Bikeless

At this moment my trailer is sitting in my hosts' garage, without my bike. My bike is in the shop getting repairs. It's a mile away, I know right where it is and why, and I'm picking it up in the morning (though not as early as I'd like), but that still doesn't change how stranded I feel here without it.

The day itself started out rough, but got better. I awoke (after many short lived awakenings in the night) to the reality of my very wet and dirty tent and the continuing rain in the light of morning. I very much wanted to just stay in my sleeping bag and not face the day. But I forced myself out into the rain and began the tedious process of cleaning and drying all my things, with basically no clean or dry place to do it. I used the bathroom, though its floor was rather gross, and copious quantities of its paper towels. That damn expensive campsite owed me something after all. My hands were freezing the whole time, with my gloves still soaked. With everything else mostly clean, I ultimately threw my still wet and dirty tent in my trailer, biked half a mile to another bathroom I'd used previously near a trail, and used the hand dryer there to blow it dry and blow it out. It's a technique I very much recommend.

That finally finished, with a very late start of 10:30, I finally got on the road. It was a generally uneventful day. It drizzled on me continuously for the first half. Then I suddenly noticed the sky was clear in every direction except where I was headed...including behind. The clouds were apparently moving with me, at almost my speed. I decided to stop, ate lunch and called my best friend, and sure enough, the clouds passed on, and I was suddenly warm and not getting rained on for the first time all day. It was bliss.

At some point, I developed this indeterminate dread that my bike was going to break down before I could get it to the shop, somehow thinking that was bound to be my luck, and it drove me to bike like I was possessed for the remaining distance. I made it to the shop just fine, and I got her in to get fixed up by morning. Then I was suddenly left just standing there with my trailer and some folks at the shop asking me all kinds of questions about my travels. The walk from the shop the mile here pulling my bike trailer by hand probably looked as silly to many a Hoquiam resident as it felt to me. But I got here just fine.

When a shirtless ten year old opened the door and said his parents weren't home, I got a little worried I had the wrong place. But sure enough, I soon got a call, the dad came home and I was provided a space in the garage for my trailer and invited in. Hard times have hit this town with the fishing and logging industries dried up from what they used to be, and yet my hosts are incredibly generous with all they can give. Meeting people like these, sitting and eating a family meal with them, it just makes me feel warm inside.

Tomorrow is going to be a long, 80 mile trek, that can't get started until after 9 when I pick my bike up. I hope I can handle it. My left leg is a little sore as it is. But if I manage it, I'll be out of Washington and into Oregon by the day's end. I will miss this state.

Oh yeah, one other funny, final note, my hosts here also know Bob, my first host of this trip outside of Sequim. It's a small world. Or at least a small peninsula.