Day 6: Sea lion of approval

82.33 mi 38.0 max 6:11.45 13.2 avg

If I didn’t stop to take so many pictures, my rides would be a LOT faster and I would be MUCH more bored. But, dear reader, I try to capture on film as many moments as I can so that you might live vicariously through my adventures.

This morning felt much warmer than last night. The rain that had been threatened moved north, so our day was dry, although still on the chilly side. Towards the end, the sun even peeked out a bit from behind the clouds. Views also improved with the mists’ lifting.

In Depoe Bay, I met a man walking two standard poodles, one white and the other black. He demanded to know where I was from, so I responded, “Massachusetts.” He fired back, “Good. This is a terrible place to live. I hate it here. The hospital killed a 40-something year old woman, gave her medicine that shut down her kidneys and she was dead in three months.” Other people also met this guy - he said very similar things to them, as well. He must be the local whacko. I didn’t make any effort to continue the conversation (but at least his dogs were friendly).

Highlights of my day were seeing what I thought were seals but were actually sea lions. Whatever – I thought they were the coolest things ever, since I’d never seen them outside of an aquarium. There was one place where the sea lions were making an incredible amount of noise barking & talking with each other. It was SO COOL! At about mile 50 or so, I started drafting off Moira and Doug. When they pulled off to de-layer, I rode for a while with Mark. He’s one of our two Canadians on the trip, and I found that he is a social worker in a nursing home (I think I’ve got that right). We chatted for a bit about the 101 year old lady whom I’m taking care of. We both worked the paceline thing for a while, and he was good about stopping to take pictures in some interesting places (like one of the largest sea lion caves in the world, and Devil’s Chasm (I think that’s what it was)). That’s probably my biggest complaint about pacelines – I have NO problem with them when I’m on a route that I know. However, I’m on the West Coast and many of these places I may never see again and I don’t want to remember the trip as staring at someone else’s rear tire.

Then, we got to a lovely downhill, on which I proved once again that the descents are really the things that are the best EVER for me. Although I only hit 38 mph, I managed to pass people who had started the descent before me.
As we began to ascend the first hill after the long drop, Eric realized that his rear tire had a slow leak, so he stopped to fix it. Since I was right there, I stopped to help – that was when Mark caught up and passed us. Very shortly, Shannon, Eric, and I were back on the road – they kept a nice 18 mph paceline which I hung onto through most of Florence. However, I had to stop for a picture of the 101 Big Boy Grill, with cars smashing through the side of the restaurant. From there, I rode until I caught up with Bill, the 2nd of our two Canadians. He was on the side of the road, also fixing a flat. For that, my contribution was handing him the pump so that he could put it back in his backpack (mostly I stopped for moral support against the 18 wheelers whipping past).

So, probably a little more blow-by-blow action today and less sardonic wit, but if you want better stories, get out there and choose your own adventure (and write about it!).