That's what the lady running the park told me when I got here, explaining that normally there's more tent room and that the bathrooms are cleaner, but "there's a big bumch here. Half of them are zombies and the other half are runners."
I talked to one of them while I was setting up my tent, and asked her, "are you a runner or a zombie?"
"Both," she said.
So apparently it's not as simple a world as the lady running the RV park thought.
Here's the view from my hotel room this morning. I slept as late as I could, trying to get on west coast time, but went ahead and got up about 5:30 am. After an hour of rearranging things on the bike, I took my shower, checked out of the hotel, and went off to the Family Pancake House for breakfast.
In the course of unpacking stuff, I found that I had left part of the mount for my Vis 180 helmet light. As the above shows, you can overcome almost anything with zip ties.
It took me an hour to get out of Bremerton proper -- partly due to a couple of missed turns. One of those turns had me climbing a really long hill ... just to find that I missed the turn at the bottom of said hill. Once back at the bottom, I think that I climbeed the same hill again, but in a steeper way.
Soon I was riding along either the Hood Canal, which was lined with nice houses. It was still chilly and overcast, and the sky was threatening some rain, but that rain never did fall on me.
About 20 miles into the day, I stopped at a store for some Gatorade and a snack. It had warmed up enough and spots of blue were showing in the sky, so I took off my jacket and knee warmers. Some guys in a truck pulled in at the store and asked how far I was going. One of them was also a cyclist, and he got a big kick out of my Shimano sandals. They also told me that the store was famous for their breakfast burritos. Maybe next time ...
Just past this spot at the lake I turned left and went up a bodacious hill. The guy at the store had warned me about it, and I'd said that I would walk if if that was what it took to get up. Somehow, I managed to avoid walking, but it was close.
Things were more dry on this road, and I kept noticing how much of the fern undergrowth was dying. I felt a little guilty for being happy that I wasn't getting rained on, with the problems that they are having up here with fires.
Eventually, I got to Shelton. The Adventure Cycling route had me going through town, but my GPS wanted me to go around it via some weird way. It had done this earlier, so I had to go "old school" and pull out the route sheet again. It took another five bonus miles, but I eventually found downtown and explored it. This gave me a chance to find what seemed like the best lunch place in town. I got a burger that was more than acceptable.
I took another wrong turn on the way out of Shelton, so I got to climb another hill that I shouldn't have. Eventually, I got to Cloquallam Road for the last long stretch of the day.
The wind had come up, and was mostly in my face, so this part of the route took longer than I would have liked. I was so happy to see this sign.
I've been re-reading "Sometimes a Great Notion" on this trip, so this road -- which was the roundabout way into Elma -- was really cool. Of course, they had put down a bunch of fresh gravel and had signs warning motorcyclists to be careful (Hey! What about me?!). But it was easy to ride over, except for the few times that it got caught by a wheel and made a horrible scraping sound as it went by on the fender.
A turn off of this road made me miss RandoGirl.
Soon, I was exploring Elma. It was a nice town, with a good grocery store. I bought some tomato soup and Cheez-Its, plus some stuff to fix tomorrow for breakfast, and then made my way to the RV park and the zombies.
I just cooked my dinner while doing laundry (this is a NICE RV park ... although their wifi isn't too great) and chatted with the zombies while writing this blog. They told me that if you want more information, you can go to www.runforyourlives.com. A couple of them said that they are neither zombies or runners, but were just spectators.
Just goes to show that there is more to this world than is dreamt of in the RV lady's philosophy.
Hey rando boy! I was one of the "runners" you encountered in the RV park the night of the survival run, a cog in that charming machine of 20-somethings who shared your picnic table while downing malted barley and trying not to yell and cursee too much. Just wanted to say you've got an excellent blog and, while we are somewhat disappointed with the brevity of your mentioning of the zombie group, we wish you many safe travels and fulfilling rides!
ReplyDelete