Fools Love Company

NOTE: I'm going to try something different. Because blogger doesn't play well with an iPad (at least, for writing blogs), I am not embedding any pictures in today's blog. To see the pictures, go to my Picassa Web Album for the West Coast 2013 Tour (this link may take you right to today's pictures).

What do you know? There are actually other cyclists doing this route!

I got up to wet streets but no rain, so after getting a nice cup of coffee and pastry from a shop downtown I headed out on the route. Less than half a mile from my hotel I came up two other touring cyclists headed my way.

Oliver is from Sacramento, and had ridden up from there to Vancouver and was now heading back to Coo's Bay to end his trip. Max is from Frankfurt, Germany, and is riding his recumbent from Anchorage (with a ferry ride in there, somewhere) to San Diego.

They were super-nice guys and good riders, and the rest of the morning we headed down the Oregon coast, enjoying the sights, sweating up the climbs, zipping down the descents, and doing what we could to stay out of the way of passing RVs and logging trucks. Although I had originally planned to camp at a state park before Garibaldi, by lunch I had decided to ride with them all the way to their evening's destination in Tillamook.

Just after a brief break for lunch, we came upon another four cycling tourists -- two couples that weren't really riding together, but had also met on the road. One couple was just heading out onto the road, so they joined us for a few miles. They were staying at a Warm Showers house in Bay City. The other couple was heading to Tillamook like us, and we ran into them again there. They ended up at the same campground as Max, Oliver, and I.

It was really a phenomenal day, with no rain while we were riding and just a light drizzle after we had finally set up our tents. Check out the pictures and captions for more information.