Today was a less impressive ride, at
least from the viewpoint of the scenery around the inland sections of
Oregon. The ocean still has its incredible views and saltwater smell
and today we came across a beautiful sandy beach, instead of the
typical pebble-laden shores. The ride however, routed us away from
directly following the shore and into the typical American towns that
have sprung up everywhere. There were still lots of great views along
the shore to be drunk in, for sure, but the small towns start to seem
all the same after a while.
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| Sandy beach in Pacific City |
We had 4 climbs of substance today, for
a total of 4033 feet of climbing. The 1st climb was up to
Capes Meares Lookout which had a side road to take us down a steep
path to the light house and “Octopus Tree”. You'll see why they
call it that from the picture below.
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| Me in front of the Octopus Tree |
The day was a short 58 miles but had 2
SAG stops, which is unusual for a ride. Usually we would only have
one on a ride this short. The 1st SAG was in the Cape
Lookout State Park, which was quite pretty with lots of ocean views
and a beach. Long-weekend road warriors were abundant in the park,
but the drivers in Oregon are quite bike-friendly.
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| Bikes all lined up at the SAG stop |
Today was a day to ride with a variety
of people. We started out with 13 of us riding together unless we hit
the 1st climb. This separated the climbers from the
others. During the day I started the ride with John Soley, who was
one of my roommates back in the ride across the country. I also rode
with Gary Weinstein (a fellow AAN/2010 cyclist from Connecticut),
John Douglas (possibly related to me, but it would be from many
generations ago), Don Yost (another AAN/2010 cyclist from Oregon),
Mose (a cyclist from Michigan, where there are no climbs), Mark and
Susan Weisbarth (Toronto Mark was a fellow Gelding from AAN/2010 and
Susan, to anyone who has read our blogs from before, is the infamous
“Duchess”), and of course my roommates Joe and Baltimore Mark
(we have decided to be called the 3 stooges on this ride, with Joe
clearly being Curly – same hairline - none, but we're still not
sure if Mark is Moe or I am).
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| More beautiful coastline |
People find all sorts of things along
the road, especially if you are cycling, as it gives you time to take
a look as you are zooming by. However, today had a bit different find
for Leo and Jim. They found a human child about 2 years old standing
on the road holding onto a frog. Other cars also stopped to help out.
The child was upset but couldn't really talk. There were very few
houses around and Leo and Jim went around asking about whose kid this
is. No-one knew. It was far too far for this child to have wandered
here on his own, if he didn't live in those nearby houses. Jim
suspects that this child was simply abandoned at the roadside by his
parents. 911 was called and hopefully everything turns out fine, but
where were the parents? Why was this child playing in the middle of
this moderately busy road? I just shake my head in disgust. Afterwards, we learned from the Sheriff that the child lived in one of the nearby houses. That still doesn't explain why he was in the middle of a moderately busy road, unsupervised.
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| And still more coastline |
Let's
see what tomorrow brings.
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