9/3

[written on the anniversary of the trip:
I'm reviewing what I wrote for to try to correct typos and add commentary where needed.
At the time, I didn't mention it since I didn't want to worry any of our readers, namely our parents. But now I suppose it's fine to say. Overnight, I had some real trouble breathing under the tent housing. Rain sheeted over the already muggy tent fabric and made it hard for air to circulate. It was super stifling in my bivy. At one point, I started hyperventilating and had to unzip in a rush and stick my head out into the rain to breathe. It took several minutes for my breathing and heart rate to get back to normal. It happened one more time after that. That's on top of being miserably cold without a sleeping bag and a sleeping pad that kept deflating and putting me in contact with the ground.
I got maybe 2 hours of sleep that night. In the early morning, I was super cold and tired. The fear that I was going to have to quit kept shooting pangs of panic back into me. While it was by far the worst that night, I would suffer aftershocks from that for the rest of the trip. It was part of why I was in a bad mood frequently. Even to this day, I can still feel the roots of that kind of panic stirring around sometimes, usually in response to feeling cold while biking]

Day 3. It's already getting hard to remember what day of the week it is. A few more hard climbs and scenic vista descents today. Matt's got a few of the downhills on video. You'll have to wait.

Riding in flat ground is easy. You can maintain 15mph even with some headwind all day, as long as people rotate who's in the lead. But the moment we hit a big slope, our pace grinds to 5mph. For long hills, our MO is to keep ratcheting up the hill in the lowest gear available until we hit a crest, at which point we take a break. By far, the hand signal we are most anxious to see from the lead rider is, as we're climbing, whether the road still rises upward. If so, a thumbs down is held out to temper the hopes of those behind. But if it levels or drops, thumbs up!

Today, we banked a detour of 15mi to help me get a sleeping bag. It didn't help that Longview, WA has two 1111 Hudson St.'s. More on that later. [as I wrote above -- I needed that sleeping bag. Even fully clothed, I was way too cold. The one I got was not only pretty cheap but also packed up very small.
My whole bivy + tent cover experiment was a qualified failure. If the tent material had breathed better, it would have been a hell of a lot more tolerable. For the rest of the trip, I resorted to using it in a lean-to configuration, exposing myself to the air but hopefully still getting shielded from vertica rainfall. This day was the first day that I used that configuration. Along with the sleeping bag, I slept much better.]

Now we're camped out at the modestly named County Line Park. It's a cliffside beach with a small strip for renting. We of course got the very cheap hiker/biker area, with quite a view:

It's King Salmon spawning season on this river. Folks are down on the beach fishing them. You drop a weight to anchor the line and lure out in the middle of the river. When a school swims by, some salmon take the bait, pull the line off the tin can alarm, and run. Then you have to reel them in:

After this photo, the salmon was expertly gutted and cleaned. Its head cast back in the water made for a slow meal for some noisy and persistent pelicans.

Biking through these quiet Washington towns, with only the roughest schedule and sense of direction, it's easy to get overwhelmed by a tinge of wanderlust. My adult life prior was so structured, so specific in its contexts. I love my job and it is a huge part of my life. I'm not afraid to say that. It's true. 

Out here, the most important things are to steer your bike safely and to keep rolling forward. Everything else is whatever you decide to do that day. I'll admit -- the culture shock is pretty strong. Something that would come naturally as an awesome vacation to some has me a bit lost for purpose. The purpose now is to get to SF safe.

9/3 pics: https://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/BikeTour93?authkey=Gv1sRgCO3sroXUkIX3zgE
9/3 video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6AOILcxeSw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOPtBFZLLME
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE-NlT4XV2w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W9xCLrmV40