day 17: jessie m. honeyman state park to sunset beach state park

at 4am, barely awake, we crawled outside to cover our bikes and bring in the clothes airing outside for the night. the drizzle turned into a consistent rain shower, and it only got stronger as the morning grew longer. oh dear. our first morning waking up to rain. we packed up and got everything together and were ready to go by 9am, our usual time, except it was raining pretty hard. 

we found shelter at the bathrooms and sat and waited and ate. 

(why does it not look like it's raining in this photo?!)

then we pedaled hard for 19 miles. (rain is an incredible motivator.) if you stop, it gets cold and the reality that you're biking in rain sets in. this is no bueno for the mind. 

we finally took a break to eat a burrito at a mexican express joint, which actually took a while. (they should consider renaming it to mexican forever.) but whatever, it was good and HUGE. i considered vowing to only eat half, but couldn't control myself and ate the entire thing, with a can of pepsi. YUM. bad move!!!...so i thought.  

samuel and i took off after our total one hour break and booked it for another 15 miles or so. but do you ever feel like "RAAAAARRRRRRR!!" and can't explain exactly why or don't feel like rationally thinking through what might be going on? well that was me a mile in after lunch, so i did what anyone should do when one is feeling this way: yell! loud and hard and long. that's what i did, and it. felt. good. later, samuel asked me if that was me yelling. we both smiled, i pleasantly said yes, and we moved right on, right on. 

anyway, we were both feeling really good and strong, so we kept riding until our final market (more like liquor store with junk food stop). but unfortunately, i had a sudden dip and the last 5 miles were just painful. every time we went downhill, i complained to samuel because it meant we'd have to climb it tomorrow. (this was a portion where we would have to out-and-back to get to/from the state park.) :-( the steeper the downhill, the louder my cry.

we finally made it to the state park 55 miles later, ate, showered, and biked over to watch the sunset with our new friend sheila. (sheila and i met earlier this morning. she's biking from portland to sf solo, and she's very pleasant to be around. plus, she's a fellow banana slugger and porter kid! whoa, what are the chances? except, i graduated in '04 and she in '12. that's 8 years difference. oh my.)

whatever, age shmage. the sunset was epic again. oregon, you are throwing out all the big guns to make me fall in love with you all over. it's to make up for those rude drivers huh? well it's working.