Saturday, July 16, 2011

A break in the weather! Yippeee!

Saturday July 16
Raymond WA
~47 miles.
Total 1250 miles


That's Heike eating pizza in the shower stall. Only place we could find warm and dry yesterday.

After full day of rain and sitting around the restrooms of the Cape Disappointment State Park, I finally moved north. With a new friend. Heike is from Berlin and has biked most of the way from Toronto. She's on her way to Vancouver and since she doesn't fly out til Aug 24th she has time to go at Blaze's pace. Having her ride on the tush and it pouring rain really pushed me today. About 47 miles in 5.5 hours. And we stopped for a quick lunch.

In Raymond we're camped next to the pool because Heike needs a shower every night. It did feel good:). And we had picnic tables for cooking and there are public restrooms nearby. Life is good.


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Pedal on, Pedal on

Saddle BagLady

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Washington

Friday July 15th
Cape Disappointment WA
17 miles.
Total over 1200

Rain. Yup. It let up yesterday afternoon long enough for me to dry out my tent and get out of Astoria. Thank you, rain gods. Started again during the night and on through the morning.

Saw the Pacific Ocean yesterday!!!! What a glorious sight! Now I know what Lewis & Clark must have felt. Just a tiny bit, anyways.

Met a woman from Germany here at the State Park I stayed in last night. She's biked from South Dakota. Got there by public transport from Toronto. She didn't want to bike through the boring Midwest either:). She's done a lot of bike travel in Europe, Tasmania, South Africa.

It's 8:45 am. The rain is letting up. I need to think about getting up but I know everything is so wet: the tent, the bike, the grass, the picnic table. This won't be fun getting going. I still don't know what I'll do if I can't dry my tent during the day. I need a 1/2 hour of sunshine or a dryer. Last time I threw it in the dryer, I threw in my special poly-something ultra lightweight dropcloth...and it shrank. Ouch! Got a tyvek sorta piece of housewrap at a construction site that I'm using now. We'll see how it dries.

It felt good yesterday to be out of town and in the woods (sorta) again. Not really fond of all the hustle and bustle. Cars alone are exhausting me. I realized how much noise a car really makes when I had to bike through a tunnel yesterday. Unbelievable! I had to cover my good ear to stop the pain. Thank goodness I only had to cover one ear;)

Cars are the downside of biking. Don't know how to solve that problem. I do like the biking to get some place part.

Crossing the Columbia River Bridge:



Pedal on, Pedal on

Saddle BagLady

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone