Observations on 370 Miles Pedaled from Eugene, OR to Arcata, CA

We (tandems, gear, and people) weigh 680 pounds. Two different truck weigh stations confirmed it.

Eugene was pavement-melting hot, much of the Oregon coast was wear-all-your-layers chilly and windy. Kite-flying weather. Today California is sunny-yahoo.

Dana's wildlife count includes a rough-skinned newt (They're orange on their underside), the tail end of a baby black bear, elk, sea lions ("they look like sausages" she reported from our cliffside riding viewpoint), a raccoon family, an evening with hundreds of pelicans, and some red-hot colored crawfish.
More than one hill has been 50minutes of pedalling in the lowest gear - but then there's those multiple miles of downhill. Tom's bike's top land speed record so far = 49.3 mi/hr.

Riding among the Redwoods, why pedal - just look around at the amazingly huge giant trees and breathe.

Even if you only need 58cents worth of gas (high octane, for the campstove), you can't pump it yourself in Oregon. "Don't touch that"said the attendant to the arm-outstretched Tom.

Noah's trading books at the 'take one, leave one' campground shelves, recently left Star Wars: In Mandolorian Armor for Jurassic Park.

Our kids on beaches = lots of holes dug and waves jumped.

We're changing up tandem partners every day. Less complaints about mom not going fast enough on the downhills.

Best campsite = too hard to call. The Redwoods Park backcountry freebie down a half-mile mountain bike trail, with a sunny seastacked beach?
We're having fun, and also looking forward to riding with our pals Mark and Jade starting at the Golden Gate Bridge on Aug 4. Who knows what else is up ahead?

From Dana and Noah

Good Morning,

We got on the AMTRAK train in Bellingham yesterday morning. Traveled to
Portland, walked around and got ice cream. Then got on the train and rode to Eugene, Oregon. It was late when we got there. Picture A shows my dad as he got off the train. We got our tandem bikes and all of our stuff off the train - please see
picture B.

They met us with a van and a big white pickup to carry our bicycles.

We drove about 45 minutes, and now it was very, very late. I slept well in a futon
bed upstairs at the Jane & Quentin Holmes' house. I slept in! We are in a house
with tall rooms. It is located out in the woods on the Mohawk River. This morning
we ate a delicious breakfast.

Tomorow we will start out on our tandem bicycles for the Oregon Coast. Dad and
Mon are figuring our a route that will travel along paved roads that belong to the
Forest Service.

Love,
Dana

P.S. Noah recorded his impressions of travel so far, see the link at right to his audio posts on his wikispace.

Packing Playmobil and Other Things That Matter

We've cleared shelves for our renter, the yard and garden are in the best shape we can manage, and the detailed bike trip/Mexico to-do list actually has most items crossed out.  With two days until we get on the train to Eugene, Oregon to start our bike trip, we are making piles.  One for the bike trip, one for life in Mexico (sent ahead to my sister's in San Diego), and then there was that pile we sent to Michigan already as we'll be there in January to celebrate Tom's parents' 50th wedding anniversary.  Helping the kids, I mention another category, the everything else category, which I call "things you want to see when we get back."

I bet there will be Playmobil in every pile.  And books.  Perhaps the constants show what is important to us no matter where we are.  But of course the most important things aren't things I can physically put in a pile: the friends and family (and Annie the cat) we can't take take with us but will think of often.  Did you know you were along for the ride?  Feel free to comment or e-mail so we'll know you're out there, take care, and we'll see you later.

P.S. The second photo illustrates Playmobil that came along on the European bike trip, for those of you less familiar with those little toys.  Wow, doesn't Noah look different just two

years ago.  The bike photo is also from that trip, but shows just what we'll be doing for the next six weeks.

Lightening the Load

In May, I donated my ponytail to Locks of Love in front of 1000 high school students. Part of a cancer survivor fundraiser for Children’s Hospital in Seattle, students bought raffle tickets to win cutting off a ponytail (mine or the principal’s) or shaving the head of a male teacher or assistant principal. I thought of it as a Mother’s Day tribute – my mom survived breast cancer when she was the age I am right now and I was a kid like my own students when mom was diagnosed. Growing my hair long was an almost two year commitment. It surprised me how much lighter I felt when it was cut off.

In May lightening the load was about hair, in June it is our house that’s on a weight loss plan. Getting ready to rent it and be away for 6 months means cleaning out closets and corners I have ignored for years. The outgrown kids clothes are being passed along to younger children, board games and toys are being sorted (Candyland, anyone?), and every thing put away, recycled, or slated for donation. Even easier, we hauled the vent-less gas stove to the curb, put a FREE sign on it, and it was picked up in a few hours. The neighborhood loves a free pile.

Soon we’ll have one pannier of personal gear each as we pedal our tandem bicycles from Eugene, Oregon to San Diego, CA. Lightening the load there will help me swear less up the hills. And remind me of how little stuff we really need.

The Car-Free Spring Break or Eating My First Bug of the Year

Friends went to Seattle, California, Arizona, and Greece for Spring Break. Since we are a two school district family (husband and kids have one spring break, I have another), differing calendars means staying home. I not only stayed home, but also narrowed my geographical reach by not using, or even getting into, a motorized vehicle for the week. I traveled only where my muscles took me.

I bicycled to Spanish class at the community college across town (14 miles round trip), pedaled downtown on errands (6 miles), took kids to appointments on the tandem bike (4 miles), and walked to the grocery store. It was glorious.

I’m a proud contributor to the just-released statistic that Washington state residents have cut back to 1966 car use rates, the equivalent of each driver parking their car for 5 weeks a year. Even so, going car-free rather than just car-light gets me further out of the motorized metal box. The exercise is good for my body, the slowing down and planning ahead required is good for all of me, and the pollution skipped is good for the environment.

Bicycling also moves you through the world in a way that connects you to it. You hear the birds chatting with one another, the wind moving the trees, catch the roofer singing along to his radio. You smell the flowering trees, someone's bar-b-que dinner, the prelude to rain. And with no windshield up front to keep the world out of your eyes and your teeth, you get bugs. So I ate my first bug of the year. I’m thinking there will be more bugs in my stomach's future, since I plan on a lot more bicycling.

Sliding Scale of Weird

“You’re leaving the country to live in Mexico for a semester,” someone disbelievingly repeats, “wow.” The head tilts and the eyebrows lift as the person considers our two-adult two-kid family packing up, renting our house, shelving our American work and school obligations, landing somewhere completely new, and studying Spanish. Outside of a circle of friends who have traveled, I can read between the head tilt and the eyebrow raise a very definite “that’s weird.” Then I add that we’re thinking of bicycling to Mexico, some 1300 miles. If someone didn’t think we were weird before, they tend to slide in that direction.

If you don’t know many adventuring families, what we’re doing seems weird. But weird of course is relative, and I have come across many families who have done more and bigger adventures than we’re planning. There’s Elisa Bernick who writes about family sabbaticals and with her husband & kids went international for 18 months, and the Vogels, who head out this June to spend 2 1/2 years bicycling the Pan-American highway from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina with their twin 10-year-olds. Then there’s our English friends who are encouraging adventurous families through their Family Adventure Project. If there’s a sliding scale of weird, many families are further left of our plans. But we’re happily tilting the scale and headed their way.

To us, pedaling to Mexico and staying to learn as much Spanish as we can in a semester seems like a next logical direction. We bicycle around town as a matter of course, and have done multi-day bicycle trips with the kids every summer except the ones in which they were born. Summer 2006 we pedaled two tandem bicycles (the kids were ages 8 and 10 then) for a month in Europe and loved our Canals, Croissants & Castles 5-country camping-all-the-way bicycle tour. Finishing in the Netherlands on a North Sea beach, we looked at each other and discussed how we would all be happy to just keep pedaling.

Learning another language has been a goal since before having kids, when my husband and I signed up for Spanish classes at the local community college and thought we would go to language school in Guatemala that summer. Instead we went to India with my Hindi/Urdu speaking brothers-in-law. How could we pass up their invitation? We lived with Afroz’ friends and family members for 5 weeks as we traveled to the places where he grew up - Kasganj and Aligarh in the state of Uttar Pradesh - and took side trips into the Himalaya and Rajasthan. If we lived nearer, I’d happily enroll myself in Afroz’ language classes at the University of North Carolina and learn Hindi/Urdu. (They are the same language spoken, but written in different scripts.)

So you blend the language fascination with our bicycling selves and you get what doesn’t seem weird to us. In fact, we think of it as perfect.