The Candian Job - Day Quatre

The first thing I did on day four was ride the handful of miles left to Astoria, buy a couple of corn dogs (everyone knows that they are PURE ENERGY), and interrogate the local bike shop owner about the insanely long bridge that I was about to cross. The chap at "Bikes and Beyond" was really friendly and explained that the 4.7 mile long bridge crossing the mouth of the Columbia river, with a 24 inch shoulder, wasn't really so bad. I was scared out of my mind for the first mile or two but after the bridge leveled out I started to calm down.



After crossing the bridge I stopped for a few minutes to marvel at the fact that I had actually ridden my bike to another state. But as soon as I started pedaling to the first town in Washington I realized that the weather was turning again me. It had been hot and sunny for most of the trip until this point, but as soon as I entered Washington it started to get cold and wet.

The first 60 miles or so up highway 101 into Washington were very Twilight Zonish. Traffic was flying by me like crazy but for 60 or 70 miles there were no towns, no gas stations, no general stores, nothing....just highway and cars and coastal wetlands. At one point I got another flat tire which really pissed me off because I just wanted to get to a town to eat and relax and start looking for a campsite. When I finally came upon a town, Raymond/South Bend, the people were pretty unpleasant and were no help in cheering me up. But after a calling Matt to do some research for me I ended up camping at a trailer park and was happy to just be done for the day.

I rode 77 miles that day and by the end of the day I realized that my biggest motivation to continue riding was the idea of taking a shower. Could not wait to take a shower. My body, clothes, sleeping bag, EVERYTHING was sticky and smelly and gross as hell.