"Tail wind? ... Has anyone seen a tail wind?"

Weather is starting to impact us and impacting our rides.  On our ninth day of riding, due to health, Bill had to set it out and ride in the SAG wagon and Jim and I had to cut our 60 mile ride short at about 30 miles due to rain.  We got up next morning and it was still raining.  We caucused and decided to dress for riding but put the bikes on top of the car and head south. After we had a leisurely breakfast, hoping for a break in the weather, we gave up and started driving south.  When we got down to the Oregon Dunes, we decided the rain had subsided enough to stop and take the bikes off the car and start pedaling.  I must say that the Oregon Dunes took me by surprise.  The dunes go for miles and miles and the juxtaposition of tall pines, mountains, dunes, dune grass and ocean was spectacular.  Well, I found it to be spectacular.  After we were out of the dunes, it was the Oregon coast I have described before; cliffs, ocean, off shore rocks, breakers, gulls, pelicans, fishermen and all. 

We continued pedaling south.  There was some head wind, but not too bad.  I have been starting to wonder about some of our research for this ride.  We were told by our research that we are more likely to encounter tail winds going from north to south than from south to north.  However this has not been our experience, but I will have more to say on that topic on our ride from Bandon to Gold Beach, whew!  However the ride from Oregon Dunes to Waldport was pretty nice, nothing incredibly noteworthy.  As I said before, the Oregon coast I have been describing.  That was until we got to the Coos Bay area and North Bend. 

I hope I do not offend anyone when I say that North Bend must be the arm pit of the Oregon coast.  What a sketchy town, and we have been through a few Oregon towns. Astoria was an authentic seaport, some fishing, some shipping and some tourist places.  Cannon Beach was all tourist,  but upscale tourist.  The locals call it California.  Rockaway was downscale tourist, lots of shops selling the same thing, large signs to pull you in, no evidence of any building covenants. Tillamook pushed cheese, of course.   Bandon was cute and enjoyable.  But North Bend; I could find nothing to compliment North Bend.  It had a rough start from our perspective.  On the north side of North Bend from the direction we entered, there was a very large and long bridge.  It was just about a mile long.  It was also so narrow that we could not ride over it.  We had to dismount and push our bikes up to the peak of the bridge and then down the other side on a very, very narrow sidewalk.  This was not fun in road bike shoes.  To make matters worse, there must have been some construction on the west side of the south end of the bridge, so there were orange cones in the middle of the narrow sidewalk.  That was too much for me, so I crossed over to the east side of the bridge, while Jim and Bill tried to maneuver their bikes around the orange cones.  Finally we made it off that God forsaken bridge and pedaled our way into North Bend. I usually like quaint, rustic, even primitive places but North Bend was none of this.  We were looking for some coffee and Jim stopped at a place, and I have to admit, I said, “this place is just too sketchy for me”, so we pedaled on, past the smoke shops, and the tattoo parlors.  We finally found a Safeway with a Starbucks, so we stopped.  I had a foofoo coffee (caramel macchiato) and Jim had a regular coffee, that was so bad that he returned it for a refund. We hope to quickly forget North Bend.

By this time, after our leisurely start in the morning, we were beginning to run out of time and light, so we contacted Dennie and decided to reconnoiter in Waldport.  We cleared North Bend and Coos Bay and headed towards Waldport.  Waldport is a very nice community and ahead we could see the van waiting for us in a parking lot.  We rode in, dismounted, took our front wheels off and put the bikes on top of the SAG van and drove south towards Bandon, where we had reservations.

After we settled into our rooms, we checked email and weather and then headed out to grab a bite to eat.  From a rain standpoint it looked like there was a possibility of drizzles in the morning but early afternoon it looked like we were going to get hammered by a storm.  Also of concern was the wind.  The wind was again directly from the south but the intensity was going to build to about 20-25 mph by noon with gust to 35+ mph.  Again, I wondered about our research that said wind would generally be in our backs if we took the north to south CanMexPac route. 

Next morning we got off at about 8AM, heading south.  The route took us west of 101 on a beach loop route through Bandon.  It was very nice, I really liked Bandon.  I did not expect much and it was a pleasant little surprise.  The seascape and the offshore stacks were really neat.  The vertical offshore rock formations are called stacks and this is what the Oregon coast is known for.  We continued to pedal south and the wind continued to build.  Soon, we were trading places up front in our three man pace line.  Sometimes, as we came around a bay or inlet, the wind would hit us from the side and we had to concentrate to maintain the shoulder.  At one time, we were going downhill, full into the wind, pedaling hard to maintain 10 mph. Fortunately, most of the time when we were in a climb, we were sheltered by the hill we were climbing and we were usually able to climb without the wind in our face.  Until we started to crest and then we would be hit by the wind again.  A few times we would be hit by a gust and we would have to stand up in our pedals to maintain forward progress. 

Approximately about 10 miles from our destination, our route went inland and was more sheltered from the coastal winds.  We wound our way through valley and over creeks until we got to the Rogue River and then we started making our way back to the coast.  We were getting hit by more of the wind that blew up the Rogue river, but at least it was mostly downhill.  Just before we got to the coast, I yelled, “Stopping!! Pictures!!”  Jim and Bill are getting used to that now.  Sometimes they no longer stop and they just pedal slower and let me catch up.  This time they stopped though, because there was a herd of Roosevelt elk not far from the road.  The Roosevelt elk is an elk that is unique to this part of the coast.  It is smaller than the elk we have in southwest, but rather majestic anyways.  I snapped a few pictures and then we departed for our destination which was near.

As we were leaving the elk, there were a few drops of rain.  Within about 5 minutes, we were getting hammered as we crossed the bridge over the Rogue River and climbed up into Gold Beach.  It turned out, none of knew exactly where our motel was, so we pulled into a restaurant parking lot and tried to figure it out.  While we were in the lot, the blasted wind blew my bike and Bill’s bike over.  Mine was OK and Bill suffered a broken mirror.  I decided to call Dennie and see if she found the motel.  She had and she met us in the parking lot.  About this time, someone in the restaurant told Jim our motel was only about 6 blocks up the road.  So rather than put the bikes up on the van and take them down again, we struck out on our bikes again.  We decided later those were the toughest 6 blocks we ever rode.  Winds had us standing in our pedals to maintain some kind of forward velocity and the rain was pounding us in the face.  We pulled in the motel at 2PM and a sign was on the door: “3PM check-in. No exceptions!”  I did not care.  I was willing to sit in a warm lobby for an hour, but they did make an exception and we were able to get into our rooms.

Tomorrow is our rest day.  Minor bike maintenance and do a wash.  We checked the weather and it looks like Thursday is good weather and, hard to believe, a tail wind is forecast.  Also, Thursday we cross into northern California and finish Oregon.