The Finish Line!

TUE 8/10 -- Salmonberry County Park (Alsea) to Florence OR (69)
[Truth-in-advertising note: I started this post way back in Florence,
but mostly I'm writing it at least three weeks after the fact. I
should have finished it right away, because by this point I've really
lost my blogging mojo. One thing that's been holding me back has been
the feeling that the end of the ride was a momentous event, so
shouldn't I write momentous words? Not necessarily, is the answer I've
eventually arrived at. The day was what it was; just write it up,
dude. The more important issue now is that it was the immediacy and
intensity of the experience that really energized the act of almost-
daily writing, and those forces are now long gone and severely faded,
respectively. Fortunately, (a) I jotted down some quick notes, and (b)
the day packed enough of a wallop that even in their faded state, the
thoughts and feelings that I had are still pretty clear in my mind.
Blah, blahbiddy-blah, blahbiddy-blah... Get on with it, man!]

First coherent thoughts upon waking: Wow. This is it. At the end of
this day (assuming I survive, of course) I'm going to have ridden my
bike across the entire U S of A -- from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
over 4,000 miles. On the one hand, it's impossible. The notion that I
would do such a thing is "obvious nonsense, especially for someone of
your age," as my cousin Alex delicately phrased it a couple months
ago. And he's right; I can't figure out how I did it. On the other
hand, it's been very, very simple: just crank the pedals and repeat as
necessary. Hugh and I have talked about and marvelled at this...
this... I don't quite know what to call it... this seemingly
completely contradictory pair of facts about the physical nature of
the ride, since just about the day we crossed the Mississippi (I know
that's where it first hit me: Holy crap I've ridden a long way!): (a)
it's impossible, and (b) it's easy, if you just keep at it. It's
pretty amazing how far you can ride a bike when you break up the huge
distance into a whole bunch of small steps. 20 miles here and 30 miles
there eventually takes you a long, long way.

Not only was the imminent completion of the physical feat somewhat
mysterious to contemplate (and it still is), but my mental and
emotional states were a little hard to sort out, too. I'd anticipated
this day for weeks, but now that it was actually here I didn't know
what I was going to feel when we hit the ocean. Exhilaration, that I
made it? Relief, that it's finally over, and I can go home to my
family? Sadness, that the grand adventure is over? A combination of
all three, is what it turned out to be, but at the start of the day I
wasn't at all sure.

So it was in a somewhat muddled state that I packed up camp for the
last time, and Eric and I left Salmonberry Park and headed for the
coast, just a little over 30 miles away. The group's plan was for the
vanguard riders (i.e., Mike) to find a restaurant where we could
easily congregate in Waldport, a little town on the coast just a few
miles north of the Beachside State Park wheel-dipping site, and we'd
caravan en masse from there to the park. Apart from the heady
anticipation of finally reaching our goal, the first leg of the ride
was pretty unremarkable. The main excitement, such as it was, was
watching the river we rode alongside (the Alsea?) grow steadily less
and less inland-river-like, and more and more tidal, the closer we
came to land's end.

In Waldport the shortcomings of our plan to meet and ride together to
the sea became apparent, key among which were the following: (a) The
restaurant Mike picked for our meeting place was not smack in the
middle of the road. Oh, it was right on the route -- and even on an
inside curve in the road, so that an approaching rider would have to
work pretty hard to avoid staring directly at it for a quarter mile or
so. It was also littered with parked bikes (see photo #1). Impossible
to miss, right? Wrong. Those of us who were already there watched in
amazement as one rider -- there's no need to name names here, so we'll
just refer to him (or her) as H -- sped right on by. But H didn't get
very far; we retrieved him (or her) pretty quickly. (b) Our group of
14, on top of several tables of regulars, completely overwhelmed the
restaurant's wait staff(*), which consisted of one notably inefficient
waitress(*) with (a) a low frazzle point, and (b) a cell phone that
seemed to be more compelling to her than the live bodies in her
presence. (I should note in her defense that it appeared to be the
restaurant's phone line she was carrying, and not a personal phone.
But still...) It took me 30 minutes to get a cup of coffee and a
cinnamon roll. About 25 of those minutes were spent waiting(*) for the
waitress(*) to take my order. I should have phoned it in; I'm sure I
would have gotten it sooner. (c) The members of our group arrived at
very different times and with very different ideas about how to pass
the time -- e.g., cup of coffee vs. full breakfast. Naturally, some of
the early arrivals opted for the quick (as if!) bite, and some of the
late-sters ordered the breakfast equivalent of Peking Duck. Whaddya
gonna do -- tell a man to rush through his breakfast? I don't think
so, even if it is his second one of the day. Bottom line: Lots of us
waited a long time for everyone to be done and ready to go.

But eventually everyone was done, and ready to go, and off we went,
Jerry in the lead. (It just seemed right.) Excitement was high;
everyone was pumped(**). And about a mile down the road, there it was
-- the pounding waves of the Pacific Ocean! And just a couple miles
later our entry point -- Beachside State Park. Into the parking lot,
up a little wooden ramp, down to the edge of the beach, shoes and
socks off, camera to Eric, walk bike down to the water, wheel in (see
photo #2) -- MADE... IT... ALL... THE... WAY!!!!! Woooo-hoooo! (See
additional photos of triumphant dynamic DC duo (#3, at distance, with
shades), triumphant group (#4), and triumphant dynamic DC duo again
(#5, up close, sans shades)).

Hundreds of hugs and handshakes and fist bumps and about 10,000
pictures later -- our photographers, Eric, Kath's husband, and Jerry's
wife, all risked repetitive stress injury to the right index finger --
we left the beach, shook off the sand from body and machine, and got
back on the road to Florence, about 30 miles further on down the coast
(***). The Oregon coast was every bit as rugged and beautiful as
advertised, but the road was equally rugged -- up and down and twisty
and turn-y and with an often treacherously rough shoulder -- and
*very* heavy with traffic. Everybody made it just fine, but all in
all, I'm not sure it was worth it, riding that final stretch of road.
Just a little too harrowing, especially since we had already achieved
our coast-to-coast goal.

About 5 miles short of Florence, Hugh and I pulled off at a scenic
spot for a lunch break. The first couple we chatted with extensively
(****) were seated at the most perfectly situated picnic table in the
place, ocean-viewing-wise. Which they signalled to us was ours if we
wanted it; they were just leaving. We did want it. They were a German
couple, from Munich, in a rented RV, travelling the Pacific coast for
the umpteenth time. They'd started their holiday in the east,
including several days in DC (which they loved, except for the heat),
and then had flown west for phase II. Their English was quite good,
but I think they didn't trust their initial understanding of how we'd
made the same east-coast-to-west-coast journey. "On your bicycles?
From Virginia you rode here?? Congratulations!" They drove off,
leaving us good wishes for our safety, and promising to give all bike
riders a wide berth. And then as we finished our lunch a second couple
arrived, multiple dogs in tow. They, too, were impressed and
congratulatory about the mammoth ride, but maybe even more incredulous
that we were riding on Highway 101, just because of the volume of
traffic. I told them it was far short of the worst riding conditions
we had experienced on the tour, and of course parts of it were quite
beautiful, but I would've been happy to stop once we hit the ocean.

A few miles on down the road was Florence, a quaint-looking little
burg that we unfortunately buzzed right past to get to our lodgings
for the night -- the nondescript Park Motel about a mile-and-a-half
beyond the town.

A package was waiting for me at the motel -- two very cool Trans-Am
Trail t-shirts that I'd bought on behalf of the group at Adventure
Cycling HQ back in Missoula. Photo #6 shows the basic design: the
trail in black, running across a US map in red, against a blue
background, all of which is comprised of the names of all the towns
the trail passes through. With lots of ACA staff help I had arranged
to have them customized as end-of-ride gifts for our two leaders. Each
one said "2010 Van-Supported Tour." Michael, the stickler for healthy
eating, had one of his famous quotes memorialized forever on his
shirt: "Salad is not optional." Steve's said: "The Legend -- He is
THAT Good," because that's how he liked to refer to himself. (I was
tempted to have it deliberately mis-printed as "The Legume [etc.],"
but suffered a failure of nerve.) Everyone signed the back of each
shirt, and we presented them at that night's farewell dinner at the
International C- [sic]Food Market in Florence. Should I speak of the
ICM, and its inept service and mediocre food? No; why end on even a
slightly negative note. A fine time was had by all, including me, and
it's possible -- maybe even likely -- that I was the only one at all
bothered by the repeated misdeliveries of beverages and meals, and the
ordinariness of the latter. We treated ourselves as conquering heroes,
and that was enough. It mattered very little that the restaurant
wasn't up to the task.

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(*) I'm only realizing it now, in retrospect, but her performance
displayed very nicely the full range of possible meanings of the terms
"wait staff" and "waitress."

(**) Me too, although I also had this horrible fear that somebody was
gonna not pay sufficient attention, and that 3,999.99 miles into our
4,000-mile ride there'd be some sort of tragedy. Wrong, thankfully.
50,000-ish person-miles of bike riding, and not a single important
injury -- pretty amazing (and very fortunate)!

(***) Not Jerry, who loaded his bike on his van and drove to Florence
with his wife. And not Eric, whose "Trans-Am interloper" time with us
ended at this point. (He was being picked up at Beachside and driven
back to wedding central in Redmond by buddy Dave.) Too short a time,
but what a MAJOR HOOT for his old man to have the boy join in the fun
for even just a few days!

(****) C'mon -- I was with Hugh, and there were other life-forms
nearby; you think there's not going to be conversation?!? In a pinch,
if there aren't people around, the man will chat up an oak tree!