No turning back

We were too far into the inland route of Washington to turn back now. For the rest of Washington it will be long days of the same mundane, but strangely beautiful, scenery. Since we were just done with the Canada and San Juan tours, Washington didn't seem as nice, but there were a few times were I had to jump off my bike and hike a few feet off into a ditch to say "wow."

It was a good 65 miles from Old Fort Townsend until our next stop at Potlatch State park. Very uneventful but a delightful ride because we actually got up at a decent time. We got to a small town named Quilcene, the oyster capital of the world I think. On a small road I found a nursery that had free wifi, that was where I updated to say we were finally back in the US. My... that has been a long time. One of the managers there was real nice and told us stories about his own bicycle tours and how his own children have done a similar route to us. And we were scared that people back in the states were going to be jerks.

We stopped in Hoodsport to have a small lunch and headed to the Potlatch campsite. Waiting for the showers, I was talking to a man that had done a five week hike on the peninsula route of Washington, going around the Olympics and the monster Hurricane Ridge. He was an older man and he said it made him smile to see us young people do something like this.

We ran into some men sitting around their RV that asked us how our day was going. We exchanged greetings and I asked what they were doing. They said they were celebrating the birth of the nation... it was July 2. They had started early. We kept on walking until I realized I was wearing a Canadian beanie on my head. I took that off quick and stuck it in my pocket.

Before night came rolling in, we headed to the beach for a bit. Nice and blue. Back at camp, three more bicycle tourist rode in and we greeted eachother. Ben, heading of to Alaska, didn't talk to him much, Nate, an awesome guy from Portland that was travelling up to the San Juans, and Mike, a creative writing professor at Stanford that was travelling to Montana, all met eachother on the road. Ben and Mike just happened to be from San Francisco too! We had a good time until it got dark and we all headed off to our own things.

One word of caution, embers+gasoline+bad firewood is bad. I don't really want to talk about it, but just trust me.

Where to now?

This must've been the worst day. No one got hurt but it was very close.

The day started really nice. The sun was out and beaming down. Then things went downhill from there. We had to take Highway 19, yeah bikes on the highway, all the way down to McDonald Provincial park. It was about a 65 mile ride.

Well here's the bad part. We hit a hugh stretch that was all downhill. At that moment I was just thinking, "Hey, my bike is pretty awesome. It's old and reliable." I hit about 35 MPH on the downhill and the highway started to turn to the right. There was a little sidewalk, barely able to fit our bikes, that I did not see. I went past it. But right before it, was this huge pothole. I was going to fast to slow down, I was too close to traffic to swerve out of the way, so I just hit that damn thing so hard my waterbottle flew out into the highway. Then I hear George hit that same one, his pump flew off his frame. I stopped a few feet after to see if the other two were okay. We recovered my waterbottle, it was on the shoulder, but as George was reaching for his pump a truck ran over it right in front of his eyes.

Hitting that pothole was scary. REALLY scary because if I didn't have that weight in the back of my bike, I'd have flipped over on the highway. The cars were already close, about a foot away from us sso I wouldn't have just broke my bike, I'd have broken my face. I'm still a bit shaken up by it so I'm just going to go slow on the downhills now :)

I thought everything was okay. I went ahead a bit. Everytime I made one revolution, my whole bike bounced. I saw that my front wheel had a big flat spot. It was unbearable to ride, but we still had a few miles to get to the next town. We found a bike shop thanks to a local cyclists and they said they couldn't fix it. I HAD to buy another one. And even worse, this shop didn't carry the wheel size my bike had because it was so old. I had to ride another three miles down the road on a broken bike to get another wheel which costs $170. The fellas at the shop were really nice but still, money money money. Then we went to Wendy's too celebrate.

We left and the next bad thing happenend. George found out that his wheel was starting to bound a bit too, but then I felt that even my back wheel was bouncing. That means I have to get a new back wheel too, which is even more expensive. The pothole that costs me $400.

The day got even worse. We decided to head to Chemainus to see the murals. Very hilly country but had some amazing views. I don't have any pictures because we were trying to get into camp before sunset. We didn't make it anyway because we had some faulty directions and signs that led us nowhere. We rode until 9:00PM, in freezing cold, to find the next campsite.

For the first time we had a fire going. We did not know why we didn't do this the earlier nights.