While in Oregon

Okay well here's the next installment. I'm adding pictures to some of the previous posts. They definitely add to the story. SO...continued:

Before leaving Bandon (the town with the health food market) we made a stop to try and fix some problems I was having with my bike. I was limited to using about 10 of my 21 gears and was also unable to shift correctly anymore. If I shifted to too high of a gear my chain would get completely stuck and I'd have to stop riding to correct it. Tim knew more about bicycles than II did (at least about this specific problem) and showed me exactly what was wrong. After he explained it to me I at least understood the theory. Unfortunately that was about as much as he understood, too, and we had some difficulty figuring out exactly how to get the job done. I could go into detail, but I'm sure that it would be really boring and confusing, so I'll just say we did something wrong, and when Tim gave it a test ride something went horribly wrong. I felt that awful, unexpected jolting shock shoot through my nerves when my eyes began to take in my disfigured bike. The chain had pulled the derailleur all the way up around the gear cogs and was almost completely dislodged from its correct position. A good comparison would be to say that my steed had a broken leg and the sight of it was painful. For a second I thought the trip was over.

Tim

It hadn't been Tim's fault at all. He was just the victim of circumstance. So I went over to the bike and fortunately enough I was able to shove the thing back in place well enough that it worked for now at least. A number of days later it would fall off of the bike and crumble to pieces, but for the moment I didn't need to surrender to an early end of journey. After coming so near to disaster I began to be thankful that my bike worked at all and the problem I was having with my gears seemed insignificant.

Tim and I kept riding south. After riding for a few miles on our left we saw a very unique building, decorated with panels of art that at first resembled graffiti. A sign was sitting on the ground outside that said it was an art gallery and there was a newspaper article posted by the door about the guy who ran it. I can't remember what the guy's name was, but after skimming over this, Tim approached the glass doors of the entrance, and slowly tested one to see if it was locked. He pushed it open and tentatively stepped in, calling out the name of the artist. A small white cat was walking around outside and when I followed Tim inside, it followed me. It was dark inside, and there was artwork covering all of the walls, piled on shelves, paintings stacked horizontally like records in a record shop, watercolor, acrylic, sculptures, collage, all of it abstract and vibrant with character. Moving through the rooms there was a blacklit section with neon paint luminescent in the dark, a bathroom with an instructional poem written on the toilet seat describing the toilet's purposes, and a layer of writing and signatures hiding the paint on all the walls. It was a house and when we reached the back room, we found it occupied by an old shirtless man seated on a couch, neck bent forward over a cold steel oxygen tank with a rubber hose dangling from his nostrils and a long gray beard dangling from his face.

There we met the artist and his son, who was sleeping and continued sleeping through much of our visit and through the weak pesterings of his father trying to wake him up. They showed us around and told us their story of how the father had been working on his art since adolescence and his son since his. This place was their home and the collection of both their life's work. He explained to us his philosophy on the artistic process while he slowly hobbled around the room hauling his metal tank behind him. What we saw collected here was the product of art, he said. “The art is in the creation and the creation of art without action is just mental masturbation.” Glowing in neon green over the entrance to the room was the bold-faced word “creactor”.

When we walked into the entrance room we met two other bicycle tourists who had stopped for a visit as well. I had seen them multiple times a few days before, passing them, them passing me, and so on, and here Tim started to talk to them which eventually led to them joining our entourage. They were two kids from Canada, a guy and a girl.

I don't think they ever told me their names.

Our team was a little odd. There was Tim and I, looking worn and torn (both of us could easily have passed as homeless, and technically we were), juxtaposed with these Canadian kids who had all of the equipment a bicycle tourist is supposed to have, wearing the tried and true uniforms which were beyond our budgets.

I'm willing to admit that I had made a prejudgment of them the few days before when I had seen them, and as is so often the case when we're fortunate enough to be put face to face with our own ignorance, I discovered over the following day that I'd been entirely wrong. With the kind of poisonous thought that's made quickly and without notice I assumed that because they had nice bikes and expensive equipment they'd think they were above me. It's interesting to me now how significantly my view of the world had changed simply because my clothes had more dirt on them than most peoples', my skin was more tan, my hair unwashed, and my face unshaven. At some point I had adopted the role my unkempt appearance assigned. The things around (and in this case on) us really do have a profound effect on even our most core nature. You can be changed severely if you place yourself in foreign surroundings and you have exactly as much control of the way you are changed as you have of what situation you put yourself in.

Now we continued south and the pattern of riding changed once again. I politely fell to the back of the line and followed as we rode along the shoulder of the road through valleys and trees. The hills receded on our left and then built up again, the road leading us, pushing up, coasting down. There was a new pressure to keep the pace.

We continued until the next town where we stopped and discussed the plans for the night. The Canadian kids said that they wanted to try camping wild with us. They had spent most of their nights in campgrounds and it had been generally miserable with noisy neighbors and they had one story of a night spent in a park where they had sat paralyzed inside their tent and listened to what they thought was a murder taking place by someone who didn't realize their tent was there. This ended up not actually being the case, but their fear had been just as real.

Before finding a place to camp we agreed on macaroni and cheese for dinner and we stopped at a grocer, getting what supplies were needed. While the Canadian kids were inside shopping Tim walked around asking people who looked nice enough where they would recommend camping and I watched all of our bicycles. Tim returned defeated and said that the problem was that he looked either too homeless or not homeless enough to the people he was asking to get the kind of answer he was looking for. It really is a bit awkward asking a total stranger if they know of a nearby place where you might be able to “get away with camping” because you never know what thoughts might go through their head.

Once we were off and a little farther along the road, Tim, who was in front, stopped to ask a man who was calmly relaxing in a rocking chair on his porch with a friend of his where he would recommend we camp. “You know, I'll be honest with you: We don't really have money for a campground.” The man was very kind and sympathetic, and through a small conversation he and his friend thought of the perfect spot on the beach about a mile and a half farther down the road. With thanks we left and after a few minutes arrived there.

It took us a few hours to figure out how to go about camping on sand. Hauling an 80 pound bicycle (especially with tires as skinny as mine has) along a beach is very difficult work and through all of our efforts to try and find a good spot to camp I must have carried it at least half a mile. Up hills, down hills, through a path and through beach grass. It doesn't sound like much in writing, but it was anything but easy.

We ended up not pitching our tents and instead we laid out our tarps with our sleeping bags on top and decided that the area we'd found was enclosed enough (rock walls extended more or less on either side of us providing shelter from any wind) that tents weren't really necessary. We set up a little area in the crook of the rock wall to boil the noodles and stir in the cheese, each of us doing our share of the work on our own stove and pot, while trying our hardest to keep the sand and food separate from each other, and finally adding a few of Tim's vegetables at the end as the light began to fail. It came out as a nice makeshift dinner and was almost reminiscent of sitting at the dining room table at home, underneath the spinning ceiling fan and the dimmed light, my family around me as we ate my mom's macaroni and cheese casserole. This was a new family of friends and a meal shared on the beaches of Oregon. We ate and then our conversation quieted as the sun fell behind the rocks, leaving in its wake orange, pink, and blue, then the sky unveiled, revealing the sea of stars above us and in unison we became reverent and silent.