bike riding mostly
June 18, 2021
Back to the Gales Creek Trail. Last time was a winter slog turned back at a too deep too fast creek crossing. This time the trail has been immaculately maintained, the slides were fixed, down trees cleared. The fresh bear poop was a nice touch. Rode from Gales Creek Campground up to Bell Camp trailhead. Light traffic on a early weekday. Good.
May 28, 2021
Another minus tide ride at Cannon Beach. Timing aligned with a day off and a 9 AM, -1.7 foot tide. Crowd was light. Rain through the coast range on the Sunset Highway yielded clearing skies at the intersection with US 101. Nice ride up the coast and out onto the otherwise inundated wave plane. Tunnels were revealed along with the multitudes of starfish and anenomi. Not much flotsam & jetsum. Two buzzards were getting a head start on a fresh seal carcass. Post ride de regueur visit to Bruce’s Candy Kitchen in downtown Cannon Beach to restock the taffy stash.
Rinsing off in the bird bath.
Pastrami jack sourdough mustard kraut.
January 23
Drove over the hills to the beach yesterday. Where US 26 intersects 101, on the left coast the best coast, we usually turn south a little ways to Cannon Beach but today we turned north to investigate Gearhart, beach town little bit north of Seaside.
Seaside has the large hotels and attractions and fancy main drag and a flavor similar to Crescent City, just below the surface a dark underbelly of dinge.
Keep going north past the franchises and “treasure” shops and there is Gearhart with almost no commercial activity. Upper scale second or third or fourth vacation homes for the Portland “elite” I hear.
There’s a post office, bakery, cafe, and a Mcmenamins on a golf course swarming with unmasked scurrilous heathens. Much quieter than Cannon Beach; more spread out and roomy. Plentiful parking and easy beach access with acres of dunes to meander with a straight shot north to the mouth of the Columbia and south to the mouth of the Neawanna.
Tossed in the fat BOB prototype modeled after the Coast Kid’s design. Swing arm is a sturdy brace of perforated angle steel with a kite buggy wheel hanging off the back end on a 20mm bolt. Tire is run near flat the carcass providing enough support for the lunch box. Maybe with use as flexibility increases it may need a few more PSI but for now it spreads out and floats nice across the top of the sand. Makes a good platform to haul treats and layers and collecting the flotsam and jetsam.
Making way…on a grand day seeing the new sights on the tide flats with the fat bikes.
oh you shoulda seen it man settin on the couch Friday morning pissin rain forecast says all damn day and i say to her i am going ridin and she says yer nutz be home fer dinner I says Okey dokey and off I go and it rains and rains and rains and i get to the trailhead and i says what the heck am i doin this for then realize that i need to do it to keep the juices flowin so off we go me and the bike and I am soaked within half mile of the car and i say to self, self just get to the next spot then the next spot then the next spot keep going keep goin an hour an a half later get to the overlook and there’s little white snowflecks amongst the rain drops and it’s stickin’ on the ground and i says to myself Geez Im kindof gettin cold out here so turn tail and blast it back to the car mud sprayin and flyin and deer dartin and no one else in the forest far as i can tell but me and it is a fine time to have to one’s self and it made me realize a larger fender would make the overall experience less bad.
This log out on the trail it’s been there awhile and I thought I’d take a whing at it last weekend with the trusty 6 inch folding saw feeling saucy with a couple light limbing successes under the belt but that log overwhelmed the chicken wings holding onto the Corona so we left.
This weekend we engage that log if it’s still there with advanced hardware. Yes, the chainsaw was considered, briefly, then calmer heads prevailed and here we are…
…Bestville, around the corner from Sawyers Bar, was platted by George Best as a result of his being, some say forcibly, removed one night from the Sawyers Bar Community Hall during one of the notorious methanol fueled hoe-down blow outs that would draw all form and type of folk from miles up and down river and occur most nights except Thursdays when the hall was reserved for the DAR meetings which themselves typically ended in a blood curdling brawl after minimally polite discussions of lineage turned to heavy allegations recriminations and insults of heritage and provenance.
The she said she saids resulted in multiple layers of blood teeth vomit spouting forth from the combatants/historians. Scraps of skin and assorted articles of clothing were then found amongst the leaf litter on the rough hewn porch Friday mornings. This exfoliated layercake of gore and grime was tended to by the chinese labor who maintained a sleeping porch out behind the building before the schoolchildren arrived for their lessons. While the Hall was being scrubbed and shoveled birds tidied their nests with the hanks of womanly hair strewn about the property caught on the briars and brambles the long trailing tresses gleaming in their beaks like spider’s silk as they stole back and forth through the morning sunlight.
But I digress…George’s expulsion was due to a specific interaction with an even-toed ungulate on christmas eve 1877, after which spectacle no one in the very clique-ish community cared to see or hear from George again so he dragged himself out of sight around the corner and the aptly named Bestville rose, didn’t last long by modern standards, and fell to ruin melting back into the trees as locales tended to in those days of the rabid mining era where sustainability had not entered the lexicon and standards were low but by god they were there and intimacy with ungulates was one of those lines that shouldn’t be crossed and such behavior was met with swift and definitive judgement as George discovered.
There were many lines then as there are today and they twist, turn, bisect, interlace and it’s a strange and tangled dance but pay close attention because you don’t want to find yourself over the line and end your days like George wiggling through the riffles along the banks of the North Fork Salmon River, a whimpering crank clawing at the gravel making godawful mewling noises like a cranked out wino getting kicked loose from the hind teat of a three legged diseased dachsund.
Visit to Mt St Helen. Rode the Ape Canyon to Plains of Abraham trails. Warm day ride out and back on a fine trail to a blowout locale. Few bikers and hikers about. Took the skinny tire trail bike does well enough in the pumice had to push a little bit. Saw one fat tire rider and had minor envy.
