Biking Across America (2 page)

W
et spray from my front tire buffeted my face and brought me back to the present. I rounded a bend and was back in Neah Bay. This northwestern corner of the United States is an Indian reservation, home of the Makah Nation. I rode through town and followed Route 112 for several miles until it intersected with Route 113, which I took south.

A short while later I was faced with my first choice. Highway 101 circles the perimeter of the Olympic Peninsula. A left turn onto it would take me east, back through Port Angeles and along the same road Bob and I had traveled that morning on our way to Neah Bay. A right turn, however, would lead west and south through the town of Forks and on to the Pacific coast. Both directions would eventually take me out of Washington and into Oregon.

I decided to take the unknown road that led to Forks, Washington.

Just as in life, my choice of direction determined so many things. I wonder whom I might have met, what I might have seen if I had taken the road not chosen.

A tumult of emotions fueled my pedaling. The exhilaration of beginning a new adventure was tinged with uncertainty and apprehension. I like routine and dependability, but as I looked ahead I saw only five thousand miles of unknowns.

Fortunately, the rhythm and exertion of pedaling had a calming effect. Along the roadside, wild hollyhock bloomed in profusion. I started to take in my surroundings. The land was mountainous and heavily forested except for numerous areas populated only by large stumps. Here, clear-cutting had taken place years before, and some growth was reappearing. I saw one enormous stump that had been cut decades ago. Then another tree had apparently grown from the top of the stump, and it too had been harvested.

My first big hill required some effort, but as I'd learned long ago, big climbs offer the reward of a thrilling ride down the other side. However, this time that thrill never materialized. Instead, I was introduced to my first headwind. This was new; pedaling on the downside of a hill was something my old boyhood bike had never required me to do.

I soon realized how much road conditions were going to determine my speed and distance as the smooth asphalt turned to a coarser stone mixture and immediately knocked 5 mph off my speed. And in just a few hours, I also learned how quickly extra weight would slow me down. How much weight I chose to carry, road conditions, and wind direction would effectively determine how far I could travel each day.

At five o'clock that evening I at last reached the town of Forks, Washington. My plan had been to travel several more hours and find a camping spot, but I realized I would need more luxury than my tent would afford. The camping area was another twenty miles down the road, and I needed a shower and a good night's sleep.

There was not much choice of lodging. Searching for a vacancy, I heard that over forty rooms in town had been taken by Coast
Guard people. A few days before, a Coast Guard helicopter had crashed just off the coast of the Olympic Peninsula, and three of the four people on board had died. That had brought more Coast Guard personnel and the media to town. Added to that influx was an invasion by the Twilight people.

Although Stephenie Meyer had never been to Forks, the author used a fictionalized version of that town as a setting for her wildly popular Twilight series. In the past, Forks was a sleepy logging town that most folks passed through on their way to somewhere else, but the town was now taking advantage of the opportunities and pretending that the vampire stories had really taken place there.

I found the town gripped by Twilight mania. Houses were designated as sites where events in the novels had taken place. An old pickup truck had been painted red and was masquerading as the vehicle used in the books. Of course, everything was bogus, and the old saying about a sucker being born every minute was extravagantly exploited here—except that the suckers were coming into town in droves, and so was the money. Twilight events were held all over town. Twilight specials were on the menus in restaurants. Stores offered Twilight gifts and paraphernalia.

Into this mix of nonsense and madness pedaled one tired and aching biker. My only goal was to find a cheap room, soak my weary bones, and get some rest. But the marquees on the motels in town all proclaimed “No Vacancy.” One sympathetic desk clerk made some calls and told me that the Dew Drop Inn still had a room.

I rode to the far end of town where the inn, a recently constructed motel, sat across the street from a hardware and grocery store where a main character in the Twilight books had supposedly worked. The room rate for this inn was advertised as sixty-nine dollars. That was sixty-nine dollars more than I had intended to spend at the beginning of the day, but that was fifty-nine miles and many sore body parts ago.

“We have one room left,” said the young man at the front desk. “It's a suite, and it will be two hundred dollars.”

I gasped something and looked at him in shock.

“I don't want to buy your place; I just want to rent a room,” I replied.

“It's the Bella suite, named after the main character in the Twilight series,” he replied. “The author herself slept in that room.” Thus began my education about all things Twilight.

Since it was approaching twilight in my own day, I started negotiations with my adversary.

“I have called other inns, and this one suite is really the only room left in the entire town,” he assured me.

I assured him that no one in his right mind would pay two hundred dollars for a room in Forks. By now I was tired and dejected and just wanted the comforts of a hot soak in a tub and a warm bed.

“How about one-fifty?” I offered.

“I really shouldn't, and my boss will be unhappy if he finds out I let it go so cheap. But I suppose you can have it for that.”

The deal was done, and I wheeled my bicycle down the hallway in anticipation of this spectacular suite.

The Bella suite was designated as such by a piece of paper taped to the outside of the door. I opened the door and stepped into my extravagant luxury. Even through my exhaustion I saw the obvious—a sixty-nine-dollar room had been turned into a two-hundred-dollar suite. A tray with a bottle of grape juice and several pieces of chocolate candy greeted me. As much as a dollar might have been spent on red and black ribbons draped around the room. The look was topped off by red and black sheets and blankets and thirteen pillows—I only needed one. Oh, well; the soak in the tub was worth almost a hundred dollars to me.

I decided to cross the street and look for much-needed nourishment at the store where “Bella” once worked. As I was leaving the
motel, the front desk clerk rounded a corner and headed up toward the second floor. He gave me a sheepish grin. He was carrying a tray with chocolate pieces and a bottle of juice that looked very similar to the tray in my room.
Something about that silly grin doesn't quite make sense
, I thought.

On my return from Bella's place of employment, I investigated what I already suspected. The scoundrel did indeed have sixty-nine-dollar rooms left but was turning them into two-hundred-dollar suites. Two more rooms had just been appointed as suites and marked as such by new sheets of paper stuck to the doors. If someone called for a room, he would have one room left; and when a sucker bit, a room would quickly be transformed into a suite.

I resisted the urge to go to the front desk and dispense some Mennonite justice. I sort of admired the rascal's business acumen. I comforted myself with the belief that someday the Dew Drop Inn would become an all-suite inn with many rooms featuring characters from my own books. Imagine the money this fellow could command for a room where both the author of the Twilight series and the author of this book had slept.

The following morning I was rested and ready for a full day of riding. At the edge of Forks stood a road sign telling me it was one hundred and five miles to Aberdeen, Washington.
Wow
, I thought,
that's a century. Can I pull that off?
A biker who does a “century” rides one hundred miles in one day. I had always dreamed of riding a hundred-mile day but had never succeeded. Well, okay, I'd never even attempted it before.

Let's go for it
, a corner of my brain said.
Are you crazy?
my body replied.
This is only the second day of a long journey; let's use some common sense here
.

But the sane part of me was overruled. It was a beautiful Sunday and as I rode the miles flew by, miles of forest, wildflowers, and sheer beauty. There were occasional sections of clear-cutting where
posted signs indicated when each section had been cut and when it was due to be harvested again. Sometimes the forest broke to give me views out over the hilly terrain. The road had its ups and downs, but nothing steep enough to require enormous exertion.

Enveloped in mist, I reached the coast at a stretch of beach where thousands of logs had washed ashore. The wind remained favorable and the temperature perfect for my longest ride ever. I reached the seventy-mile mark in relatively good shape—but at mile eighty I was gasping and wheezing, and a hundred miles looked impossible.
Only twenty-five more miles. You can do it
, said my brain to my body. It became an endurance contest, a test to see if my stubbornness and persistence could keep my body going long after it wanted to quit.

At five o'clock I reached the hundred-mile mark. No town was in sight. I was totally alone, but I slammed on the brakes and celebrated my first century with a loud “Yippee!” Then I quickly finished my ride to Aberdeen. On only my second day out, I had already met one goal.

My goal the following day would be to reach the town of Astoria, Oregon, eighty-two miles south.

The air was damp and cold as I meandered three miles through the streets of Aberdeen the next morning. I had already learned how fast that cold Pacific mist could soak my clothes, so I wore my rain jacket. I stayed dry, but I wasn't warm. Three hours of pedaling brought me to the town of Raymond, where a corner café cleverly named Corner Café enticed me in from the cold for a bowl of hot soup. I frittered away an hour while observing the comings and goings of the small town eatery.

As I pedaled through the town of South Bend, I observed a large conveyor belt protruding from a building. What appeared to be
oyster shells were carried along the conveyor and dropped into the back of a truck. I pulled off the road and watched the scene for a while. Traveling along the coast, I'd seen numerous fishing vessels putting out into the bay. I guessed this building played some part in oyster harvesting, but I had no idea what process was taking place inside.

Several miles later, curiosity got the best of me. I stopped at Goose Point Oysters, along Willapa Bay, and asked if they would allow me to tour their oyster processing plant. They were very accommodating, and outfitted me with a hairnet and invited me in. Inside, fifteen workers were hard at work shucking and sorting the disgusting-looking critters.

They offered me a raw oyster, white, slimy, and gelatinous. Although I had never had the courage to eat one before, I decided to give it a try. I realize some folks think raw oysters are a delicacy, but in my case, it was not to be. I gagged. I knew I'd either have to lose the oyster now or risk losing both the oyster and my Corner Café soup. I rushed out the door and heaved that badly damaged oyster back into the bay.

While waiting for my throat to stop constricting, I noticed thousands of pounds of shells bagged and stacked nearby. I introduced myself to the barge captain, Hector, and questioned him about the process of raising oysters. From millions of larvae, oyster farmers grow “seed” oysters that are scattered on the mud flats in the bay and left to mature for several years before they are harvested.

He was preparing to head out to raise the large metal cages containing seed oysters, dump them on the barge, and distribute them evenly in the bay to grow for three more years. “Do you want to go out with us?” he asked.