Bikers

Starting in oregon, where our route became more common and obvious (hugging the coast on 101), we met bicyclists. For three nights we camped next to Rody and Jen, a jolly rosy-cheeked couple from Vancouver who timed their bicycling to stop at every micro-brewery and ice-creamery and were fairly obsessed with campstove buttermilk pancakes, we met a couple from seattle who'd quit their jobs and planned (for their first long bike trip) to pedal the whole way to Buenos Aires, having outfitted their bikes with a hanging handlebar garden (mostly herbs but some lettuce too) and a dry erase board to deliver messages to (or occasionally solicit favors from) motorists, we met a lesbian couple from Bellingham biking along in summer dresses who, when asked where they were going, replied 'Malibu', and who biked through five South American countries last year, we met Luis, a burly latino incredible hulk bike-riding toker, at a road construction stop where he explained, shirtless and helmetless in the freezing fog, the disappearance of his riding partners (they got sent back to Texas from the Vancouver airport because of DUIs on their records) - later we saw him off the road, high as a kite, posed on a rock above the cliffs, facing the setting sun with his arms straight above his head as if the pacific ocean had just scored an eternal, unmatchable soccer goal. We met a solo reclining biker who, like some kind of novelistic ominous crow, mysteriously appeared four times in three days at precise moments of being tired and cranky (for some socially awkward but perhaps prescient reason I snapped his picture before even saying hello, see above), we met Devian, a solo mountain-biker who, in the middle of his 1000 mile trip, stayed behind in Arcata to race in a 12-hour offroad marathon and then caught back up to us doing 90-mile days, we met a strong-willed, river-swimming, early-rising couple from Seattle who, despite camping in the same location three nights in a row, never saw much of us - they went to bed, exhausted, at sundown and were consistently saddled up and gone by 8am, we met a Vietnam vet, camping with us in the rain, who was riding his weirdly hi and low tech recliner-bike north (the views are even better, he said), drank Squirt from a 2 liter bottle, and who, around his camp bonfire, got the younger biker boys riled up about how things were better in the old days of bicycling (before clif bars was one example), old days which they clearly, mathematically, hadn't experienced. We met a trio from Portland towing their samsonite luggage with special contraptions, an architect from Seattle who is disillusioned with his field, and a shoeless, white-bearded, waving bicyclist who looked like Father Time and carried a front basket full of root vegetables. We met all those, and more, but today - today was the first time we had another riding partner. We temporarily became three as Ryan rode with us from his house in Trinidad south through farm fields, over the Mad River, and onto the organically-paved streets of Arcata CA. The company was excellent and we didn't have to look at our map once. Spent the night at the Arcata Hotel to bask in a night of relative civilization, complete with a really good bookstore full of books that are too heavy for us to buy.