TuTuTun Lodge to Crescent City, CALIFORNIA

65 miles, 2700 feet of climbing, not much road kill (2 possums, 1 raccoon, 1 snake)

Today reminds of a line from a favorite book: “Things must improve”. Our day started at the Tu Tu Tun Lodge and the delivery of fresh squeezed orange juice and hot coffee at 7:15am. This was followed by a “Michael Phelps” style breakfast of eggs, potatoes, bacon, and toast. We describe this detail because this was the highlight of the day. With almost all of our clothing on, we started riding by 8:30am in very dense fog and chilly temperatures. Oh, and as a bonus, like yesterday, we had headwinds. Right out of Gold Beach, we started with a long steady climb. This was helpful for trying to stay warm. The views were stunningly beautiful --- or so we are told because we could see NOTHING! It was frightening to realize how close oncoming traffic was before we could see headlights. This was SERIOUS fog. So serious that Arn was now wearing four layers up top and had finally broken out the leg warmers for the first time on the trip.
Now, you might be thinking we would hear fog horns in the distance (given that we were riding on the coast). You could think of it that way except the fog horn was connected to logging trucks. It wasn’t a truck or two. It was every logging truck driver in America driving south between Gold Beach and Brookings hauling half the remaining trees in Oregon this morning. As scary as this was, it paled in comparison to the continuous stream of RVs pulling boats, SUVs, and anything else they could hook behind. Don’t they know gas is $4 a gallon? Are they in some kind of race we don’t know about? Is there a staging going on for RV parking spots?
One of the lowlights of the day was going over the highest bridge in Oregon. Really – that is what the sign said. We couldn’t tell you what it spanned as we couldn’t see across the bridge, below the bridge or what not. At least we crossed during a break in traffic. At this point, we were 30 miles into our day really suffering and depressed. This was supposed to be fun, wasn’t it? Things must improve.

NOT.

Just when it looked like things couldn’t get worse, they did. What was that sound? A pop of a rock and then it sounded like metal on metal. And Arn can’t peddle. So, in the middle of another miserable climb we pulled off to the side to see that Arn had broken a spoke. The rear wheel was now taco’d a bit but he thought he could still ride it. But we needed to do something about the rear brake as it was now rubbing the wheel at the taco point. So, Arn tried to re-center the brake but instead of re-centering, the screw that compresses the spring was stripped and couldn’t get any compression. A bit of time was spent rigging up a half solution that would still allow for braking with one side rubbing a little all the time and the good side providing braking power. Ugghh. We glanced at our map and found out that there was a bike store in Brookings – 7 miles down the road. We hoped that our half-cocked solution would hold till then.

Rolling into town and into the bike shop, we weren’t expecting much. Arn had a spare spoke but our brakes are essentially cyclocross brakes and we needed a replacement as the housing for the centering mechanism was stripped. After a bit of discussion with the owner/mechanic, he thought he might have some used brakes that could work for us. Okay, we went to get lunch while he worked on the wheel and the brakes. When we returned, the wheel was fixed but the brakes were not. Though at this point he suggested heading to Ace Hardware to pick up a slightly bigger screw and see if we couldn’t make it work. The friendly Ace Hardware guy found some self tapping bolts and voila, we were back in business!
Fortunately, our route in the afternoon was mostly off 101 and we saw 1 logging truck the entire afternoon (versus about one every 5 minutes in the morning – really, that many). After arriving in Crescent City, we decided to head to the laundry mat to do some laundry and write this blog. While there, we ran into another touring cyclist who has been touring for FOUR YEARS. 30 countries. 50,000 miles. Fully loaded he said he can carry enough food/water for 5 days and his rig weighs 170 pounds. He isn’t hauling that much right now as he only needs to get food for a day at a time on the coast. WOW – we are so not worthy.