Day 9

Grey whales. I feel like the last person on Earth who has never seen one. Until today. Three. Amazing. It was difficult to determine age, relationship, size, but they were doing the UW thing, pulling together. I don’t know whether they draft or use the power of the current from the lead whale, but from the perspective of pure power, it was a sight to behold. We use machines to propel us across large distances. They swim.

Yes, they’ve evolved to maximize their physical capabilities to get them to where they need to go. What evolutionary changes will we undergo to maximize our physical capabilities so we can reproduce and find food? Or, is this all there is? If the life forms we become are more machine-like, what happens to the whale? For that matter. what happens to any life form besides humans? All I know is the metronome of a whale’s life is an incredible story and something we could probably learn from.

Today was just another beautiful day in paradise. The wind, though, is serious. I’m so glad we’re riding with the extra push from the north. Riding a bike into that wind would be incredibly difficult…unless you’re a Serbian woman who is en route to Prudoe Bay from Terra del Fuego. That’s right. We encountered another one of those people whom only the whales can appreciate. We yelled across 101 traffic to communicate because surely if we crossed the highway and stopped to talk longer, we would only ask more questions and delay her northerly travel. She was pedaling into a steady 15 MPH wind with gusts in the 20’s. People like that scare me because you never know if they are real or placed here by an omnipotent power just to demonstrate to us what we are capable of when we put our minds toward something. Maybe both? Our conversation lasted 10 minutes, but the impact of her determination will last my lifetime.

Tom and I met Jake’s daughter and +1, Gabe, this afternoon. They drove over from Corvallis where she is a sophomore at Oregon State. We walked to the beach and felt the full force of the wind. Tom carried a small backpack and kept walking toward the waves. He stopped, disrobed to his shorts and sprinted into the water with glee! Immediately, he reversed course, and ran to fetch his towel all the while expressing both agony and elation. He has come to the American west to do it all!

Finally, we have two more bicyclist travelers in the hiker-biker campground tonight. They are brothers, one from Winthrop and one from Kent. They plan to end their ride in Crescent City after starting in Astoria. Again, two more retired guys, so the score is now Seniors 4. Juniors 1.