Saturday, June 30 – TT Seaside, OR

Last day of the month, white rabbits for tomorrow, which has already arrived there at home in NZ!

As day broke we wake to the gentle pitter patter of raindrops on the roof, nice!  By 9am it is dry and patches of blue appear in the sky.  Our plan today is to hitch a ride on the trolley at 11.48am from right here at the Resort.  It seems the loop will take about 50 minutes so we will go around once and get the lay of the land and then jump off in town and explore – yes!

So we get over to the pickup point 10 minutes early and proceed to wait a long time for the trolley, first by standing, then by sitting – passing the time by watching the world go by.  Apparently there is a parade in town something to do with the Miss Oregon Coast Competition so we expect there might be delays.  The first trolley at 11.48am doesn’t arrive but we are relaxed, it is warm and we are perched on the Cable TV box which makes a perfect seat.  People come and go, including the UPS Postman Pat who picks up the mail from the resort letterbox over the road.  We saw the camp dude (as in belonging to the camp, not necessarily camp) put his outgoing mail in and raise the flag.  Pat collects the outgoing mail, deposits the incoming mail and puts the flag back down.  We are happily amused watching the world happen around us.

Flag was up and now it's down again, ready for tomorrow I guess!

We agree to give it to 1pm which is very tolerant on our part (well on the part of one of us in particular) and decide we will ride our bikes into town.  But, as we set off it is looking decidedly murky and we feel a couple of splats of H20.  Plan B is to go back home for lunch and wait for the weather to change.  Kim wanted pancakes for brekkie but I had my mind set on healthy, so for lunch our ideas meld and we have pancakes, caramelised banana and of course maple syrup. What - bananas are healthy. Lunch done and dusted!

The sun comes out so we decide to bike to the outlet mall – yay!  Kim is quite mellow today and happy to go with the flow, but he is looking for a replacement printer cartridge so he can do some printing!  Not sure if that will happen today.

We lock our bikes up together on the bike stand and set about going shopping.  This I am good at!  So our first purchase is a light down jacket for me from Helly Hansen.  I seriously don’t know what I was thinking not bringing much in the way of warm clothing over with us, considering we would be spending a lot of time on the coast and doing a cruise to Alaska.  I love my new jacket!

I love my jacket, so cozy!!

Kim couldn’t find one at HH : (  So we do the rounds, including the Nike shop and eventually while I am buying a jumper in Dress Barns Kim has spied some jackets at Eddie Bauer.  There aren't many blokey shops and he has been very patient waiting outside while I shop and the mall has strategically placed seating exactly for this purpose - very good of them!  

Anyway Kim gets a down jacket too, he loves his jacket and he wears it on the ride home on our bikes.  I would have worn mine too but it still had the tags on.  I should reiterate that these are outlets stores where are making our purchases at so we are not paying anywhere near full price, my jacket was discounted by 70% and Kim's was 50% off.

I love my jacket!

We still haven’t seen the trolley and Kim is keeping an eye out for it.  He comes into a store and tells me he has seen the trolley, I immediately calculate the time when it might be back around, then he adds “it was being towed on a trailer”.  Hmm, might give it another go tomorrow!

We have ridden to town which is only about 2km up the road and another 3-5 kms along 101 and we are still alive.  I am embarrassed we don’t have helmets but, where we can, we ride on the footpath and I for one am super careful.

A friend of ours - Kiwi Clare, is flying with her bicycle up to Vancouver and will be riding south along the Oregon Coast Bike Route, all the way to LA or even further south if time permits before putting her bike and herself on a plane back home to NZ.  So now as we drive or ride on these roads, we are thinking what it would be like to ride them as your main mode of transport.  Apart from the obvious for us couch potatoes, like how do you peddle and breathe at the same time, how does one go about such a mission?  She has done it several times at home so has it all down pat.  She is one plucky lady - bloody good on her I reckon!

Unfortunately, although we will be just a few miles across a small body of water at one point of her journey, it is not likely we will get to catch up  : (   We will keep in touch though and monitor her progress south.

 

OMG it’s already 5.30pm and we are still shopping, time to head back home.  Another lovely day in Paradise, even it if wasn’t overly sunshiney!