Day 12: Wind, rain, hills and racism
The mashed potatoes in the packet were not as bad as I expected. Not great. Definitely don’t come close to proper home cooked mashed spuds. But they do make a nice change from rice.
Camping on the oceanfront was cool with the sound of the ocean to put you to sleep. I have found that once the sun goes down I struggle to find a reason to stay up. Once it is dark at camp, there is not much reason to stay up. So bedtime has been around 8.30. Maybe close to 9pm if I am feeling adventurous.
I woke once during the night to the sound of little footsteps running around outside my tent. Not a bear at least. I did see squirrels running around earlier in the day and multiple people have said that racoons will get more common and more of a nuance as I get further south. I did lock all my food inside of the bear lockers away from camp so there is no food in my panniers. So I was pretty confident to roll over and go back to sleep.
Heavy mist/fog had rolled in from the Pacific during the night so everything was wet when I got up. And my panniers were open… Either the squirrels opened them or I forgot to close them. Oops.
I had planned to do a 100 odd km today. How naive I was. Immediately after leaving camp was a monster of a climb. Over 800 feet of climbing over just 4km with almost constant 8% grade. Ouch. This is made much worse in that I still can’t get into my lowest gear on the bike. It took me nearly an hour to get up that hill, which was mostly walking. But that downhill the far side was epic and absolutely no vehicles on the road. Speedometer read 59 km/h at one point. I didn’t know it went that high.
I stopped in a small town called Pacific City where I stopped the first random person I saw and asked for a breakfast location recommendation. He pointed me to a tiny little place I would never have found. There was a queue of 4 groups waiting. This must be good, so I got in line. I had a “Farmers breakfast”, pic attached. Sitting at the table beside mine was an elderly couple, the man wearing a Trump hat. We got chatting, he was a pilot for the navy for many years before returning back to his hometown. He talked of the differences between the place he remembers from his childhood and the town he sees now. He was super interested in my trip, listened eagerly to me bitch about the hills and gave me some advice on upcoming towns/cities.
Then I left and walked out to the rain and wind. This is the first time I have seen rain on this trip. No worries tho, I came prepared. So I took out my rain gear… I have 2 pairs of waterproof trousers at home, one that is perfect in every way and one that is too small and I hate with a passion. Guess which one I thought I brought. And guess which one I actually brought? I kept them on even though they were so uncomfortable as I couldn’t justify pulling over in the pouring rain to take off rain gear.
Stopped for a coffee at some small roadside place an hour or so later, completely soaked through. So much for the rain gear. I had a coffee and tried to wait out the rain. After an hour, and some reflection I realized that being soaked through isn’t so bad. If you are already soaked through, you can’t get any more wet, right? You just need to stay warm and cycling provides ample warmth. However, I was stopped for an hour so I had dried out quite a bit… This sounds good but it means I have to go through the process of getting soaked through again, and that process isn’t fun. But made easier by dumping those damn rain trousers.
The wind and rain didn’t let up. This sounds worse than it was however. Everything was objectively shit. Headwinds, rain, climbing hills. However, my spirits were very high and I was in a great mood. The 2nd big hill of the day was much kinder. It reached similar heights as the first but didn’t get above 4% grade over maybe 8 kms and on quiet back roads with little traffic. I was far more cautious on that downhill though given the rain.
100k was too much for today, so Lincoln city was the new goal. This was still 70km so still a good days ride for me. And once getting over the 2nd big hill, it was mostly downhill. I decided to treat myself to a real bed. Chris from the last few campsites was staying in the same town so we were going to meet for dinner and a drink.
I arrive first and go into a small pub/restaurant. This was at 6pm. I take a table. A few minutes later, the waitress comes over, welcomes me with a friendly smile and gives me the menu. I asked for just fish and chips. Something changed, I can only imagine it was her hearing my Irish accent. She asked to see my id. I didn’t ask for alcohol and had not had any drinks. I only asked for fish and chips. I show her my Irish driving license, which she refuses to accept. 2 possible explanations for this. First is that I smelled really bad… But I had soaked in a bath for a good hour beforehand…. But that could still be the issue in fairness! The other option was just pure racism.
I took it in my stride and went to the place across the road and it was very welcoming. The waitress recommended the French dip, and couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before, so I ordered that. It is a beef sandwich with a beef stock to dip it in. Pubs here are weird. You can eat, drink, gamble at slot machines, play pool and they even have line dancing, which looks like a lot of fun in fairness.
In bed by 9pm.
