Every time that I have thought guiltily that I should take a moment to blog I feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that I know I will have to divulge. One adventure has ended, another begun, and with school starting, yet one more sweeping scene will take the spotlight and leave the last seemingly brilliant episode dimly in the shadows without ever having a chance to be seen. It seems, some how, sinful to have lapsed in writing for so long that I have forgotten all the small details that make something worth remembering, writing, telling.
And the pictures! What of the pictures that cannot be so nonchalantly placed in rows down a page, neatly scrap-booked by an electronic nobody that effortlessly places them uniformly and exactly and makes me want to just mess it all up a little bit, but that would take too much human work; I don't have the skills to make the alignment less than perfect.
Now, where was I.
We rode down the coast and with sanguine faces every time that we saw the ocean and could hardly bear to ride away from it. On the days that we were forced to dodge inland and the hills rolled like on the plains but through the woods, we made frequent stops at every stream to throw sticks for Mary to break up the monotony. Bringing the dogs was the best decision that we made as they made us a laugh and entertained us when we were down and very effectively guarded our belongings when we went into stores or ate at restaurants.
We discussed at length the primordial desire to be near any water source; the euphoria we felt when in the ocean's infinite presence or the content fortitude that we gained while following a creek. We saw a sand sculpture contest and an old ship wreck. I did an oyster shooter, Mary fell off of a culvert into a creek, we stayed at a hiker/biker camp site for five dollars; all the details are lost.
I desperately wanted to use our fishing pole and catch my own dinner. I thought that it would top off the growing ecstasy we floated on while reveling in our independence from gasoline. If I could catch my own food, I would truly be money free and self-reliant. However, we still hadn't found a lure for our pole and the days went on as we road the coast with many a fisherman dropping their lines over the rocks along the way in search of their own meal, but not a one of them happening to drop a lure as they loaded their tackle boxes back into their cars and drove away.
Down the Oregon coast, stopping at a every town we could and doing short distances so we could enjoy the beaches and tourist traps. I composed in my head the journal entry of what it would be like if we finally found a fishing lure. I would write, "I squealed with excitement and startled the boy as I screeched to a stop and picked up my treasure..." As I squinted in a setting sun at this thought, I passed one of millions of shiny metal objects that we passed every day on the side of the road. The slanted rays of the sun illuminated the 'J' shaped hook as if I had dreamed it into existence.
Our luck had run out with the weather and it drizzled but we made the most of it, taking beer tours in Astoria and riding the tilt-a-whirl in Seaside. It was a Monday morning at a campsite just passed Seaside that we discovered our only option for a rental car was back up the coast in Astoria.
After weighing our options, we decided that we would rather not continue down the coast and then have to back track into the wind. Nor did we want to stay put in the area and watch our painfully earned and saved funds dwindle. We decided that we would take the remainder of the cash left from the trip and invest in our next adventure, kiteboarding.
