June 23, 1972
Bellingham to Salem, 1972
In the summer of 1972 I took what I’ve always viewed as my first real bicycle tour. As context, Carol and I were living in a house on Donovan Street in Happy Valley, just a few blocks south of the Bellingham University campus where I was completing my bachelors degree in Environmental Engineering at Huxley College, one of a cluster of sattelite colleges established the previous year, or possibly even this one.
A year earlier I was granted an early discharge from the army where I was based as a records clerk but living off-base with Carol in Olympia. The early discharge was given so that I could start my bachelor’s program in winter quarter, so that winter we drove north from Olympia to a farmhouse fifteen miles north of town in Ferndale where we lived in a shack of a farmhouse rent-free as I remember it, in exchange for doing odd work on the farm - specifically, I would periodically grab young turkeys from their cages by the feet, two in each hand, and carry them outside on their way to their final destination.
We relocated from Ferndale to Bellingham that summer, moving into a house we were to share for the next year with two other men: Alan Davis, a man we were introduced to by his friend Dennis, one of my coworkers in the army. Both men were influential figures in my life. Dennis was another misfit like myself, an MIT graduate who was yanked from his infantry training company to perform clerical work at home rather than lugging an M-16, hand grenades, bayonets and gas masks through the jungles of Viet Nam. Dennis, a budding playwright from NYC, and others like ourselves were spared this fate and instead spent the next two years managing the records for the less fortunate others, virtually all of whom were destined for the jungle.
Dennis and his wife Linda lived in Seattle also after his discharge, and they became some of Carol’s and my closest friends in the coming years. I believe it was Dennis who encouraged me to apply to Huxley, and it was his influence that encouraged me to buy my ten speed Peugeot U-08. He was also a bicyclist, and a competition racer on the MIT team.
And he introduced me to his childhood friend from when they both grew up in the same school system on Mercer Island. Alan too became one of our best friends, close enough that we gave our newly adopted son Shawn Alan as up his middle name.
Looking back on it now, I remember that year in Happy Valley as one of the best years of my younger life, in an idyllic time and place when I was clear of purpose. It was the 1970’s, I was an environmentalist, and I had come to Huxley to help save the world. The first Earth Day was just two years earlier in 1970, my first full year in the army.
The morning breakfast ritual was probably the most important time of day as I remember it. Breakfast was very important to Alan, and the core component of the morning meal was sourdough pancakes, made from the sourdough starter Alan began maintaining years earlier. For reasons I don’t recall, pancakes were invariably poured into ‘amusing shapes’ - Alan’s idea presumably, but I may have had a hand in it too. In any case, the morning ritual began with he and I each pouring and stacking pancakes for the table to be served with maple syrup, with he and I in competition to produce the most amusing shapes.
So, about the tour itself. I can’t remember where the idea came from, but the plan was for Alan, my brother Stewart and I to bike the Pacific Coast Trail to San Francisco, and at the end we’d each take the Amtrak back to Seattle - he to his family home on Mercer Island, and I to my parents’s home in preparation for me to begin my masters program in Air Pollution Engineering that fall at the University of Washington.
The bicycle would have been the blue Peugeot U-08 10-speed I bought somehow after I was discharged from the army. The figure $100 comes to mind somehow when I think of that bike. I remember really falling in love with it and riding it everywhere around Ferndale in the summer we lived on the farm there. It wasn’t destined to be mine for long though, as I apparently jettisoned it somehow when we prepared to enter the Peace Corps the summer.
I have retained many memories from that tour, some accurate and some less so. It was a real gift when this lost journal was found again to remind me of what really happened.
And a note about the lack of photographs. This was back in my stupid years when I didn’t carry or even believe in the wisdom of a camera, thinking they robbed you of your actual memory. As they do, but time does so with a wider sweeping brush. Fortunately Carol took plenty of photos and saved this one for me. Thanks, CJ!
Day 1: Deception Pass State Park (37)
We left Bellingham around noon after a big breakfast and last minute arrangements. It was overcast and wet but not rainy as we biked down Chuckanut Drive to the Skagit Valley. We had almost no problems with traffic until we reached the Anacortes highway. All three of us were pooped and sore by the time we arrived at Deception Pass State Park.
We made a shelter out of our tarps and had dinner: peanut butter, raisins, cheese and milk. We were visited by amazingly bold chipmunks, one coming within a foot of Stewart and me.
We almost drowned during the night, as our shelter was poorly structured and water ran in from the sides. Both Stewart and I had nightmares, with me dreaming about being badly burned in the middle of a flood.
Day 2: Fort Townsend State Park (38)
We left our wet shelter fairly early for a somewhat leisurely ride south through Whidbey Island to the Port Townsend ferry at its southern tip. In Port Townsend we shopped around for odds and ends, picking up dinner and doughnuts. Then we biked to Port Townsend State Park, only another five miles away.
We had another cold dinner and then made a feeble fire and heated up a can of chili which Alan then tipped over into the fire. Poor Alan. Stewart has been in bad sorts for most of the trip, and he told me why tonight. We debated for a while whether he should go back home from here or not, and finally he decided to sleep on it. No rain or sun today.
Day 3: Belfair State Park (61)
Stewart decided to go home, so we left early this morning. We rode together across the Hood Canal Floating Bridge and then parted ways - Stewart biking east toward the Kingston Ferry to Edmonds, while we continued south toward Bremerton. We were both very sorry to see him leave, thinking that the trip might have been really good for him.
The start of today’s ride was beautiful as we cycled south from Port Townsend, across the floating bridge and on south through a beautiful agricultural valley but then ran into a soaking drizzle that lasted for about an hour. on the way we stopped in Port Orchard to stop in on Bob Graciela (a close friend of Alan’s). We finally reached Bremerton, only to find that Bob was away in the army reserves.
We stopped for our first hot meal here in Bremerton at an A&W and then continued southwest to Belfair State Park, another nineteen miles away still. We biked somewhere between 60 and 70 miles today but we both feel very good about it. Alan decided today that he is really enjoying the trip. Both of us are feeling proud of having come so far on our own and have fun telling people along the way where we began.
We had a hot shower tonight which really helped, and then I left to do the laundry and call Carol. Both of us miss each other so much and it was a sort of sad call. This trip had better be fun to make the separation worthwhile. She is going to Victoria to spend a week with her Grandma Sheldon and will return on July ninth. I’ll call her again at Dennis and Linda’s Thursday night, from Oregon!
Day 4: Elma (56)
We left Belfair State Park fairly early once again, heading southwest toward Shelton. The first 25 miles were pretty difficult succession of hard rises and falls until we reached Shelton, which is at the upper end of Oakland Bay, a finger of Puget Sound. we had lunch in a city park by the train tracks in Shelton, planning to ride another 15 miles next and find a place to wild camp beside the road somewhere.
We went farther than that though, all the way to Elma. This was an amazing stretch of road, perfectly flat or downhill the whole way, with lilies lining both sides of the road. It was a very pleasant ride. We camped under an old abandoned mill on a sheet of plywood near Elma, and played a game of Go which I lost by five points, after which I finished Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Day 5: Fort Stevens State Park (100)
We began the day with the intention of biking about fifteen miles beyond Raymond. We awoke early and reached Montesano around eight, where the grocer let us into the store early. We reprovisioned ourselves with bread and peanut butter and then continued on to Raymond.
The next 25 miles were another very tough stretch, the hardest and most stressful so far as we struggled over a series of challenging hills, hugging the shoulder for protection from a constant flow of logging trucks, in a drizzling rain. We arrived in Raymond around 10:30, cashed a travelers check, enjoyed a delicious milkshake, rested in the park for an hour, and then headed back onto Highway 101 again.
We intended at this point to bike another 15 miles, far enough so that we would make it across the river to Astoria by Wednesday night. But then a magical thing happened: the road flattened out and the scenery was gorgeous as we biked alongside Willapa Bay , and the further we biked the better we felt. We kept stopping every fifteen or twenty miles to break for another peanut butter sandwich and quart of milk and then set off again. Alan got a flat tire at around 100 yards from the Nemah gas station, the only gas station we’d seen for fifteen miles! Amazing luck.
We just kept going and going, all the way to Astoria and on to the state park ten miles beyond, for a 110 mile day! And we both felt really fresh in spite of it. Crossing the Astoria Bridge was a tremendous experience. It’s four miles across, beginning with a mile-long descent and ending with a matching mile-long ascent into Oregon at the other end.
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Day 6: Barview Jetty (62)
We started out with a brisk ten mile ride back to the Pig ‘N Pancake in Astoria for a huge breakfast of pancakes, ham, eggs, hash browns, oatmeal, tea and milk! Wow, we were really stuffed. We went next to the Astor Library to write letters and wait for the bike shop to open at eleven so that Alan can get a new tire. We finally got out of Astoria about noon, with most of the day’s ride still ahead of us.
We kept quite a fast pace as far as Seaside, but after that the road became hilly again as the mountains of the coast range get close to the ocean. We got more and more weary but the coast got more and more beautiful, making it worth all the effort to me at least. We came to the top of a hill, shot through a gap north of Cannon Beach and were looking into an azure frame surrounding Hatstack Rock.
Further south, we came to a lookout from Oswald West State Park which gave an indescribable panorama of the coast sound past Tillamook . I couldn’t believe it and could have sat there all day. Then, after a while I had an accident when my rat trap came loose and began catching in my spokes, causing us to slow down enough to lose one spoke and some time.
In late afternoon we finally reached Barview Jetty Park about ten miles north of Tillamook, completing a good but challenging day’s ride. And here, Alan and I decided to abandon the plan to bike to San Francisco and turn east to Salem and end the tour there.
Day : Salem (90)
And just like that, the journal ends here, with no explanation of why we decided to end the tour here. I remember it though as a one-sided decision. Alan decided it was time, and I decided to end here with him. We rode the 90 miles to Salem the next day, where we stayed at my sister’s house for the night. She and her husband Vancelived in Salem for a number of years, beginning when they moved drawn from Salem so Vance could study law at Willamette University. I remember nothing at all about that last day’s ride, other than the route we followed.
It has always been my belief though that what killed the tour was that breakfast in Astoria, a milestone event Alan and I had been looking forward to for days. For him it was a big letdown though after that big set-up. It was and still is one of your standard issue pancake houses, serving copious meals to packed houses but shy on finess and character. I think it was just too big of a letdown for him.
I’ve come over the years to question whether I just made this up though, so I was pleased to see a hint that I was right in a sentence from that postcard to Carol we sent right after breakfast: Alan was a bit disappointed - only one of his pancakes had even a remotely amusing shape to it.
Day 8: Seattle (15)
The story doesn’t end in Salem though. The next day we caught the Amtrak to the King Street Station in Seattle and from there we biked east together to the shore of Lake Washington where we parted ways - he to bike across the floating bridge to Mercer Island, and I to follow the shoreline north to my parents’ home on Sand Point,
We didn’t contact each other after that until two days later when I got a call from Alan’s brother letting me know that Alan was in the hospital and would appreciate a visit. He never made it home after I left him, and never even made it across the bridge. He went over the handlebars when his front wheel dropped into an expansion joint, and among other injuries the tip of his nose was sheared off when he hit the concrete. As bad as it was, it could have been dire - because of course nobody wore helmets in those days.
Addendum
There is one additional page in the notebook that belongs with this tour: an itemized expense account, and a reconciliation section for reimbursements due me from when I apparently picked up Alan’s share. Big spenders, both of us.
Today's ride: 455 miles (732 km)
Total: 605 miles (974 km)
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Another remarkable parallel - in the summer of 1972, 2 friends and I embarked on my first bike tour. I was 17. We rode from Los Angeles to San Francisco along the California coast, camping in state parks. I had a set of pictures until they got lost several years ago, but didn’t keep a journal. I wish I could recreate the tour as you’ve done here. Great job of journaling and hanging onto your history!!
1 month ago
Huxley College. That was my thought when I first heard about the school, and of course it was a source of humor for the students at the college too - such few as there were that early in the college’s existence. I think there were six of us in the Environmental Enginerring program, and I think only two professors. Bert Webber taught the air pollution and other courses, and I can’t quite remember the man who taught wastewater engineering, but after class I’d sometimes go play handball with him.
It’s surprising how many of us have coming of age bike stories like this. Bill Shaneyfelt shared his own from the Mojave Desert in an earlier comment here. I feel so fortunate to have written so much of it down and then found it.
4 weeks ago
4th of July on the beach with a campfire, grunion hunting, camping in the desert on my way home, riding over the coast range both directions, coasting downhill into Quartz hill at terrifying speeds and so much more!
The memories you have triggered!!
4 weeks ago
4 weeks ago
4 weeks ago
But that's another long series of stories I could tell, and yes, I have been told I should write a book... But I know several who have written and published and ended up in the hole with boxes of perfectly good, interesting books that nobody wants. Only 2 have made a little money.
4 weeks ago
1 week ago