The Rain --- Oh, The Rain

(Posted by Yama)

Well, here we are at our next couchsurfer's pad, in Cannon Beach, 100 miles down the coast from Aberdeen. We originally planned to ride to Tillamook today, but we figured it was worth it to cut some mileage off of today, since we had that really long day yesterday.

It's also good that we didn't have to ride the extra 40 miles or so, because about 5 miles out of town it started to rain. Actually, the weather was iffy all day today, except for a few sunny patches, so I guess we're lucky we made it as far as we did without getting rained on.

In any case, those last 5 miles were pretty brutal. It wasn't exactly pouring, but it was cold and very windy and we were so, so happy when we finally made it to our destination. We even had a chance to do laundry, so our clothes are good to go for tomorrow.

Unfortunately, however, the storm that has arrived is here to stay for about the next three days... So... the next 2 or 3 days do not look promising at all for riding. At one point, we even considered changing our course completely and heading east, eventually crossing the Sierra Nevada, at some point passing into Nevada, and then heading due south to Tijuana. That would save us several hundred miles, but may not be much help, since the weather along that route isn't looking very promising for the next couple of days either...

Yeah, so who knows what's going to happen. We wanted to go as far south as Reedsport, but now we're thinking about going to Newport, instead, which is about 115 miles away. Again, however, everything depends on the rain and wind.

Speaking of the wind, the other "highlight" of the day was having to battle winds of up to about 25 mph on the flats leading up to the Astoria Bridge as well as gusts of probably 35-40 mph while crossing the 4.1-mile bridge. The crossing wasn't brutal, but it was really slow going and there was only a narrow shoulder for us to navigate along.

Anyway, as I'm typing this I can hear the wind and rain outside, and I can only hope that tomorrow brings better weather.

If you asked me now whether I think we will be able to finish this ride (all the way to TJ), I'd probably say "No way," but none of us is going to give up just yet.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

May the sun shine!