It’s still raining. But today wasn’t so bad, because I didn’t have to bike alone.
I was leaving Mount Humbug, which was amazingly gorgeous, but which I didn’t take pictures of because I don’t take my camera out in the rain. I saw a man in bright yellow tending to a busted tire and asked if he needed help, which he didn’t. But the man, Alex Neweling, ended up biking together to the next town, Gold Beach, Oregon, where we decided to split a motel room.
It was a good thing. I was soaked, and so was he. Our room smelled like moldy socks and microwave popcorn, which the proprietor gave us to warm up.
Alex and I are almost on the same trip, which is astounding. We’re both doing boxes. I am essentially doing Baltimore-Maine-Washington-California-Florida-Baltimore, and he’s doing Vancouver-California-Florida-Quebec-Vancouver. They’re about the same distance.
And he’s blogging, too. His blog is here. He’s a lot funnier than I am, and makes quips I wouldn’t even think of. Check out this spoofy picture from his blog:
Alex, 27, is a barely practicing Lutheran Canadian from a long German heritage. He generally goes to church only on Christmas, which, honestly, is pretty common in the Pacific Northwest. It’s not as religious as other parts of the continent.
We did, however, talk a lot about biking and our different approaches. He brings a camp stove to cook; I eat cold food. He bikes only in the day; I bike a lot at night. He’s an Aquarius; I’m a Sagittarius. He has bad knees; I have bad knees. He named his bike Gladys and I named mine Ibn Battuta, or “Tootie” for short.
We’re not going the same route, but I bet we’ll see each other again.
Anyhow, here’s a cool pic from Gold Beach. All over Oregon there are corrugated steel trailers where industrious forest folk, if they have permits, can sell mushrooms they gather for a hefty sum. (Alex thinks a lot of the mushrooms might go to Japan.) It’s been a rough year, though. With temperatures in the 60s in November, the mushrooms are being eaten alive by insects and worms. So it’s a hard deal.
