Adventures of Bill

Garibaldi to Lincoln City (Garmin File)

We left the Garibaldi Inn and headed south.  My legs were still adjusting to the milage, 300 miles in the last 4 days, so I opted for a shorter alternate to avoid going around cape Mears and the associated big hill is required.  It was also the first day that it rained.  We were incredibly lucky with the weather.  We had two days with scattered showers and one half day of light rain, in a place where it normally rains 15 days a month that time of year.  After 5 days I was also starting to settle into a routine. Roll into town, check into the hotel, wash your shorts and hang them out to dry. Do some basic hygiene, saddle sores are a real concern and they can end a bike tour.  Cleanliness is the key to prevention.  Only after these chores are done do I search out food.  The criteria is how far do I walk, how healthy is it, and how much does it cost?  I would like to say we erred on the side of healthy, but honestly most days it was distance, distance, and distance.  If you could not walk to it you had to have a really good reason to eat there.  More often then not this meant Fish and Chips. 

Long Beach to Garibaldi (Garmin File)

We left the Inn at the Sea in Long Beach excited to enter Oregon.  I know we passed many very pretty places. Lisa and I used to live in Vancouver, WA and have been to the Oregon coast many times.  Sunset Beach,  Seaside, Ecola State Park, Haystack Rock, Hug Point, Arch Cape, Short Sand Beach, Manzanita are all beautiful places and I have fond memories going back 25 years of this area.  However, from this trip all I remember from this day is the Astoria-Megler Bridge (url). 

Rather than describe it myself, I will just quote Gemini AI, when I asked if the Astoria bridge is safe to ride a bicycle across.

“The short answer is no, the Astoria-Megler Bridge is not considered a safe or comfortable place to ride a bicycle, though it is legally permitted.

While it is a critical link on the Oregon Coast Bike Route (U.S. 101) connecting Washington and Oregon, it is widely recognized by touring cyclists and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) as a major, high-stress barrier.

The primary safety concerns include:

• Extremely Narrow Shoulders: The bridge is 3.7 miles long, and for the vast majority of that distance, the shoulder is only about 2 feet wide. There is very little margin for error between you and the fog line.
• High-Speed, Large-Vehicle Traffic: The speed limit is 55 mph. The bridge is heavily trafficked by commercial logging trucks, wide-loaded RVs, and tourists who may be distracted by the views or uncomfortable with the narrow lanes themselves.
• The “Astoria Hill” Climb: If you are traveling south from Washington into Oregon, the bridge is relatively flat for the first 3 miles, but the final half-mile features a steep, sustained 170-foot climb to clear the shipping channel. Grinding up this section fully loaded forces you to ride at a slow climbing speed right next to fast-moving traffic, which many riders find highly stressful.
• Severe Winds and Weather: The mouth of the Columbia River is notorious for sudden, violent crosswinds, heavy fog, and rain. A sudden 25–30 knot gust while you are balancing a loaded bike on a 2-foot shoulder can easily push you into the vehicle lane or against the guardrail.
• Debris: Because the shoulder is so narrow and hard to street-sweep, it frequently accumulates road debris, glass, tire wire, and even dead birds (from the cormorant colonies nesting below), forcing you to make quick, micro-adjustments.

The Good News: There is an Easy Alternative

Because of these conditions, many experienced bikepackers and touring cyclists choose to skip riding the bridge entirely.

The Sunset Empire Transportation District (SETD) operates a public bus service (Route 24) that runs between Ilwaco/Naselle in Washington and Astoria, Oregon. The buses are equipped with bicycle racks, allowing you to easily and safely shuttle yourself and your rig across the river for a couple of dollars.

Summary Recommendation: If you are highly confident, experienced with high-stress highway riding, and catch it early in the morning on a clear, calm day, it is entirely doable—hundreds of coastal tourers cross it every summer. However, if it is windy, rainy, or busy with midday weekend traffic, utilizing the local transit shuttle is the much safer and more relaxing choice. “

Photos pulled from the internet.

Now,  back to the blog.  It was on this day we coined the term, “Bridges of Death”.  While the Astoria bridge was the first, it was certainly not the last dangerous bridge we crossed.  Most of them were in Oregon, all were old, long, high traffic, and little to no shoulder.  If there was a walkway it was elevated above the roadway and narrow.

Shelton to Westport (Garmin File)

The day started with a room breakfast at the Super 8, a slightly below average 2 star hotel. At hotels, like this one, where breakfasts were nonexistent or uneatable we opened up a mobile kitchen, consisting of high quality cereals, breads, fruit and toppings.  My favorite evolved to be  Kashi cereal and toasted raisin bread with cream cheese.  After rolling out more or less together the faster groups started looking for the first coffee stop.  The rest of us started looking for bicycles at coffee stops.  After coffee the fastest riders started looking for our second breakfast stop, which usually consisted of a gas station.  Steve Wesson usually located a good town to stop for lunch.  Most often after lunch we were spread apart so far we gave up looking for other riders and were on our own until we reached the hotel.  Rune Bjerke created the concept of these rides but on a day-to-day basis Steve ran the show and we were better off for it. He used to own a bike tour company and has ridden this exact trip a couple of times and led it a couple times more.  He can come off as a bit of an ass sometimes, but people say that about me too, so who am I to judge.  I left the trip with fond memories of Steve. 

As I recall the roads were rural and had low traffic and we had sunny weather. At 51 miles we crossed our first named bridge, the Chehalis River Riverside Bridge (url).  Built in 1939, it spans 240 and has no shoulder.

     

Seattle to Shelton (Garmin File 1, Garmin File 2)

We flew into Seattle a day early so we had plenty of time to reassemble our bikes and make sure we were ready to ride on Day 1.  We arrived a few hours later than the international flights coming in from Europe and they were waiting for us in the hotel lobby.  As we checked into our hotel, the lobby was empty. I texted the gang and asked, where are you?  We are in the lobby. They replied, you are not in the same lobby as us!  Yes, we booked our first night at the Comfort Inn instead of the Country Inn. Luckily, these hotels are only a 5 minute walk away from each other.  After changing hotels the next morning we took our bikes for a quick spin around the parking lot and everything worked as expected, so we put them and ourselves to bed.

A local Parkinson’s Disease Support Group met us at the hotel so it was after 9 before we rolled out.  Within the first 5 minutes my shifting quit working, I have SRAM electronic shifting and the left front shifter stopped working. After some roadside troubleshooting I deduced it had a dead coin battery.  If I was smart I would have figured that out the prior day and fixed it, instead of walking around Pike Place looking at fish on ice.

Wrong hotel room, bike won’t shift.  What a way to make a first impression. Unfortunately, we had a ferry schedule to keep so I rode the hills of Seattle, using my phone to reprogram the right shifter to go up and down and the the little manual button on the front shifter to change from the big to small chain ring.  At least I am ingenious.  Nonetheless I spent the first half of the day in the wrong gear.  The Matlin’s were making a great first impression.

We arrived at the ferry with a few minutes to spare, bought tickets to Southworth and got loaded on the ferry.  Minutes before departure they rescheduled the ferry to go to Vashon Island.  So we had to offload the ferry.  After watching a second, unscheduled ferry depart with a lone fuel truck, the correct ferry arrived.  In all it delayed us by an hour.  Between a late start and the hour delay we were well into the afternoon before we left Southworth.  About 20 miles further I found a hardware store and bought a coin battery for my shifter.  The shifting crisis was averted just in time, since the last half of the day was filled with short steep, punchy hills and a stiff headwind.

It was a hard day and to be honest, I laid in bed that night thinking, if these guys don’t slow down I am going to be riding in the van to Phoenix.