Day 124: Fort Townsend State Park to near Port Angeles, WA

August 14, 2011

The thick evergreens all around me help keep daylight from reaching the tent, and when I step outside I find a cool, cloudy, wet-feeling morning where I'm surrounded entirely by the colors green and brown. It's very Western Washington. It reminds me of home.

I work my way down the eastern side of Discovery Bay, waiting for the big hills to come. On my first multi-night tour back in 2008 I traveled Highway 20 in the opposite direction in the cold and rain of September, and I remember battling hills for hours and hours. But this morning they never come—or rather, I've gained so much riding experience that the elevation changes don't affect me much anymore. They're annoying as all hell—the constant ups and downs of coastal riding always are—but back then I was a man and now I'm a machine.

I spend several hours pedaling along the shoulder of U.S. Highway 101. It's the only major road going to and from the top of the Olympic Peninsula, so even on a Sunday morning it howls and growls with the noise of cars and trucks and the trains of giant RVs that tow full-sized cars behind them and back up traffic 20 or 30 cars deep in a line that stretches for a quarter of a mile. It's uninspiring riding—so much so that the most exciting part of the morning comes when I throw open the door to a public bathroom and hear the middle-aged guy inside yell out, "Aw! Hey man! Come on!" before I just as quickly slam it shut. It's a situation that's always horrifying for the poor fool on the shitter who forgot to lock the door and gets a mid-squeeze scare, but it's also completely hilarious for the person lucky enough to be the opener. I run through the scene in my head over and over for an hour and crack myself up every time.

Eventually I pick up the hard-to-find Olympic Discovery Trail. It takes me into the woods, where I can hear the roar of the traffic but not see it, and only catch quick peeks out to the bays off to my right. Up and down and up and down I ride, and soon I end up in the oddly named town of Sequim. The place stretches for miles and miles and I pass what seems like every kind of business, from a tae-kwon-do studio to insurance agencies, office supply stores, a carpet shop, and Frank's Hobbies & Guns, where I could buy a pinewood derby car and a .357 Magnum in the same stop. The dark gray clouds off to the west threaten rain and look depressing, which matches how I feel. Even though I look forward to going home, knowing that the novelty and excitement and unpredictability of life on the road are coming to an end still bums me out.

I pass farms and homes with huge yards as I continue west. With no cars and few people around I soon zone out and get lost inside my head, thinking about business, ice hockey, the two weddings I'm going to in a few weeks, and how I wish I could move to the San Juan Islands permanently. But the trail won't let me get too wrapped up in real life for too long. Unlike most of the off-road paths I've ridden on this trip, the Olympic Discovery Trail isn't built where a railroad line used to run. Instead, it bobs and weaves its way through a maze of left and right turns and drives me to curse the constant hills, some of which are the steepest I've pushed up since leaving the Appalachians. A month ago I could have dealt with it all like a reasonable adult, but I'm so close to the end of the line that my patience is mostly broken, just like everything else I carry. The afternoon fills with swearing and soon the madness of Highway 101 starts to seem appealing.

I'm in the middle of yelling at the trail for the 50th time when it drops down quickly, rounds a corner, and spits me out along the waterfront, where the flat calm waters of the Strait wash quietly onto shore in the sunshine. I can look out across to the San Juans and Vancouver Island and see all of them clearly. From there I ride into Port Angeles on the flats, cold from the water that sits just off to my right, with the strong smells of salt and low tide filling my nose. In town I find that the tired-looking Dairy Queen I went to several times as a kid is still open, so I drown the tough afternoon with a huge mass of peanut butter Blizzard. In just ten minutes my world changes from awful to awesome.

Port Angeles tries to be charming with its clean downtown and colorful waterfront promenade, but it feels like a working-class town struggling to make itself look like something it's not. The huge cargo ships anchored in the harbor, the street kids and punks hanging out near the bus terminal, the lumber mill to the west of town, and the old industrial site on the east side that's now a hazardous cleanup zone—those are the things that seem to reflect the true soul of the place, so much more than any antique shop or coffee stand or public art installation ever will.

A few miles farther on I pull up to an RV park and see a sign attached to a tree that reads, "Voted Best RV Park Near a Dam." That's actually a thing, and people more important than me actually vote on it. The owners show off the awards with great pride in the office.

In the evening I meet a middle-aged German woman who rode from upstate New York to Washington and flies home from Vancouver in a few days. When I ask her if she's looking forward to heading home, if she's excited to see the friends and family she's been away from for three months, she looks at me with a half-surprised expression and says no, that she's not even a little homesick. If she could stay on the road for another three or six or 12 months she absolutely would. All I can do is shake my head, smile, and tell her how much that amazes me. As much as this trip has given me joy, made me think, and brought me into contact with so many awesome people, I'm two days away from seeing the love of my life and I can't imagine delaying that any longer. She's been sitting at the front of my mind for the last week, to the point that I've started to get distracted and think more about her than the road in front of me and how to get wherever I'm headed next.

After dark I lay in the sleeping bag and think about the other things I'm looking forward to at home. Things like a real pillow, a hot shower every day, windows and doors and walls that let me sit down without having to constantly sweep bugs off my body, and not buying any food from a gas station for a very long time.

I don't fall asleep until midnight, as the countdown clock rolls over to two.

Today's ride: 56 miles (90 km)
Total: 6,375 miles (10,260 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	2
Comment on this entry	Comment	0