May 21st

Milepost 3??

While I’m riding, I think a lot. It’s a very meditative activity. While I do pay attention to what I’m more immediately doing since I want to be a predictable user of our shared roadways and I want to not be smushed by someone who is less predictable, I realized I was at times starting to feel and sound like the condition of the road and its other occupants was the primary fascination on this journey, and of course that isn’t true. That portion of the world gets a majority of my active attention, but it’s the least remarkable thing I’m experiencing and hope to share and remember. So, I’ll see if I can write differently; with more intention to reflect on the remarkable joy of noticing that you haven’t smelled humanity in miles, only nature. And then I’ll be there to remind you that much of the part of nature that is slow enough moving for us to smell, is also dead and thus smells even worse than garbage or pollution. So, you don’t want to run over that raccoon corpse if you can possibly avoid it. (Narrator: he did in fact avoid it)

Today I took more pictures, so that’s a good start, right?

Still, there were minor challenges:

• Sometime in my first few miles, I managed to accidentally reset my odometer. That’s fine, I still know where I am but the pleasant little counting number and “average top speed” and “time pedalled” counters all set back to 0. Wish I’d been able to figure it out and intentionally do it before I left, but that was not a successful mission. Accidental mid-trip success instead, yay?
• refilled, then forgot my second water bottle, and today had some long stretches without services. Fortunately, every single place I could stop supplies replacement bottles filled with whatever electrolyte-enhancing fluid I might dare to dream of.
• I started out sore. Mostly butt and wrists. (Narrator: the legs, though were gloriously functional and untired)

Challenges aside, tree lined roads were the theme of the day, coming into area with a bigger variety of tree types to be sure. It was largely coniferous to the north, but now there is a good mix with deciduous, and among the deciduous also a good variety. The forests are both less epically vertical but also seem more…adaptable and vibrant. Pure-conifer or Mostly-conifer forests are the norm in the sections of the PNW that I frequent and they are somehow darker though taller. I like this kind too but it feels…foreign. And interesting!

My travels today were split into two parts - swooping riverside road to Elma at ~25 miles where lunch was had, and then swooping riverside road most of the way into Centralia (~40 more miles), a bustling burg of 16k. Amtrak station and all! But the last 2/3 of the trip was long and hard since my soreness had not dissipated, I recall somewhat less of the pleasantness, though I do recall that it was largely flat and that was largely quite nice. When talking with last night’s hosts about the route, there were some…differing opinions:

• Carolyn: “Just take the highway, I used to bike on the highway (101) to work! Look, you can save a lot of distance by taking this cut-off.”
• Google “Just take the highway, mostly. Look, it’s a little different than the car instructions so we put Some Thought into it OK?”
• ACA “travel on the highway at a minimum, try these nearby, slightly longer roads that may not be the way you’d think to go. Trust us, we have reasons.”

So I stuck to the ACA route, and today it showed a lot of thoughtful, good choices that google didn’t seem to be aware of . Every once in awhile, google maps would be aware that a road was a “bike route” with a green dotted line and occasionally it would even route me on that street but only if it was directly on the way through a town without deviating even one block from the optimal route. the ACA route was totally nonintuitive, and was mostly roads I would have chosen to ride anyway, similar in feel to the old columbia river highway (but usually with less traffic). Theme: long twisting-but-not-undulating stretches of very quiet low-traffic consistent pavement FTW!

The weather was quite pleasant, and I even remembered to re-sunscreen 20 miles from the end when I started to feel the sun’s warmth more insistently, and avoided sunburn. I also stopped more often to stretch and pee and just tried being kinder to my body even while it was really reminding me about pain with every bump transmitted direct to my sore butt and wrists. I remember thinking at mile 3 of that final 40, with no good bail options besides “stealth camp and leave tomorrow”, that maybe discretion should be the better part of valor and hoping I wouldn’t have to look back and comment on the foreshadowy nature of that thought. (Narrator: he was lucky THIS time).

I rolled into a McMenamin’s in Centralia, got cleaned up, and then had delightful fajitas at the Mexican restaurant nextdoor, and though I’ve had better pina coladas, I’m gonna call it a win.

Turns out: I even slept through the train whose tracks are 50 feet from my window without trouble. I was tired. So tired I took a day off and stayed here and let my butt and wrists recover.

Written by Chris McCraw who resides in Portland, OR but maybe his heart is on the bike?