100 Days 48 States - The Journey

"Two roads diverged in a wood and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference."
- Robert Frost

TODAY’S ROUTE:
Sekiu, WA to Long Beach, WA: SR-112 East to SR-113 South to Sappho, US-101 South to Forks to Hoh Road East to Hoh Rain Forest, back to US-101 South to Ruby Beach, through Neilton to Humptulips through Hoquiam and Aberbeen to Raymond then South Bend to SR-103 North to Long Beach. (MAP)

THE DETAILS:
I’ve gotten some sleep but the result is I don’t get on the road till 11 AM. That is a late start. I’m getting quite good at loading the gear quickly on the bike, though. It takes me all of 15 minutes every morning. Of course it helps to have a motel room with the bike right outside the door.

I head south, cutting across the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula along the Sol Duc River. The forested landscape is lush around one turn and then deviating clear-cuts fill the view around another. The deforestation here is quite disturbing, and I see the results of severe logging throughout the day. Ripped up stumps litter battlefields of tree wars, and the trees lost big time. New growth has been planted in some areas, but these spaces are now tree farms instead of diverse forests. Hey, we all need wood but this is ridiculous.

The first planned stop of the day is the beach at La Push, which my friend Jennifer Arlinksky told me about. Just before Forks, an old logging town, I turn down the road towards the ocean. But there’s road construction, again, and I wait in a line of traffic for ten minutes while the follow truck returns from the other end. When it finally arrives, the driver backs it off the road and gets stuck in a culvert. When they start pulling out the tow chains, I turn around. La Push will have to wait for my next 100 day trip. (Sorry Jennifer. I tried.)

15 miles down the road from Forks is the incredibly lush Hoh Rain Forest, part of the Olympic National Park. After all the clear-cuts it’s a refreshing relief to be in an area so green and filled with living things. You can actually feel the earth breathing here. Giant Hemlocks, Fir, Cedar, and Sitka Spruce trees tower hundreds of feet above a blanket of moss. This is a temperate rain forest, receiving over 140 inches of rain each year. I hike the 1 ¼ mile Spruce Nature Trail and get my fill of oxygen for the rest of the millennium.

I’m just riding along the road leaving the rain forest and enjoying being surrounded by all this nature and drifting along on a natural high and grooving along with the motorcycle and feeling the early afternoon sun glint through forest canopy and turning over that hill just ahead with the river to my left and BAM! OH MY GOD I’M BLACKING OUT HOLD ON STRAIGHT IT’S OVER HELMET SMASHED TRIP OVER STOP BIKE HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED OH MY HEAD.

Out of nowhere, in less than a second, a large bird has flown up from the side of the road and smashed into my helmet. Everything happens in fractions of seconds. The force is so great I feel like someone just clocked me with a telephone book across the top of my head. Millions of brain cells vanish instantly and I feel myself losing consciousness. But I don’t, and I keep the bike straight and stop it quickly, pulling off to the side. I’m in shock. I put down the side stand and slump over, on the tank bag.

Okay, I’m all right. My head is ringing and hurts like I have a concussion, but I’m all right. The helmet did the job and absorbed most of the impact. I take it off to look at it. Remarkably, it’s intact and nothing is broken. I was sure the face shield was cracked, but it looks like the top of the helmet, just above the top edge of the shield is where the direct impact was. There’s some juice from my victim there.

I walk back down the road about 100 feet to see what’s become of my fine feathered friend. The bird, some kind of pheasant or grouse, was killed on impact. A female, I assume from the lack of coloring, she weighs about 5 pounds. There is a large open wound on one side from the impact against the helmet. I shot some video of her (yes I went right for the camera – I WAS A JOURNALISM MAJOR) and then toss her into the woods. May she rest in peace.

I guess I’m just happy I didn’t go down. I was going about 50 MPH and it is hard to describe what it feels like to have a five pound object hit you in the head when you’re traveling at that speed. Without the helmet, I would have died. Most likely, the impact would have cracked open my skull and I would have been knocked off the bike for sure.

A few miles down the road I stop at Ruby Beach, another unit of the park. I’m still pretty shaken up and I need to get off the motorcycle for a while. I walk the deserted shoreline, strew with enormous tree trucks, washed from the edge of the forest. It’s cloudy and dark and gloomy here, but it’s good to feel the ocean air and smell the salty sea. Hey, it’s good just to be alive.

THE DAILY TAKE:
Miles Today: 259.5
Total Miles: 15,111
Time on Motorcycle: 4 Hours 53 Minutes
Average Speed: 53.1 MPH
States Visited today: 1 (WA)
Total States Visited: 30
National Park Service Passport Stamps: 0
NPS Stamp totals: 111 Stamps, 27 States
Weather: Clear Morning, Threatening Clouds along shore all afternoon
Birds killed so far: 2

SEEN ON THE ROAD:
"Be A Good Citizen: DON’T LITTER" – road sign on Hoh Road near US-101

RANDOM PASSINGS:
Even before my incident today, I’ve been a strong advocate of helmet use. Not all states require a helmet, but I always wear mine no matter what. The reason is quite simple. If your head hits the ground at 18 miles per hour you will probably die. That’s all it takes, 18 miles per hour. Most people can ride their bicycles faster than that. I love to ride my motorcycle, and I want to keep riding my motorcycle, even after I have an accident. So I protect myself as much as I possibly can.

The helmet I wear is a very special one. It’s called a BMW System IV and it is one of the safest, most comfortable, and convenient helmets on the market. With the push of one button under the chin piece, the entire front of the helmet lifts up. This allows me to have a sip of water, pull off my glasses, blow my nose, have a conversation, or do a whole bunch of things which I used to have to pull off my full-face helmet to accomplish.

Unfortunately, BMW doesn’t sell the System IV here in the U.S., as the subcontractor who manufactures it doesn’t carry insurance coverage for the states. But everyone wants to get his or her hands on one. There used to be a couple of German dealers who would ship you one, but BMW put an end to that. You can ride up to Canada, but the ones they sell there aren’t exactly the same as the European version.

So how did I get one, you ask. Well, it helps to have friends in high places. Actually, my dear friend Nicole Dean has a boyfriend named Frank Taubert who lives in Berlin. How fortunate for me. Thank you Frank and Nicole for helping me get this invaluable piece of equipment. Today, it may very well have saved my life.