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Day 74 Springfield, OR To Florence, OR
August 5, 2016
74.3 Miles for the day
4,218.9 Total miles for trip
6:00 Ride Time
I slept horribly last night. All night long my skin was super itchy. I was either alergic to the sheets or this motel room was infested with invisible bugs. In the middle of the night I got up and took a second shower. Such a waste of money staying in this Motel. I should have just camped behind a dumpster somewhere.
I got out of Springfield as quickly as I could. When I got to Eugene I stopped and had breakfast at the pancake house. The place was packed with hung over college kids. I told my waitress I just rode my bike there from Virginia and she made a huge deal about it and make sure my breakfast was extra delicious.
Today is the last day of cycling the Transam. My plan was to just show up in Florence, hit the coast and then spend the rest of the night celebrating.
The trail changed between 2005 to 2016. In 2005 they had you ride Route 126 with straight shot to the coast. In 2016 they bring you north of 126 and take you through all these small towns. I was so eager to hit the coast I decided I didn’t give a shit and just decided to stay on 126.
Quick let’s take a selfie inside this tunnel before I get run over by a logging truck.
This was a bad idea. 126 had a nice shoulder for the first few miles coming out of Eugene but then it basically disappears and has a lot of fast traffic with no room for cyclists. It was actually a really stressful ride.
But the closer I got to Florence the bigger the shoulder became. When I arrived in Florence I was starving and getting hangry. So I stopped at an A&W Rootbeer place and inhaled a burger and a root beer float.
After I got some food in my belly, I then rode across the bridge in Florence and out to where I could see the coast.
When I was about half a mile from seeing the ocean, I was almost run over by some giant dune buggy vehicle. I was in the middle of the lane, so they leaned on the horn and gave me the finger as I frantically got out of their way.
When I got to the parking lot I climbed up the dunes and just sat on top watching the ocean and thinking about everything I had been through to get here. I was overwhelmed with emotions.
I have never felt more alive and connected to the human race, then when I have bicycled across America. Yet I feel like I have given so much of my life doing bullshit in the name of making money and progressing my career, which has left me feeling empty. I feel like I’m so done with caring about all the egotistical architect shit.
I never actually walked down by the water. It was windy and cold. I’m also a big pussy in the cold and wanted to get back into town and start celebrating my bike ride.
Back in town I went to the beach comber and found the girl who worked there who’s mom I met back in John Day. She bought me a drink and told me her mom always sends the cross country cyclists to find her.
When I was hanging out at the beach comber a crew of dudes came in with cycling clothes on and handlebar bags. They told everything they just finished cycling cross country and were celebrating. I forgot all their names but ended up hanging out with them for the rest of the night. This crew was about a week ahead of me for most of the trip on the transam, and somehow I caught up to them at the very end.
Travis and Alexis were in town so they came down and had drinks with all of us. I rode with them in Colorado and Wyoming. They were going to keep riding down the coast till they get home to Oakland.
I went back to the campsite camped with everyone at their site.
What a trip. I can’t believe I’m here.
While I was riding today, my Portland architecture friends Lucas and Kristin texted me and offered to pick me up at the coast tomorrow. In the morning I’ll either hitchhike or ride north and meet them somewhere on the coast.
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