Day 7. Tsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss........

After a reletively pleasant day 6 of cycling through Washington and entering Oregan, with just one puncture in the first 6 days, I left the Holiday Inn in Astoria full of hope and expectation.



I had used my rest day to do what any self respecting individual does in Astoria, and that is by watching The Goonies whilst gorging on pizza and chocolate. I didn't feel the need to go and do the truffle shuffle on the correct tree stump, or even hunt out one-eyed Willy's treasure.

I set off from Astoria with the hope of reaching Tillamook, the next stop on the scheduled route. I say scheduled route, but I'm already a day behind in terms of distance covered, although much if this is due to taking the more scenic route through the Washington islands than originally intended. I wanted to up the ante and top my best distance for a day so far, and after 1 hour of cycling I felt extremely confident I would be able to do so. I had raced out of Astoria and was hugging the hard shoulder of the 101, which would take me all the way to Tillamook. Then it started. Someone, somewhere clearly had it in for me today. Smooth riding suddenly felt a bit bumpy and as I looked down, it was quite clear I had another puncture. Damn it. Still, won't take long, I'll just swap the innertubes over and then I'll be off again.

Having fixed the puncture I got on day 6 it meant I still had 2 spare innertubes so no big problems there. A quick stop then we're off again. Zooming through Seaside (who came up with that original name for a town?!) and then boom! No bumpy bumpy but a clear cut blow out. My tyre went from fully inflated to flat in the space of a second. On inspection of the innertube it appeared as if I had just cycled through a minefield as there were 3 different holes. Of course I only found the 2nd and 3rd holes after I had fixed hole number 1. Lots of messing around and getting annoyed with reinflating over and over and we were off again. I was starting to get a little concerned. The hard shoulder of the 101 is a pretty dirty affair and I was now completely paranoid that each and every bump or stone was going to give me another flat.

What also concerned me was that I was now well behind schedule for hitting Tillamook before dark. I pressed on relentlessly to try and make up for lost time. I got as far as Rockaway and stopped to look at a couple of motels there, of which neither were particularly appealing, and after talking to one of the locals decided to press on to Garibaldi, which was a further 6 miles and about 9 miles short of Tillamook. By now it was starting to get dark, but I thought I should be able to make Garibaldi before it got properly dark.

Ten minutes of cycling later I realised the old back tyre was feeling a little flat again.. no no no please not another one!!! This time it was a slow puncture, which I assumed was due to my own inability to properly fix punctures, however this turned out to be not the case (I know this because I have just fixed puncture number 4 in the same innertube) and I was left in the predicament of having to put in innertube number 3 (or technically number 1 as it was the one to fall foul to the original puncture on day 6) and hope that a) my handy work held up for the next 6 miles as b) i had now run out of patches in my puncture repair kit.

I was also fully aware that there was not another bike shop until Tilllamook. So now cycling very carefully, in the dark, along the highway, I pondered what I was going to do if another nasty piece of glass, or metal, or anything sharp came along to destroy me! Fortunately whilst I was musing over this I came across Garibaldi (have I done a biscuit joke yet!?) and checked into a friendly looking motel. I was also most impressed when I popped down to the local supermarket shortly after arriving to see it stocks bicycle repair kits. I now have 2 spare innertubes at my disposal again, although one of them does look like it lost a fight with a hedgehog. So drama over... for now at least.

I didn't get to Tillamook, although after the day I had cannot complain. I'm about 9 miles short of it and still racked up 55.81 miles on the speedo. Some of the scenery was also quite exceptional, and I would probably have gone on about that had it not been for all the punctures!

 I'm pretty sure that if you line up the right doubloon you'll find you need to start looking for one-eyed willys treasue at the restaurant (just out of shot)