Day 3: Abort to Orbit

2024-08-25 — Part of PAX 2024 — ← prev next →

Start of day: Rockaway Beach, OR
End of day: Neah Bay, WA
Distance: 317

Fred Meyer parking lot, Tillamook, OR
10:15

I started to feel a little tickle in my throat on Saturday morning. By the afternoon it was worth calling sore. By nightfall I was feeling properly sick: headache, sniffles and congestion.

I’m thinking I’ve got COVID, 700 miles from home. Not ideal. If it hits me like it did in January, I’ll have 2 or 3 days where it’s hard to concentrate on anything. I could barely watch TV, let alone ride a motorcycle. Certainly the trip would be ruined.

So now it’s Sunday morning, and I’m sitting in a Fred Meyer parking lot, waiting for the COVID test strip to change colors. I feel a lot better than last night but not 100. Let’s see what happens…

15 Minutes Later…

I’m negative. This is somehow just a cold. Or maybe just a real sucker punch of allergies?

I’m going to keep on moving north. When I feel like I gotta stop, I’ll stop and get a hotel. Sunday night I should be able to find somewhere.

The Space Shuttle had a procedure called Abort To Orbit. If something goes wrong during launch, the safest thing to do is actually to continue the launch, reach orbit and then decide what to do next. It’s theoretically possible to jettison the engines, turn the shuttle around, and try to fly back to the launch pad, but it’s extremely risky. Instead, the preferred option is to keep going forward, full steam ahead, gaining altitude and speed, father and farther from Earth, until reaching a safe place to reassess.

If COVID were to hit me like a ton of bricks, 2 days in to this trip, then I won’t be able to turn around and ride for 2 days to get back home. I’ll have to park myself here in Oregon and ride it out. By the time I’m back to full health again, it’ll be about time for the return journey on schedule anyway. But, I’m testing negative anyway, despite feeling under the weather. So, I’m going to Abort to Orbit: I’ll carry on northward, taking it easy and keeping a close eye on how I’m feeling, but still following the plan as far as I can.

Astoria, WA
14:00

The Astoria–Megler Bridge across the Columbia River is really cool!

The Oregon approach takes you on a dramatic climbing helical turn up to the level of the bridge. You can really see how high up you are. Then the bridge itself is fairly steep, until at the summit the view opens up all the way across the river, four miles to Washington. Dramatic stuff! I bet it’s extra exciting on a day with strong crosswinds.

I didn’t take any photos or videos, but if you search for the bridge on Youtube you’ll find plenty of crossings. It’s something that doesn’t really fit in the camera lens.

In my original plans, I was going to arrive in Astoria early, visit Fort Clatsop for some Lewis & Clark history, and probably stop for lunch. Due to this morning’s COVID challenges, I’m way behind schedule, so I zipped through Astoria without stopping.

Aberdeen, WA
15:37

On a long motorcycle trip, it’s nice to take breaks indoors, sitting on a comfortable chair. Despite the weather, whether it’s sunny, windy, rainy, hot, or cold, it’s nice to take a rest.

Usually I look for coffee shops. Starbucks will do, but I prefer to support a local store if possible (and the coffee is usually better). In Washington, drive-through espresso kiosks are very common. It was not easy to find coffee shops with an indoor dining room that were open in the mid-afternoon!

Stopping for a coffee break at a drive-through espresso in Aberdeen, along the proverbial muddy banks of the Wishkah

So I stopped at Huckle-Bearies Espresso and Bake Shop in Aberdeen. They kindly let me lie down on the back porch of the kiosk and take a 20 minute nap. After that, supplemented by a shot of espresso and some pastry and a full tank for the bike, I continued north into the Olympic forests.

Neah Bay, WA
19:00

I made it to Neah Bay, which was Plan A all along. On the bike, I feel about 90%: a little sniffly, that’s about all. Off the bike, last night and tonight, the fatigue hits me. I can get everything squared away, unpacked, eat some kind of dinner, and then it’s basically bed time. This is manageable.

The dreaded bullet points begin! I’ll come back and fill these in, honest.

  • Oregon Coast continued to be nice
  • Western Washington: Lots of trees. The clearcut checkerboards are shocking to my unaccustomed eye.

Neah Bay is the westernmost town in the contiguous US, and Cape Flattery just past town is the northwesternmost point. The westernmost point is Cape Alava, just a few miles down the coast (but much harder to reach)

I have been to:

  • Ka Lae, the southernmost point of the 50 states
  • Neah Bay, the westernmost town of the 48 contiguous states
  • Cape Mendocino, the westernmost point of California

Obviously I should keep collecting extrema! Point Barrow might take a while…