A few weeks ago I set off with a friend on a bike trip across Central Oregon and Northern California. My mother, as she often worries, was half-convinced I would die. On the other hand, my grandmother thinks it's a miracle I have lived this long in the first place. In all reality, we were well prepared for the trip and it went smoothly. Although we missed out on some of the poorly-placed adventures of unpreparedness, we had our share of notable events.
The trip was a much needed vacation for me, but the pleasure of the trip, as always, is in the details. I would love to walk you through those fine details, including biking through forests on roads with virtually no cars, but for full effect I think you'll have to get on a bike and do it yourself. The people we met were one thing that made the trip quite enjoyable.
In one case of swapping stories with a couple Pacific-Crest-Trail section hikers, my biking partner quickly recounted how just the other night as he looked for the tent zipper, I started to claw at his hands! He finally found the zipper, went outside for a bit, got a drink of water, etc., and got back only for me to rudely ask where he had gone! Of course I had to set the record straight: On the second night of the trip, as I was about to fall asleep, my friend started clawing at the tent. I asked what was up, and he said he was looking for the zipper. Although his clawing looked rather frantic and unorganized for simply finding the zipper to the tent. He found it and got a drink of water. I fell asleep only to be later woken by him shaking my pillow! Again I ask "What are you doing?"
To which he asks, "What is this?"
"My pillow"
"Oh," and he goes back to bed.
At this point I'm considering the possibility that my friend has cracked. Sure enough, sometime later he opens the door of the tent and goes back to bed, letting all the ants and other bugs into the tent. Talking to him in the morning, he attributed it to some possible claustrophobia induced by my cursed tent, or it being too hot out. Of course, I (jokingly) had my doubts.
Fortunately, the next few nights are uneventful, but again, just the other night I awoke to him clawing at the tent (this is where he started his story). I grab his hands and move them to where the tent zipper is, only to have him pull them away and continue to claw at the tent. He finally finds the zipper and gets out. Five or so minutes later, and he's still gone. I start to dread the thought that he got lost in the night. The last thing I want to do is try to track down a person, who is already acting strangely, in a forest, in the middle of the night. And really, who knows where he might have gone. Much to my relief, he finally returns and goes to bed.
On the trip, we also got to meet a farmer. A good portion of Northern California consists of private farmland, which makes it difficult to find a good spot to camp. We finally settled one night and found a discrete spot on private land. As our new farmer friend pointed out to me, he wouldn't have caught us if he had not been out so unusually late that night. He told this to me at about midnight as I stood next to his pickup in nothing but boxers, still a little drowsy from being woken by a car horn. We chatted a bit about where my friend and I came from and where we were headed. I looked over to see my friend standing in nothing but briefs as he stared blankly into the headlights. It took a whole lot of effort to not burst into laughter at the site. The farmer let us stay there, with a stern warning to be gone by sunrise. I imagine his compassion came from an extreme sense of pity for our pathetic appearance.
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