Florence to Bandon - a big bust of a ride

The killer storm never materialized.  While it was raining at the start of the ride and the majority of riders elected to jump in the van, by the first sag stop the rain had stopped and most of the riders decided to chance the weather and ride to Bandon - all except Rodger, Jim and I.  

The smart riders rode in the van with the riding and rain gear on, while I decided that the day was going to be a total bust as per weather.com - so I packed all my rain gear away in my luggage.  So when the sun came out, I did not have the ability to do the rest of the ride as I did not have the right apparel (not to mention the couple of local brews I had at lunch). 

People improvised on clothing. Here is Sarah wearing the trash can liner from her room on her head before the start of the ride.  Let me tell you she is another one of those veteran, tough riders.  In her late 60's (won't tell you the exact age) she got on her bike at the first sag stop and racked up about 50 miles on the day. And she did it all by herself as her riding partners were in the van with me soaking down the local brews.

Here is my bike heading to Bandon.  In my defense on being a woose, the radar showed a huge storm along our whole ride.  But as soon as would get to the spot that was indicated on the weather map, the storm would move past us and we would miss the rain.  Like that all day.

The sky was pretty dark and gloomy most of the day so there were not a lot of photo ops.  We did stop at the Oregon Dunes and were able to take some photos of the dunes and the sea in between rain swells.

All along the coast there are signs warning people of the potential for a Tsunami.  The advice on how to deal with this threat is simple - get your ass to high ground and don't screw around going to the beach to watch the wave kill you.  You don't think about this a lot but when we got to the hotel there was an actually Tsunami warning in affect for the Hawaiian Islands.  So this stuff is real and I am going to keep my eye out for some big waves.

As you can see I did not get a lot of pictures yesterday.  One reason is that I fell asleep in the van for most of the ride.  These long bike shuttle rides are killers.  I did manage to get a shot of one of the light houses that dot the Oregon Coast, but then went back to sleep.

I did manage to wake up in time to visit the High Tide Cafe for lunch.  We are all sampling the clam chowder in each of the towns we visit and then voting on which one has been the best chowder. 

The High Tide claimed that their chowder was "award winning" so our expectations were pretty high as we walked in the door - and it was pretty good.  The three judges for the day (me, Rodger and Bill) determined it was better than Mo's the night before in Florence.  As for the award....

Caveat Emptor.  Upon close examination of the actual award that was hung on the entry wall - the award was given in 2013 by the North Bend High School Internet Club - I kid you not!  These geeks obviously know their chowder.

By the time we got to Bandon, the sun was out and it was a glorious day - providing me a perfect opportunity to sample some of the local wines (no local beers that I could find).  It has a little commercial center right on the harbor.  Not much bigger than the center of Wellfleet.

The biggest tourist attraction is Harry the Fish.  Harry is made out entirely of recycled plastic that the local fishermen have "caught" in their nets.  As Harry's sign says "this stuff sticks around for 400 years before it disintegrates".    So this statue should be here for a long time.

The only disappointment of the Bandon experience is that we ate at the local pizza shop.  Never trust a place has a "Help Wanted" sign, "Open For Business" sign and a "Sale by Owner" sign all in the front window.  I should have know better and should have bolted to one of the better establishments in town.  My bad.

Today is supposed to be a great riding day with no rain and temps reaching the mid 60's.  But as I am writing this post, it is really raining hard.  It actually woke me up it was so loud.  Of course my trusted weather.com is telling me it is only cloudy outside - so once again I have no clue on how the day will turn out to be.   Again we are on Rt 101 for a good part of the day, so I really hope weather.com has its act together today.

It is a short ride today (55 miles) so we have the opportunity to depart a little later in the morning than we normally do (9 am departure).  So hopefully it gets better by start time.