Rhythm Way
Sometimes, by the time I finish my ride, set up camp, make dinner, and fly a kite, there's very little energy left to actually sit down and write about what's gone on during the day. Or, rather, it's not so much the energy that is lacking, but the recollection: these days, I always have to think for a minute when someone asks me "Where'd you start today?" and sometimes, like today, I can't remember. It's a steadily decreasing attachment to that whole time thing, and a slow replacement of my ordinary sense of life's rhythm by the rhythms of the road. This never happened back east, never had a chance to. Here, the steady accompaniment of the ocean's tides helps me along the way, sends me to sleep, and focuses my attention on the present. I get up, I break camp, I ride, I come to rest, I make camp, I sleep...repeat.
Today I crossed the bridge out of Newport across Yaquina Bay, a tall, arching affair which demanded that I use the narrow sidewalk. I wasn't going to hold up traffic across the entire span by using the roadway, but the sign told me to walk my bike across. I can't really do that, so I rode, squeezing the trike and trailer along with inches to spare on each side, squeaking beneath the sets of archways that marked the center of the bridge. The wind was steady and strong, but I carefully made my way across. In the photo I took at the top of the bridge, you can see the wind whipping the flag straight out, and bending the antenna over with its force.
Later on, I passed by Seal Rocks, a picturesque arrangement of stone and sea that you'll find an image of at the end of this post. Shortly after that, the mechanical gremlin had a go at me again: suddenly, I couldn't pedal. I decided not to force the issue by pushing until something broke, because that would be bad. First, I took the chain off the cranks; they spun freely, so it wasn't the bearings there. I was able to move the hub in both directions, so those bearings were fine, too. I unhooked the trailer and took the Arkel bag off the rack to get a better look at the rear deraileur, but it looked fine. Then, something about the idler wheel caught my eye. The idler wheel is a bit unique to recumbents: it's a small sprocketed device about midway along the chain path that helps manage the eight-foot chain as it passes beneath the seat on its way to the rear cassette. It consists of two flat disks, with a smaller sprocketed disk sandwiched in between them; the chain passes between the two flat disks and rides along the teeth of the sprocket as you pedal. The space between the two disks is less than a half an inch, and there was a rock in it. Somehow, while riding through one of the innumerable gravel patches that litter the shoulders of Route 101, this small stone had bounced perfectly into the gap, where the chain helped it to crush one of the sprocket teeth and wedge itself firmly into place.
I turned the trike on its side to get at the idler wheel, and a bit of work with the screwdriver had me on my way again. A very odd, random rock bounce, that.
Now, I'm at a very small hiker/biker site at Beachside State Park, which, true to its name, is about fifty feet from shore. A calm day, windwise, but flying a parafoil in low winds is its own game: slow, subtle, with the occasional broad gesture on the lines to bring the foil higher into the air and keep it from collapsing on itself and falling to the ground like a wayward scarf. After a nice dinner of boiled water, rehydrated food-in-a-bag, Oreos, and chamomile tea, I'm sleepy, and ready to discover whether I picked the right spot to pitch the tent. In about twenty minutes, I'll go watch the sun set.
Tomorrow: 35 miles or so, to Honeyman State Park in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. About a mile away from the ocean, but I'm told that the dunes are spectacular.
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