Heading South - Rain, Disc Golf, and some misplaced belongings

For the first time since I've moved to the west coast, I can say that I really, really hate west coast rain. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Washington/Seattle weather, we rarely see the sun for about 5 months out of the year, and for those 5 months we are stuck in a almost perpetual misting rain. It rains so little at a time that we actually have less rain (in inches) than other cities like New York, but it just never stops. 

This never really bothered me before. I'm usually only walking outside for about 15 minutes to wherever I'm going and this kind of rain just gets me a little damp; once I'm inside it dries itself off before I notice it. This isn't the case when cyclo-touring. Unless you are in one of the southern states in the middle of summer and the rain is simply a relief from the unbearable heat you will always need to wear a waterproof shell. The fact of the matter is that when cycling in even a light misting for more than an hour you will be soaked through, especially if you are biking into a headwind at the time. (And ask any cyclist, you always are). Getting soaked through is a good way to catch hypothermia.

So, I've ridden through rain before and I knew enough that at the first few sprinkels of rain I immediately threw on my waterproof layers. And they worked as intended, they kept the rain out perfectly. However the rain just never let up - not completely, and certainly not enough to air myself out. Without being able to air out I just kept baking inside of those waterproof layers, sweating more and more as I continued to ride. After the third hour in the rain I was wondering if there was really much difference between the outside and inside of my coat. (There actually was, I found later when I actually checked. I was just really pessimistic at this point)

THIS is the big distinction, whereas everywhere else I've ridden had rain that more or less would pelt you hard for an hour or so and then dissipate the rain here just continued for about four to five hours; and from personal experience that isn't out of the ordinary for the region. I think this is the reason I haven't seen any other touring cyclists on the roads since I started this tour. Everyone else was smart enough to know not to ride these roads except in the summer. (Complete inversion of my ride on the southern tier in the middle of summer : there everyone else was smart enough NOT to ride there in the summer)

So anyway, despite the weather report showing no rain until 7 PM, it rained constantly from 4-9. Eventually when I reached the town of Shelton I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to keep my gear dry if I attempted to camp, and just sprung for a local motel. Using the heating in the room I was able to dry everything off more or less, so at least I won't have to worry about mildew. And the weather today looks beatiful, so hopefully things will be better today.

<Time lapse in time of writing - could not upload the above immediately due to lack of wifi>

AND IT WAS. It was beautiful the whole day, and despite me getting a late start and not being able to go as far as I might have liked I had a great time biking! I think I burned myself out a bit because this segment sort of frontloaded its hills, but that just meant that I was able to take it easy on the way down.

I did get lost a couple times along the way, that little jutting off in the map above is one of my longer forays into the unknown in the wrong direction.

Just a picture of a barn I took on said foray. Did you expect something more interesting?

But anyway, the real treat of the day was when I arrived at my hostel in Elma! I stayed at Grey's Harbor Hostel. The hostel is run by an elderly man named Jay and his wife Linda,  him being that special kind of elderly gentleman who is both extremely gruff and friendly all at the same time; I've tried three times now to write something embodying that and I'm coming up blank, so hopefully you know what I'm getting at. (Short on time at the moment) Just know that he's pretty great host.

Anyway, he told me that the whole purpose of this hostel was to allow him to have the insurance (equity?) for his real passion - his 18 hole disc golf course. Apparently this is a new sport in which the rules are pretty much the same as gold, except instead of using a golf club and ball you throw a special frisbee at a series of goals. He gave me a tour of his course, and it was quite something to behold. 

In the half a football field or so area around his house he has gone to great lengths to sculpt the land into a disc golf course, with the different holes criss-crossing around the fields. Tall grass is growing certain areas as "out of bounds" regions, and he has encouraged some trees to grow out in certain ways so they make a barrier for your potential shot. (I know they required encouragement, because in at least one of them he had the branch supported by 5 struts so it would stay there). He also has small rivers and lakes with salamanders and fish living in them, and apparently had to run a pump to move water from his well to those areas so they wouldn't die in the recent drought we've been having. 

In short, he has worked incredibly hard to sculpt and maintain this. By his estimate it took multiple years just to get it going, and he did most of the work by hand. 

NOTE: all of the below were supposed to be panorama shots, but my phone has to take ~15 shots and then somehow reconstitutes the panorama out of them, and that isn't being uploaded correctly to google for some reason. Will fix when time and resources allow.

 Also featuring that great coastal fog.

 If you look reaaaally close in the left side of the picture you can see one of the goals.

Hitting one of the cows is a one stroke penalty, and you also have to go ring its bell and say you're sorry.

Jay also let me look at some bicycle and tent magazines he had around, and showed me some alternate routes to reaching Oregon. In fact, since he said there wasn't much of anything interesting to see on the route I was going he showed me a shortcut that probably saved about a day of travel time.

And onto today! The ride was just beautiful. It featured a super slow decent for the first half or so, which just meant I was able to barely pedal for two hours or so and still make good time. The only real downside for this half of the ride was that the road was super corrugated. (It adds a LOT of friction, and makes a very noticeable difference in ease of pedaling) I get why they do this; it adds better traction for cars when it's wet and slippery, but it still hurts me to see of to the side the nice smooth tarmac they chose to cover with the gravel paste. The silver lining was that that sliver of smooth tarmac still existed, and with care I was able to ride on that for most of this segment.

In the middle : My beautiful, smooth, lifeline.

 

Once I veered south though the road improved in quality and became a lot more hilly. I don't have any complaints on that front; one of the bicycling axioms I've always had is "What goes down must come up." I.E. whatever dividends the road pays you in steep descents you will need to pay back in equal and opposite climbs. Plus, you get some great scenery out of these regions.

 

Note : Again, panorama technical difficulties.

 

 

 I also passed this interesting sign shop that made me immediately think of the American Pickers TV show.

Eventually, after many long hours of riding I arrived in my day's destination of Raymond. This is where the story gets a bit more interesting. (And embarrassing for me)

So after a quick google search I note that only one restaurant in this town has an above average reputation : The Pitchwood Alehouse. (This is underselling it a bit. They have a 4.9 on google and 4.5 on TripAdvisor and Yelp) So, I knew where I was eating, and headed over for a beer and dinner.

While there though I met a few of the locals and struck up a conversation with them. (Translation for anyone who doesn't know me well enough : they struck up a conversation with me) One of them in particular, Mike, was especially friendly, and gave me a tour guide's list of places to see in Astoria where I'm planning to take my first rest day on Thursday, and even offered to let me play with them on their trivia team that night. We won by the way, though I think that the one question I contributed didn't help all that much. Still, I had a great evening, and the food and beers were great. I even found an IPA I think I might actually like!

But I digress, the interesting part of the night came when I discovered that this Alehouse also doubles as a hostel, and tried to book a night. My debit card...was gone. After a quick mental rundown of everywhere I've been in the past few days I narrowed it down to the place I ate dinner at this morning...and after a quick call confirmed that they have it. So I need to go back for it. 

 

Normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal to me. Yes, the ride is harder going back to Elma but I'd live, and I certainly have enough cash to make it back there. No the problem is the weather. This beautiful weather I've been enjoying is only going to last until Wednesday and Thursday is going to be rain rain rain. The whole reason I took this shortcut to Raymond was so I could reach Astoria on Wednesday and spend the rainy day sightseeing. Heading back to Elma tomorrow and staying there Thursday would simply not do. (Very small town, nothing to do).

But there is hope! With the help of the people at the alehouse I was able to come up with the following plan :

1) Get up at 5AM

2) Catch the 6:20 bus from here to Aberdeen. (NEXT BUS LEAVES AT 1PM)

3) Catch 8:00 AM bus from Aberdeen to Elma

4) Take 9:00AM bus from Elma to Aberdeen

5) Screw around for a few hours.

6) Take 1PM bus from Aberdeen to Raymond.

7) Book it 45 miles to just outside Astoria (leaving at 2PM)

8) Hitchhike in someones truck over the 5 mile bridge to Astoria (7PM?)

And since they have also offered to keep my bike and gear locked up in their storage room I shouldn't have to worry about anything going missing. Anyway this only leaves me with... five and a half hours of sleep at the time of writing, so quality checking be damned I'm posting this and heading to sleep. 

Thanks for reading, if you actually made it to the bottom of this post!