is a state penitentiary area’. Will didn't let her stop. We made it to Westport and our motel was clean and exactly what we needed after a late arrival. We ate a salad and pizza at Black Beards Brewery, back to motel by 8, cleaned bikes with some engine degreaser Will had picked up, stretched and asleep by 10:30pm - despite getting a little over-excited by the Memorial Day Harry Potter bonanza on TV, with all films being shown back to back.
Day 2/17 Westport, WA to Astoria, OR
94 miles, 2,227ft elevation.
We woke up really tired and got started at 8am after setting the alarm at 6:45 and faffing for too long. Need to leave earlier in the future! We cycled a little in the wrong direction (on purpose, though!) to see the look-out at Westport. It was a very cute little town with lots of seafood restaurants that were just a bit too far from our motel to go to the night before.
Today we spent a lot of time on highway 101 with a pretty meagre shoulder in parts. That was a little nerve-wracking - though we probably just need to get used to it!
Throughout the day we saw evidence that we had just missed multiple rain showers, so there was lots of detritus on the road. We were very thankful for our mudguards.
We ate a huge pancake breakfast in Raymond - a bleak town, but a town we turned out to be very grateful for...
Memorial Day weekend meant lots of food places were closed but google maps didn't have up to date info, so we spent some time going to various cafes to read their 'closed' signs, our frustration mounting as lunchtime came and went, with only a few snack bars as sustenance.
Very hungry from a lack of lunch, and after doing some heavy turns on the front using her new aerobars, Lisa bonked (official term for hitting a wall physically and emotionally) on the 2.5 mile busy and narrow Astoria-Megler bridge crossing the Columbia river. Will had to drag her along to get to the lovely hotel, which had a library with the complete works of Dickens. Will instantly decided this was the hallmark of a good hotel.
Knackered and starving, we walked around Astoria in a daze trying to find sustenance on a bank holiday Monday. Somehow, with the shared half-brain we were functioning on, we found the Astoria brewing company which saved us thanks to their phenomenal Marionberry milkshake (and had excellent views across the river to Washington).
Somewhat revitalised, we went back to our room to watch the beautiful sunset over the bridge we had crossed earlier that day.
And so we said au revoir to Washington state.
Day 3/17 Astoria, OR to Pacific City, OR
86 miles, 3,468ft elevation
We were getting into the swing of things now, understanding what prep needed to be done the night before (charging electronics, stretching, eating, getting out fresh clothes, and
researching breakfast and lunch stops for the following day).
Will had an extra stop scheduled for first thing in the morning, and so at 06:30 he snuck out to visit the iconic goonies house which was a mile up the road. Verdict? Totally worth it.
He came back, reunited with the other half of the cycle team, and we went to have a really great pastry and cup of tea at Blue Scorcher cafe just around the corner (several locals corroborated it was the best in town), chatting to some locals and watching a guy in a stetson make enormous bubbles from the back of his pickup. Really.
And then we were off! An hour and a half later we were in Cannon Beach having second breakfast of latte and ham/cheese croissant (in case you haven't picked up on this yet, we plan 2 breakfasts a day - just like hobbits. If you get going around 7, then by 10 you really need something more!)
Cannon Beach was a gorgeous little seaside town with towering islands dotted along the shoreline.
The stunning coastal scenery and nice roads continued all morning, but things started going wrong just north of Tillamook, around lunchtime, with a puncture in Will’s tubeless tyre which wouldn't seal properly (it was a huge piece of glass!). We stopped in to an e-bike shop in the town to see if they could do anything, and rather unwisely, Will got convinced instead to replace his chain (which he'd been muttering about replacing since we set out). Unfortunately, they punched out a pin in his old chain to remove it, and only then realised that their replacement wouldn't fit. So the old chain went back on, with a weakened link.
After a 12 mile detour to a washed out road that was impassable at Cape Meares, the inevitable happened, and Will's chain finally snapped.
Thankfully, lovely, friendly people seem to abound in these parts, and Jessica and Mark soon pulled over with their caravan in tow. We stowed our bikes in the caravan, and jumped in the back with Caroline, their baby, and their dog, and got driven the 17 miles to Pacific City.
We were sad to have to forego some cycled miles, but there was no way onward with a busted chain. To cheer ourselves up, we had a fabulous (and huge!) Pad Thai and a beer in the Beachwok, and consulted the staff about how best to get to the nearest bike shop, still another 40 miles further down the road, in Newport.
Sadly, they agreed that hitching some more was the only way - since COVID no-one was even sure if there was a bus still running down the road. So Will tried a long-shot. He jumped onto Strava (for the uninitiated, an app not unlike facebook, but which centres on posting exercise activities instead of thoughts/messages/pictures). He found Anthony, who appeared to be the most active person cycling around Pacific City, and messaged him out of the blue. We went to bed fearing that our tight schedule was already being bent beyond breaking point.
Day 4/17: Newport, OR to Florence, OR
53 miles, 2,588ft elevation
Anthony turned out to be an absolute saint. It helped that he was also an endurance cyclist, who taught bicycle safety.
He replied to the random Brit asking for help, and even drove over to our motel in the morning, to lend some tools with which Will tried to make a temporary fix to the chain.
When that failed, Anthony insisted he would drive us and our bikes halfway to Newport, where a bus could then take us the rest of the way. A phrase we heard several times while we relied on the kindness of these strangers was to 'pay it forwards'. That stuck with us. The idea that everyone should remember receiving an act of kindness, and pay that kindness forward the next time they met someone in need.
Sadly, the bus never showed up at the bus stop. We were still 20 miles from the bike shop, and back to hitching. Getting a little desperate as the day wore on and no-one picked us up, we finally jumped into Michael's pickup truck, and stowed our bikes in the back, in exchange for some gas money.
Michael was a talker. He turned out to be a 65-year old ex-meth addict from Maryland. It wasn't always entirely clear what he was telling us, but it seemed he was on his way to the county courthouse to attend the annual check of his driving license and to pay off a fine. He seethed with a sense of injustice at the situation.
He told us all about his journey to find God and how he had been filled with the Holy Ghost and had very much met and chatted to Jesus - although Jesus claimed to be someone else. But Jesus wasn't fooling Michael, who knew. Jesus was Jesus. And we, he suspected, were angels. Though again, he knew we wouldn't admit to it.
Michael had also met aliens, and had some health issues. He also had bad lungs and asked us to pray for him.
It would have been easy to laugh off our experience in Michael's truck, but the fact was that he stopped to pick us up, when countless others in cleaner, bigger trucks didn't. And he got us to the door of the bike shop. Here was a guy with his own demons, who was still trying to do a little good in the world. We're not big religious types, but we did pray for Michael, in our own way. We still think of him. Because it is so easy to fall off the wheel - especially in a country where social welfare is practically non-existent. Once you're off that wheel, it's so hard to catch it back up and jump back on. The world is as kind or as cruel as we each make it.
Anyway: Newport bike shop had the right parts, and Will's bike was back up and running with a new chain and new armoured tyres (we decided to ditch the tubeless experiment) in short order. One hugely dissatisfying lunch later, at 15.30, we were back on our way (some sort of open pork sandwich and fried mozzarella sticks, if you were wondering. Hard to imagine pulled pork being bad? We agree. And yet, somehow...)
Despite skipping 40 miles of that day's ride, the remaining 50 seemed really tough. Doubtless the stress of getting to the shop had worn us out already. And late starts are rarely good.
We arrived in Florence as it was getting dark, pretty knackered once again, to be told by the motel clerk that there really was no food whatsoever to be found within a 2 mile radius. We should jump in our (imaginary) car and just pop down the hill. If looks could kill...
Summoning reserves of physical and emotional energy we had previously not been aware of, Will got back on his bike and picked up some excellent takeaway, some things for breakfast, and also found time to run some laundry. Tomorrow would be a better day.
Day 5/17: Florence, OR to North Bend, OR
42 miles, 1,867ft elevation
Our first scheduled rest day. Note the 40 miles of cycling on said "rest day". But we took it very easy, had a late start, and had breakfast on the Oregon dunes at Jesse Honeyman state park, surrounded by wild rhododendrons in bloom.
Lunch was even better, in a fabulous Reedsport pie shop (thank you Don's!) which had been
recommended to us the previous night, and then a cracking early dinner at Hilltop House, North Bend. And bed by 9pm! All in all, a great day despite the bleak motel right by the freeway. In fact, that motel deserves a special mention... When we arrived, they had no idea who we were since it had fallen into administration after we booked and the new owners had only started the day before. The previous owners had left everything in disarray, including taking all the room keys off their keyrings and so the new people had no idea which key was for which room! Despite the motel being next to the freeway, it backed onto a gorgeous view of the south Oregon dunes. Unfortunately, when designing this motel, they didn't think anyone would want to see that so the views of it were only accessed from the bathroom window.
While on the subject of the bathroom, has anyone ever seen a foam toilet seat before? This one wasn't in particularly good condition and was cracked and showed more foam than plastic seat covering.