Earlier today I learnt that I am unable to rely on Steve to protect me from wild animals. In the dead of night, he left the tent to investigate what sounded like a cacophony of squealing, snorting, barking, hissing animals that were fighting around our tent. Here I was thinking that my man was going to man up and face off with these wild animals, whatever they were. Instead, the next thing I know, the sphincter factor has kicked in, he's bolted back through the tent door, crashed over the top of me and almost crapped in his only pair of underwear!
After it was evident that the animals were going to continue to run circles around the tent, he finally built up the courage to go out there again, only to realise that what had spooked him so easily before were a pack of raccoons! I will say in his defence, that these were the nastiest sounding raccoons we had ever heard.
Completely wired from his courageous efforts to chase away the wild things, and thinking that it was already 5:30 in the morning, he decided to start packing up his kit in full darkness ready for the ride today. Katie, who is highly organised, had been watching us with amused interest over the last day as we pfaffed about in camp trying to work out our system for setting up and packing up our gear and panniers, so I think Steve was out to try to impress her this morning by being ready before her. It wasn't until he realised that it was still dark at what he thought was 7am that he realised that he had been operating on Houston time. He had actually started packing at 3:30am!
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| Early morning in National Forest |
Our ride started off really well, despite Steve being short on sleep and we hit a quiet country road out of Neskowin passing through beautiful, lush national forest and several creeks, leaving the Oregon coastline behind as we head into Central Oregon. We only had two cars pass us from the opposite direction on this particular stretch of road and it was so nice to be able to ride 3 abreast and chat for awhile.
This section had our first climb of the day which turned out to be a fairly long climb, gradual at first and kicking up at the end but nowhere near as steep as yesterday. My legs were a little stiff this morning and took a while to warm up but thankfully they settled into the climb and got me to the top. What goes up must come down and we had a really fun, fast descent off this one. The road was in good condition, there were no cars and the bends weren't too severe so we could just coast down the hill without riding the brakes very often. This is the best reward after a long climb.
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| Checking the map again |
After this the rest of the day was pretty much spent on busy highway with logging trucks, transportation trucks, buses and cars buzzing closely past us. Today, we really felt the slipstream of the bigger vehicles pulling us toward the road. We followed the Salmon River for a while before hitting the vineyards and farmlands.
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| The peaceful Salmon River |
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| Lone fisherman on Salmon River |
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| Field of dreams |
Our plan for the night had been to stop and camp at the Polk County Fairgrounds in the tiny town of Rickreall ( population of 77 ), but as our luck would have it camping was not allowed tonight because the County Fair was actually coming to town on Thursday and the grounds were being set up with carnival rides and exhibitions.
Rickreall was already 65 miles into our day, and we couldn't find another campground within 20 miles of Rickreall that was on our route, so after only 3 days in we have our first hotel stay at the Courtesy Inn in the small college town of Monmouth.
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| Steve wants to trade me in |
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| Taking a well deserved break before our 2nd climb of the day |
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| Chasing shadows on the path to Monmouth |
CRANKING ODYSSEY STATS
Total odyssey miles: 176
Overall Fastest Speed: Steve (39.9 miles per hour) Mandy (35.3 miles per hour)
Bonks: nil
Dog chases: 1
Dummy Spits: nil
Flats: nil
Wrong turns: 4
Beer of the day: Georgetown Porter
Lesson of the day: always pack some duct tape
No. of our luxury items that Katie has used: 2 (duct tape + rope)
Starting weight: Steve (90kg) Mandy (51.5kg)
Posted with Blogsy
Loving the stats - What about life threatening encounters with fiercely fanged fauna: 0
ReplyDeleteRealization Steve may have indeed under-packed in the undies dept: 1
Happy Rollin
Haha. We are thinking of cutting weight so I am afraid he may be free balling soon. That may be too much information, right?
DeleteHope you took down the number of the critter getter! Beer of the day rankings could be useful although anything would taste pretty good after a long ride :-)
ReplyDeleteRankings means I would have to write more ... But yes they all taste bloody good at the end of the day
Delete