Bike - Specialized Roubaix
Day's run - 58 miles
Total elapsed miles - 448.2
Time in saddle - N/A
Average speed - N/A
July 10, 1961 - Humbug to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
Was windy at first then quit for good. Very mountainous coast along S. Oregon. Highway badly torn up in places. Bought pancakes for breakfast. Met same family with trailer about five times. Three spokes broken on hard side, two on easy side. Reached border at 2:50 P.S.T. Got caught in mountains south of Crescent City after dark trying to reach state park. Met people in trailer again who were fixing flat tire. They fed me and I gave them tire patch, then they brought me last six miles. Will reach Eureka in the morning. Made 113 miles!
Ah, to have the energy and endurance of a 16 year-old again! Made only 58 miles today. Coast is still mountainous (surprise, surprise) but the beginning miles, over the last of the Oregon coast's 800-foot plus-headlands, wasn't all that bad. Asphalt was so fresh that I had to wait for ten minutes at the summit with cars and trucks to get around a paving crew on the down leg, and the average grade was probably no more than three to four per cent. Coast road was rolling, but worst part of the day's ride was the southerly breeze, the harbinger of the low-pressure area that was moving ashore and bringing the rain that is now falling on Crescent City.
Met up with Bob once a few miles before Brookings for an energy-bar-and-fluids replenishment
and again in Brookings proper for a sit-down Mexican lunch.
Crossed the "border" into California at 1:45 - two states down, three quarters of the last one to go!
This time, Adventure Cycling's advice to leave 101 for alternate routes was sound. Not that 101 was that bad, even if they were working on the shoulders, but the alternates were smooth, flat and bucolic. The coastal plain widens here for the first time since Astoria, and is extensively farmed. Smith River, the only town between the border and Crescent City, is, it turns out, the lily capital of the northwest.
Rode past the entrance to level five, "supermax," Pelican Bay State prison, also a major contributor to the local economy. Already met two hotel admin staff who are related to prison employees.
Saw only two other riders today, just a little way north of Brookings. Older than those I have so far met , but equally heavily loaded, the couple spoke a foreign language - Swiss German, I suspect - and exhibited no interest in speaking with me, or perhaps lacked the ability to do so.
As I have no interest in riding in rain and against wind tomorrow morning, especially with the chain-slipping problem on the fendered hybrid, we plan to sleep in and perhaps visit the aquarium a couple miles north of our Best Western lodgings until the rain tapers off and the southerly breeze blows out.
In 1961, I entertained myself by reading and vocalizing road signs backward, a totally useless skill I have kept alive to this day:
Pots rof snairtsedep
Tfel nrut no tfel worra ylno
Rewols ciffart peek thgir
Now I anagramize my first and last names, giving such results as:
Bret Rusatino
Rebus Orttina
and my favorite, Snout Rarebit
Hope to make it to, or just short of, Eureka tomorrow.
Until then,
Rustin Boater
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