Ride Day 85

Today I rode from Gnat Creek Hatchery near Westport to St Helens Oregon about 56 miles and 2500' of climbing. It was raining most of the day but just a light rain except for some heavier rain cells that blew over once in a while. I took refuge under big trees when the heavy stuff hit me to try to stay drier. All my camping stuff is wet from last night, my tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad etc and my clothes are all dirty so when I got to St Helens I went straight to a laundromat to wash and dry all my stuff. Glad I did that cause I got a good night of sleep in the city campground last night. At the laundromat I was talking to several very friendly people that were curious about this strange fellow in the bright colored clothes doing his laundry. I talked to one woman for quite a while as she folded her clothes. She told me about how her father had helped a young bike rider many years earlier that was from Holland. The same man came back to see them many years later to tell them thanks for helping him out. There are a lot of nice people in the world if you just get out into the world. When I told her the city campground was full of tweekers she immediately told me I could come over and camp in her yard. I thanked her for the offer but my camp was all set up so I politely declined her offer, silly me. The campground emptied out at dark and I ended up as the only one camping there and I got a quiet night of sleep and stayed nice and dry. The ride was not too hard and at my first breakfast stop I checked in with my pregnant daughter to find that she had given birth two hours earlier on the bathroom floor at home after only 13 minutes of labor. Her sister called 911 and the baby girl was nursing by the time the ambulance arrived. Her sister and twin sister and her husband were all there to help so the birth went fine for one that went that fast. I am happy to have a healthy new grand daughter now. I will post a pic of her later. I had to stop at one point today to allow a wet cell to blow over and I just happened to be in front of a tavern so I went in for a quick one. Unfortunately after the one I went out to check the weather and it had already blown over so I hit the road again instead of having more pints. Here are a few pics but I did not take many because of the rain and drizzle. I did miss some great views of the mountains around here because of the fog and rain but such is life.