What happens when two people on the same bike tour decide to have two completely different adventures? On this edition of The Pedalshift Project, day two of the Sprocketshift Oregon Coast adventure with Brock Dittus starts with a split decision in Tillamook. Brock points his bike north for a long, wet ride toward Cannon Beach. I slow things way down for cheese, side quests, a little local riding, and maybe a bit of a rethink about what I actually want out of bicycle travel these days. Two riders. Two very different days. One extremely cheap bus ride. Will the bike and bus gods allow us to reunite for fish, chips, oysters, and beer in Astoria?
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The Pedalshift Project 445: Sprocketshift Oregon Coast Part 2
Hey it’s a giveaway!
The Pedalshift spinner giveaway! How to enter… make sure you’re subscribed to the Pedalshift email list over at pedalshift.net. I’ll send an email out to the list on Thursday July 16th for the release of part 2. Reply or forward it back at me at [email protected] by 11:59pm PT Sunday July 19th and BAM! You’re in the running. The email will have the directions too. Overly complex? Maybe. But you get the coolest designed piece ever by Simone, our clever and talented designer friend.
Shownotes
Brock leaves Tillamook with an ambitious goal: ride north toward Astoria and see how far he can get.
Meanwhile, I embrace something closer to a bicycle-assisted vacation day in Tillamook:
Same bike tour. Very different days.
Rethinking How I Bicycle Tour
My slower day in Tillamook raises a bigger question about how I want to approach bicycle travel going forward.
For years, my touring style has often focused on moving from Point A to Point B. The places along the route are part of the experience, but mileage and reaching the destination can easily become the priority.
That means I’ve ridden through places like Tillamook many times without actually spending much time experiencing them.
Instead of riding through Tillamook yet again, I stayed. I visited places I’d skipped on previous Oregon Coast bike tours. I explored. I followed a side quest. I rode when I wanted to ride and stopped when I wanted to stop.
And it may represent a bit of a shift in how I think about bicycle touring.
The length of a bicycle trip doesn’t always have to be measured by the number of miles ridden. Sometimes the bike is the thing that gets us to the experience.
Brock’s 40 Miles of Type Two Fun
While I’m contemplating a new philosophy of slower bicycle travel over cheese samples, Brock is having a very different day.
Rain. Hills. Wet clothes. More rain.
Despite the conditions, he makes excellent time north from Tillamook, riding through Rockaway Beach and over the challenging terrain toward Cannon Beach.
He ultimately reaches Cannon Beach after roughly 40 miles of riding and decides that he doesn’t need to ride all the way to Astoria to prove anything.
The original goal may have been a much longer day, but sometimes knowing when you’ve already had the adventure is part of the adventure.
Also: prolonged rain, soaked clothing, and friction are apparently a combination worth avoiding.
This is useful bicycle touring information.
Thanks to a combination of bicycles, buses, location sharing, and an Oregon Coast transit schedule that somehow works out, our two routes converge in Cannon Beach.
From there, we take the final bus together to Astoria.
The total cost of taking public transportation from Tillamook to Astoria?
For bicycle tourists interested in combining cycling with transit on the Oregon Coast, the regional bus network can create some remarkably inexpensive options for shortening or modifying a route.
Astoria: Fish, Chips, Oysters, and Bicycle Touring
We end the day in Astoria with beer, seafood, oyster shooters, and a comparison of our radically different adventures.
That leads us back to a question that has come up repeatedly on The Pedalshift Project:
Where are all the bicycle tourists?
Even during prime touring season on the Oregon Coast—one of the best-known bicycle touring routes in the United States—we encounter remarkably few loaded touring cyclists.
Is traditional road-based bicycle touring declining?
Are more cyclists choosing gravel and off-road bikepacking routes?
Are hikers increasingly becoming the primary users of Oregon’s hiker-biker campsites?
And if bicycle touring numbers continue to decline, what could that mean for the future of the infrastructure that makes routes like the Oregon Coast possible?
Our data set is hardly scientific, but after several years of seeing the same pattern, it’s becoming harder to dismiss.
Sometimes the Constraints Make the Bike Tour
This weekend also offers another reminder about bicycle travel: sometimes the trip you wouldn’t have chosen is the trip that produces the best stories.
If we’d had several weekends available, we probably would have avoided this one because of the weather.
Instead, this was the weekend we had.
Rain. Bus schedules. Route changes. A split adventure. Unexpected stops.
Brock compares it to Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies: introducing limitations and constraints that force you to approach something differently.
In our case, the constraints became the bike tour.
Statistics
Riders beginning the day together: 2Riders immediately splitting up: 2Cheese establishments visited: 2Approximate miles ridden by Brock: 40Approximate miles ridden by Tim: 6–8Bus fare from Tillamook to Astoria: $2Prawns consumed: 8Pieces of cod consumed by Brock: 3Pints consumed: 1 eachSmokes broken: 1Questionable oyster Jell-O concepts developed: 1Flats: zeroAs always we like to close out the show with a special shoutout to the Pedalshift Society! Because of support from listeners like you, Pedalshift is a weekly bicycle touring podcast with a global community, expanding into live shows and covering new tours like this summer’s upcoming bike tour! If you like what you hear, you can support the show for 5 bucks, 2 bucks or even a buck a month. And there’s one-shot and annual options if you’re not into the small monthly thing. Check it all out at pedalshift.net/society.
Music
You’ve been hearing about Jason Kent and his music for many fine episodes. Jason has a new solo album available NOW. Go listen to JUKEBOX BOY wherever cool music is available!
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