...the rain stopped, or at least long enough for Joel and I to pack up our tents and start the day wtih anything-but-refreshed-legs and a 1.5 mile climb straight up a mountain that led to a lighthouse. As the peanut gallery might have guessed..it started to down-pour about right when we turned to start the climb.
It was cold too.
We pressed on...for we had little other options. Eventually, after biking for a couple hours Joel and I decided to grab a decent meal at some Mom and Pop's diner in some no-name town. It was a glorious meal to say the least... a meal of American sized proportions. A meal where no homosapien would dryly state after wiping the last crumbs from his lips that he was "still hungry." I orded up an omlet and a tall glass of O.J. Joel orded up some eggs, bacon, toast, and clam chowder...well, minus the clam chowder seein we sat down to order our food 30 minutes too early (apparently in no-name towns they only serve clam chower after 11:00 am...fyi).
And then...Joel and I parted ways. It was written in the stars that things would end like this between us...him going his way and moi...moi going in my own direction. We shed tears, talked about all the good times we shared from the past 30 hours together....it seemedl like yesterday when we first met...it really did...We were able to put such emotions behind us and start pedaling....Joel to Astoria and me to...Virginia...well, eventually. I still had a good 8 hours of sunlight left and wanted to squeeze as many miles out of those rays of sunlight as me weary legs could manage.
As Loretta informed me on the phone the otehr night...it rains a lot in Oregon....but, it wasn't until yesterday that I really took these words to heart because it freakin rained on me on and off the rest of that damn day as if it was the last day God was permitting rain to fall from clouds. I took shelter a few times beneath outstretched branches of pine, used my bright red,neon pancho as a cover and waited....only for like 2 minutes..then i got inpatient and said, "to hell with this" and just rode off down the road.
It wasn't until 8pm that I decided to pull into a cheap motel. I needed some showering and all my gear was soaked and the gas from my stove had leaked into on of my panniers....pretty cool eh? So i found the most sketchy lookin motel i could and offered to purchase a room for a night.
As I lay beneath the sheets about to fall asleep I kept thinkin to myself that I've got to keep each day in the main focus...not the big picutre....while riding earlier that day I got really discouraged (and it's only the second day!) about how far I really do need to go. Just a day at a time though and the miles will come. Patience is the key.
Patience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment