I’m on my way down from Crater Lake, and have stopped at one of the scenic turnouts to adjust my luggage. Afterwards I stretch my legs a bit, walking around with the camera, and end up looking down the edge of a cliff at a rushing river.
You know how it is. The very fact that something’s got an edge compels people to look over it.
Later on, I’m cycling across the wide valley surrounding Fort Klamath, and this piece of cloth catches my eye. How did it end up stuck to a post over a ditch on the side of the road? Did some farmer lose a scrap of his pants while wiring the fence?
I don’t think so, Oregon farmers. Congestion is what you get when you’re driving over Highway 17 into San Jose at 9:00am on Monday morning. Cows crossing the road? A tractor blocking a lane? That’s just an excuse to stop and have a picnic.
About three hours later I climb out of the valley, heading southwest, and during one of my frequent breaks to guzzle water or sip my root beer, I find this specimen in the road:
Probably only dead for a couple of days. Then, as I’m completing the day’s journey and checking in at the Rocky Point Resort, I discover this fellow walking around on the back of my bike:
I’m heading down out of the campground, away from Crater Lake. The GPS on my handlebars claims I am going 35 mph. Whoo! Just for the sheer hell of it, I launch the AIM client on my phone, and send people short text messages as I glide around the curves. Mom admonishes me to be careful. Kashy sends me happy little geometric squigglies.
I stop at a turnout to adjust my seat, and take a photo of some interesting cliff erosions. Of course, now that I’m miles from the last official bathroom, my body has decided it’s time to poop. I dig some folded toilet paper out of a plastic bag and tromp out into the woods.
This marks the first of six times on the trip that I will poop outside. The official count is:
1 time in the woods down a hillside.
3 times in the woods at the foot of a tree.
1 time in the woods in a dry creek bed.
1 time in the desert, in the late evening, on flat ground between scrub bushes.
All six times, the result has actually been LESS messier than using a real toilet, because instead of being in a horizontal sitting position, I can actually squat all the way down. There has been almost nothing on the paper, every time. This makes me wonder if Americans will ever be convinced to adopt the Japanese squat toilet. (Or heck, even the bidet would be better.)
A couple minutes after I’ve done my business and walked back to the turnout, four identical Harleys come farting up, and park at the opposite end. A family dismounts and begins chatting and taking pictures. It appears to be an old married couple, their son, and their daughter-in-law. They look hip and cool in their shiny black leather. Two of the Harleys – the ones ridden by the married couple – appear brand-new.
The young woman gawks at my bicycle. The men cast furtive glances at it. As I seat myself and then pedal away, it occurs to me that the whole family could have gone on their trip in one small car for much less money. Then they could have sat and talked to each other the whole time instead of only at rest stops and campgrounds, or over headsets. But no … that wouldn’t be nearly as hip and cool as getting four fartmobiles and leather duds.
At the edge of the flatlands, I stop my bike to check the rear brake and the charging box, and take a picture of some sheepies for The La. (I can hear her voice now: “Eeeeeeeeee!! Sheepies!!!”) While I’m on the ground underneath the front wheel, lifting it up and spinning it to check if the charger is working, a dog begins to bark. I ignore it, and continue my checking.
When I stand up, I see a big old furry white dog come marching out from around the side of the nearby house, into the driveway. He barks a throaty bark at me, then walks a little more, then barks again. “Hey there, dawg!” I say, as I dig out my camera.
I take some sheep pictures, and the barking continues. I put the camera back in my bag, and glance up. The dog has meandered out into the road now, about forty yards away, and is sitting on his haunches barking at me.
“What’s your deal, Mister Barks-a-lot?” I say. “Huh?”
I hear a rushing noise behind me, and turn to see a big-rig moving up the road. I wave at the driver, who waves back. Then he slows down, because the dog is still in the road, barking at both of us now. The dog gets to his feet and marches self-importantly across the opposite lane, and down into the ditch. The truck begins moving again, and as it continues down the road, I squat and inspect my rear brake calipers, which I suspect are rubbing against the rim of my tire. I stretch the cable, but I don’t have the screwdriver to make the proper adjustment, so I shrug and stand up, wiping my hands on my sweatpants.
The dog has now wiggled his way under the fence beyond the ditch, and is sitting in the field there, still barking, but apparently at the world in general.
“Whatever, dawg. You just keep doin’ your thing,” I tell him.
I sit back down on the bike, and start pedaling. I expect the barking to fade into the distance, but it doesn’t. I look over my right shoulder and observe the dog, running awkwardly along behind the fence, keeping pace with me. “Watch it! You’re gonna run out of field!” I shout.
I pass out onto a low bridge, over a creek. The dog pulls up short and narrowly avoids tumbling into a bush. He is so startled he actually forgets to bark for a moment. But as I reach the end of the bridge and meet the road again, accelerating, the barking resumes.
Silly old dog. It’s funny, even among dogs that bark, you can tell the difference between the well-treated ones and the unhappy, neglected ones. This fellow is a family dog … Not afraid or angry, just outside doin’ his job.
I wake up and wash my face, then head to the nearby lodge to take a shower. There I discover that the showers are coin-operated, quarters-only, and limited to four minutes at a time. It costs me almost five dollars to get clean, including the time it takes for the water to actually get warm.
Back from the showers, my next task is to install the shoe cleats for my bicycle pedals onto my shoes. The cleats attach with four hex screws, and before my trip I made sure that I had a hex wrench to fit them, but when I examine the undersides of the shoes, I discover that they have metal plates on them that act as placeholders to protect the spaces where the cleats will be installed. Unfortunately, those metal plates are screwed on with regular Phillips screws.
“What the hell?” I mutter under my breath, and walk back to the lodge and borrow a screwdriver from the local handyman. I waste almost half an hour jamming the screwdriver up against the bottom of the shoes, trying to loosen the absurdly tight protector plates.
Finally I get them installed, and hurl the protector plates angrily into a nearby trash can. Now all I need to do is get the rest of my gear attached to the bike:
Heaped on the picnic table, it looks like way too much gear.
A quarter-mile into my first day of riding, I encounter my first crushed animal. It’s a ground squirrel, pressed flat into the shoulder, burned grey by the sun. Almost against my will, I begin to keep a tally in the back of my head. By the end of the trip, I will have seen:
Two more dead ground squirrels.
The bleached bones of a sheep.
A large dried up frog, flattened upside-down on the roadway.
The jumbled skeleton of a large animal mixed into a heap of dirt.
A rabbit freshly eviscerated by a hawk.
The carcass of a small unidentifiable animal, heaped on the walkway of a cement bridge. It was in one piece except for a chunk of its backbone, torn out and flung about six yards away. Another interrupted meal, perhaps.
Four small altars, memorializing parts of the road where people had died. (These are known as “descansos”.)
Six dead snakes. One was apparently crushed by the road-striping truck; it was dead on the white stripe with another white stripe painted right over it. Another was the withered fragments of a rattlesnake, tangled with a small wooden cross, knocked over on the ground. Another had been threaded into a chain-link fence, either as a trophy or as a warning.
And these are just the dead things. Along the way I will also pass an extraordinary amount of trash and abandoned machinery, and two entire generations of people’s discarded beer cans. (How can I tell? The label art.)
It is evening at my first campsite, about half a mile back from the rim of Crater Lake. Dad has wished me good luck and left to drive home. I’ve constructed my tent and placed all my gear in the bear box. The bike is leaning on its kickstand, chained to one metal leg of the box.
I’m sitting on top of the picnic table, looking at my iPhone, which is displaying “No signal”.
“This is it,” I think. “I’m really on my own, now. The only way out of this campground is on that bicycle; and from there it’s 600 more miles to get where I’m planning to go. … I sure hope this works.”
I think the weather is mocking me, because it began to rain just as I was setting up my tent, and now that the tent is constructed and thoroughly wet, the rain has tapered off.
Evening turns to night quite suddenly. I am dead-tired, even though it is only 9:00pm. I crawl into my damp tent, jam in some earplugs, and have nine hours’ worth of strange dreams.
