It’s the morning of day 11, and I am having some excellent coffee with wifi. Now I can upload properly!
I came across another useful market, in case you need any things or stuff- it was in Garibaldi.
A dense fog was hanging around, thankfully far above the roadway, and so was taking some pictures of how cool things looked. This old chimney was hanging out, and I think I got a good one with my camera:
Since everyone told me I should, I went to the Tillamook cheese factory tour.
As a bike tourer, there is really no excuse not to do this. It’s free, right on the route, and you get free cheese samples. Clean restrooms, plenty of food for sale, it’s a great pit stop if you need one!
Here we see factory workers cutting the cheese. I got more like this with the camera.
Back in Astoria I changed my tube to take care of the slow leak. It worked, but somewhere around Tillamook I picked up this damned staple:
I spent a solid ten minutes examining the tube, and I couldn’t find the slow leak. I’m debating changing to my backup backup tube this morning. Needless to say, I am not happy with the Giant brand ‘puncture resistant’ tires. The Schwalbe and Confinental tires that I used before seemed much more resistant.
Also, I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but I picked up a tire pressure gauge to monitor the situation, and apparently I have been running my tire really soft for the last 350 miles. I guess that’s what happens when you switch from a big pump with gauge to a small hand pump without one right before the trip. I guess I just wasn’t able to do 70ish psi by feel- but now I have a gauge. The rear wheel is also making some kind of a sound once per revolution. It goes away when I brake, so I think it might be a brake rotor that’s slightly out of true. I’ll have a look after coffee and blogging.
Regardless, I saw pretty things. This is Cape Lookout:
I’m pretty sure it was, and I wanted to keep going since the day was still young and I wasn’t too tired.
I rolled past the Meriwether-Clark boyscouts camp, and saw this crazy scene:
It looked odd to my eyes, largish evergreens getting eaten by a sand dune.
This is the big neat rock at Pacific City:
Finally, last night’s high calorie $1.50 meal:
Very good, but then I went and ate a $2 piece of fudge while charging my phone and blogging. Oh well, gotta have fudge!
Now I get to sort out my wheel, pack up, and head south.