DAY 5: Carhlamet to Seaside

goodbye Washington! we crossed our first state line of the trip, and I have to say that today was a pretty epic day. probably the best of the trip. 

we woke up and had breakfast with our delightful host Gerald. after chatting with him for a bit he took some nice photos of us and then we went off on the road. we started off missing our turn and biked a mile up a big ass hill before we realized we were idiots. we promptly turned around and popped across the bridge from cathlamet to the little island next door where we caught a ferry to Westport or. the ferry ride was like 10 minutes or less, but it was nice. 

we were all dragging pretty hard and feeling rough. this became apparent when we stopped 5 miles in to the journey and stalled for a while because no one wanted to keep riding haha. but whatever, we hopped on and immediately encountered the longest hill of our trip this far. it was a 2 mile 800 foot climb that took about a half hour. luckily it wasn't too steep, but it is really boring going 4 mph for a half hour straight while trying your hardest to forget your legs feel like they might explode. 

anyway, we got to the top of that hill and there was a grand view of where we had just come from in Washington. then of course there was a nasty descent. anyway, we hit like two more of those hills over the next 20 miles before rolling in to astoria where we hit a bike shop to fix up matt and tod's bikes. matt got fixed, tod did not. doof. (tod is in search of a different crankset in case anyone was wondering or cares)

after having a late lunch and sitting there for like 2.5 hours pretending we didn't have 20 more miles to ride, we finally got off our asses and back on the bikes. we all felt like we might die.

getting out of astoria was a bit tricky. our maps basically became a guessing game from astoria on leading us on roads none of if could find. we popped over a couple of bridges and faced some shitty head winds before making it to my favorite roads of the trip. we followed along the Lewis and clark trail roads which were pretty untraveled by cars which was great after being on freeways all day. eventually we stumbled upon an old gravel logging road that was heading our direction so we went for it. this was awesome. we didn't have to deal with other cars, just raging all over the road having a great time. 

after the gravel road we had one of the best descents of my life in to seaside. it was just the right amount of curvey where you didn't need to use your breaks at all. 

so now we are hold up in an awesome house in seaside that is another great warmshowers.comhook up. this guy Neil, who none of us have met, is out of town and is letting us have free reign over his house while he is gone. what a great dude. 

anyway, we have a day off tomorrow and a nice place to stay after a sick ride. shit is supreme. 

DAY 4: Toledo to cathlamet

wiiiiiiind! today was out first (and hopefully last) real bout with head winds. our day started out pretty chill. we rode the first 20 miles or so through pretty flat farm land. then we rolled up on a town called castle rock which I couldn't help but keep talking about lannisters.

not long after departing castle rock we got in to a series of long, but not too steep, climbs. so all in all they weren't too bad. they also came with great views of rainier and St. Helens. this semi mountainous area went on for about 15 miles or something until we reached the Columbia river.

after a brief stop for lunch, we went on to crush our last 20 miles which was on a fairly busy rode along the Columbia. unfortunately we had a pretty brutal head wind pushing us back the entire 20 miles. there were also 4 obnoxious climbs on this road that we weren't really expecting. all in all, I was a really beautiful stretch of road. I also got to participate in my first road side shit today. really invigorating...

anyway, we made it to our destination of cathlamet around 6pm and met up with our host Gerald who I contacted through warmshowers.org. he hadn't been receiving my text messages so we kind of surprised him because he never got confirmation from me that we were actually coming. none the less, he welcomed us and hooked us up with a great camping spot right on the river.

it took about 20 minutes before we all hopped in the Columbia to cool off. then matt and Gerald went on a cooking spree making tacos and a ton of other shit.

all in all, a really fun day with some tough spots. thanks again to Gerald for making our night just as sick! I gotta go eat some corn on the cob then get to sleep. we are off to Oregon tomorrow.

DAY 3: Elma > Toledo

Hot hot hot! holy shit it was hot today. it reminded me of some of the shitty days I spent biking through Nashville. we biked about 65 miles today, which was pretty challenging thanks to the heat. keeping hydrated was a full time job.

anyway, we headed out of elma around 9am this morning. for the first 40 miles today it was pretty much completely flat. we steam rolled it pelotone style and made it to centralia in no time. after a decent lunch break, we rolled out again to crush the last 20 or so miles which were the best looking of the day, but also by far the hardest. we had 3 pretty massive climbs which were made much worse by the brutal heat. I am not even sure how hot it was, but it was ridiculous and we were all pouring sweat.

in spite of the hills being pretty brutal, we got some dope views of mt. rainier and mt St. Helens. coming in to toledo we had a really great view of both peaks.

however, before that happened, we stopped at a little deli in Franklin and the nice people there filled all of our water bottles and cut up a free watermon for us! thanks lizzy!

anyway, we ended up in toledo for the evening and matt cooked like 500 brats for everyone to eat (while I are hummus... again... thanks for the options Washington!). now we are all exhausted and I'm going to sleep.

pro tip: when dogs attack

so, most touring cyclists probably know that when you are biking past houses in the middle of no where, you often times get chased by large menacing dogs off of peoples property that you bike past.

I learned today that sometimes all you have to do is squirt a dog in the face with your water bottle to make them stop chasing you. sorry big black dog and your chihauau sidekick.

DAY 2: Shelton > Elma

wooooo! we biked a whopping 35 miles today. due to us being ahead of schedule, we decided to take it easy one more day to ease in to this, seeing how none of us did any training.

today was a killer though. we woke up and got ready in the walmart bathroom. then we hung out with our meth RV friends who apparently don't sleep because they were up partying until 5am but then reappeared at 8 am with their chihauau puppy, cruiser. I chatted with another parking lot character who popped over from his massive bounder RV who told us he did the ride we did 15 years ago when he was 50. anyway, point being... you meet all kinda of characters when you sleep at Walmart in a tent.

after hitting the road we had a decent amount of claiming to get out of Shelton. none of it was really steep so it was no problem. we quickly learned that Shelton is the chihauau capital of the world or something because every house we passed we were berated with the shrieking sound of micro-dog howls.

we pushed on about 18 miles before we pulled off at lost lake and took a dip and are lunch on the rock beach. we made friends with a couple of fisher dudes.

it wasn't long after that when we made it to our destination town of elma around 2:30pm. we rolled up on three different camping options that either more money than we wanted to pay, or weren't open for check in until 5pm. with that said we went to explore the few blocks of elma and landed in a tourist diner (but there were no tourists other than us).

we hung out at the diner for as long as we could just to get out of the heat. it was near 90 today. when 5 pm rolled around we headed up to check out this hostel we heard let bikers camp in their yard.

sure enough, they did. the price was still a bit higher than we wanted to pay, but the place offered use of their kitchen, a living room and two bathrooms for us to use. also, it is home to a world renowned frisbee golf course haha. we set up our shit and in now time out host jay came out and coerced us in to a frisbee gold lesson. so we got a grand tour of his course and got to play a bit of frisbee golf. so all in all, the hostel was worth it.

tomorrow we are up and off to toledo Washington. it should be our first real day of actual riding. stay tuned!

DAY 1: Seattle > Shelton

greeting from the Shelton Washington wal mart. I'll elaborate why we are at wal mart later.

we managed to actually leave Seattle on time this morning and caught the 10am ferry to Bremerton. it was a nice relaxing start to our trip to hang on the ferry a while. I tried to eat a muffin on said ferry, but for some reason I don't want to know the answer to the muffin tasted like gasoline. it was fucking disgusting.

we got to Bremerton around 11am and promptly started riding. everyone was feeling good and we made many stops in the initial 20 miles so everyone could adjust their bikes to their liking. totally excellent.

we were originally anticipating riding 40 some miles to belfair, but 20 miles in we realized we were IN belfair. Woops! I completed forgot I factored in that we were staying 20 miles closer to the Seattle ferry than I originally planned for. anyway, it was a pleasant surprise so we decided to keep on pushing forward and be ahead of schedule. I also thought I saw there was a different camp ground option 20 miles ahead at Shelton.

very shortly after leaving belfair we encountered a STEEP hill. this shit was a total soul crusher. it was only a mile and a half, but it was brutal. since my gasoline muffin was a piece of garbage, I really hadn't eaten much of anything all day. so not long in to the climb I started bonking hard and had to stop and pound half a sin dawg to get my strength up. SIN DAWGS!!!

we raged on for a bit more up and down smaller hills. we stopped to take a break at a gas station about 7 miles out of Shelton and I realized the camp site we were going to stay at was 15 miles back. oops. at this point we were scrambling on where we were going to camp because there isn't really anywhere to do so in Shelton. we searched the internet for options when tod came up with the brilliant idea to see if there was a wal mart on Shelton. sure enough, there is!

for those of you looking for pro tips, wal mart has a policy that you can sleep in their parking lot over night. so here we are, camping on a patch of grass next to a meth RV filled with ex-cons. it is actually pretty awesome for our first night. everyone has been running in throughout the evening grabbing shit they forgot to bring.

anyway, now that we are ahead of schedule we are going to take it easy again tomorrow to let everyone have another chill warm up day.

time to hit the hay! peace easy world.

We made it to Seattle

alright, everyone made it to Seattle, all of the bikes made it and are assembled and rideable, and now we just have to chill until tomorrow.

matt and I got to the hotel around 11 pm last night and decided to just go for it and assemble our bikes. we both did such a shitty job packing our bikes we even surprised ourselves with the atrocious mess that faces us upon opening up the boxes. our bikes were just a disgusting tangle of cables and other crap. it took us about 2 hours to get the bikes together and then we didn't get to sleep until 2:30am.

this morning we still managed to wake up before any respectable human should, so we walked down to the tourist Mecca market that I can't remember the name. we messed around there for a while until George made his triumphant arrival.

we triple teamed putting George's bike together and got it up and moving in no time. we then told our steeds on a test ride to a bike shop and the grocery to dial everything in and I think everyone is ready to rip.

so yeah, now we just hang tough until tomorrow morning when we will catch the ferry at 10am and start making our way back to San Fran.

ps. I've already eaten one sin dog.


here is George wearing his only outfit for the trip. enjoy, ladies.

IMPEDING PILGRIMAGE

Oof! Long time no post. So it is all happening again! Deadly Rigs is hitting the road again this weekend. Myself and some other familiar characters from this blog will be biking from seattle to san francisco.

This crew is rolling pretty deep... It is definitely the largest number of people I've ever toured with on a non-supported tour so it should prove to be chock-full of all kinds of exciting new mishaps. Four of us are doing the entire trip, but we will be rolling 10 deep at various points. Should be nuts.

Anyway, here is a link to check out our general route:

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?mid=z31eKIX0KvdU.k6iZjDjaymE0

I'm hitting the skies with matt kosoy on thursday evening to fly to seattle (where we will be starting). We'll be meeting up with pat crawford, george murray, and tod seelie for the first portion of the trip. We don't actually start riding until saturday, but make sure to check back often for updates! I am hoping to post every day. Hopefully, others on the trip will do the same.

HERE WE GO!