Kiki Bikes Across America

Saturday, August 8th – Cannon Beach, OR to Portland, OR

“Police Department. Police Department. Police Department.” announced a police officer outside of the tent. Chase and I finally wake up after they were repeating “Police Department” probably six times or so. We look at one another with a look like, “oh boy, they found us.” and get out of the tent and talk to the officers. I openly admit knowing we weren’t supposed to be there, but then tell them that we had gotten in late in the evening and found all the campgrounds and motels/hotels to be booked, so we had nowhere to go. The officers were very friendly and understanding and gave us kudos for hiding the tent, as most people apparently don’t try that hard. The officers called in our names to the dispatcher or station to have them check our records and make sure we were clean and didn’t have any warrants out on us. And we were of course good to go and we packed up and rolled out a short bit later. Best part was, the cops saw our bikes at 3am but let us sleep until almost 6am before waking us up and telling us to leave. They didn’t want citizens of Cannon Beach to get upset when they saw us there in the morning when walking dogs or what not, so they wanted to get us up and out of there before they received complaints.

We rolled into the main part of town and went to the bakery and got some food – I just had a raspbery danish and Chase went all out getting three different danishes/pastries/biscuits and all. We also went for the Darigold Chocolate Milk (a favorite since we got free Darigold chocolate milk a few days ago at the gas station as part of a promotion).

After breakfast, we went down and took a look at Haystack Rock on the beach and looked at all the cool sea creatures living on it – sea anemones (spelling?), starfish, as well as plants and such.

Starfish at Haystack Rock

Then we stopped and got a drink at a little general store and I asked for some cardboard and a marker to make signs. I drew on three cardboard pieces. One said “Lift to Portland?” and another said “3,755 miles biked” and the last one said “pretty please” – and needless to say, we didn’t have any luck with it – too much writing and all. But whatever, we wound up biking up to Seaside to try to hitch-hike from a gas station. We spent about an hour and a half looking for a pickup truck that would give us a lift back to Portland. I asked this one man (Bob) who was pulling a boat, but had an empty pickup bed if he was going to Portland. He said he was going through and we wound up getting a ride with him, his son Robbie, and a friend of his. The ride back wasn’t bad at all – a little over an hour and he dropped us off just 1 block from Alina and Josh’s house, so that was awesome!

We left our stuff at Alina and Josh’s and then went out into Portland by bike and Chase was in search of some used clothing to wear home on the plane. He spent about 1.5 to 2 hours in Buffalo Exchange looking for some jeans and a shirt or two. I went over to Powell’s Book Store and then to Whole Foods as I was getting hungry – luckily, I resisted eating until Chase was done and then we rode up to the university area and got dinner at Baan Thai. It was awesome food and Chase really liked it as well – he’s finally getting to try things that aren’t so easy to find down in the south in Texas.

We rode back to Alina and Josh’s after dinner and Chase headed out to his cousin’s to meet up. Alina and Josh were at a house-warming party for a friend’s and Jamie (Alina/Josh’s roommate) was having a party with his girlfriend Ursula. I got back to the house and wound up chatting with some of Jamie and Ursula’s friends and in particular a friend of their’s who’s big into touring and biking and was all interested about my trip and asking lots of questions and told me about his trip to Ireland where he did a bit of touring.

I hit the sack around 11pm after conking out while trying to update my blog and whatnot.