Yesterday’s somewhat soggy late arrival at the Garibaldi
House was offset by the hospitality of the place. All those cookies & other goodies made for
a warm welcome and I have no complaints…however…
One thing that was awry though was their Internet access
seemed spotty and I couldn’t log on. I asked the manager for help and after he
tried the same things I’d already tried he suggested calling the ISP provider
saying “We pay those guys a hundred bucks a month to keep this setup going and
I’m sure they’ll fix whatever’s wrong.”
In my world calling a “support company” usually equates to
spending the next hour waiting on hold listening to really bad elevator music
or acid rock at volume guaranteed to drive you away after two minutes. In
actuality I lucked out and got a real human within five minutes. He had me try
the same things I’d already tried and the manager had tried…you get the
picture. Once we’d worked through that he did the intelligent thing and simply
logged me in without having to satisfy the secret password. Yippee. His parting shot was it would continue to
function that way as long as the hotel didn’t turn their system off which I
thought was interesting.
Anyway after posting the Day 01 blog report I called it a
day and hit the sack. During the night I was awakened twice by really loud
rain…ugh, not a nice thing. When I got up in the morning and looked outside I could
see it had rained like the dickens but at least there was a temporary pause.
The hotel put on a really great breakfast after which I took
advantage of the break in the weather and loaded my gear. Just as I finished it
started to rain, lightly at first and then with a vengeance. I checked out of
the hotel reminding the manager about the Internet issue and telling him what
the support people had done. That seemed to make his eyebrows pop up and down
for some reason. Very strange thing, that.
 |
| Highway 101 heading north |
On the road again I followed a slow moving truck north on
101, slogging along at 30 – 45 mph. I really didn't mind the slowness as the
rain was coming down fairly hard. We soon reached Rockaway Beach where I paused
to look at the ocean. Man talk about dismal, no one in sight and still raining.
The little town of Wheeler was next, still dark and dreary,
no smiling tourists here. I rode on until I arrived at Canon Beach where I
pulled off and called my buddy Tom to see if he was up and ready for coffee. No
answer, apparently his cell has crashed or he’s in jail. Note to self: Get in
touch with TR about this.
At that point I decided my plan to ride north to Vancouver
Island and then across Canada was in the trash, the incoming storm front was
affecting all of the areas that I wanted to ride through so I turned east to
Portland. The damn rain continued without letup. At least my rain gear was
doing its job and except for the slight trickle down the back of my neck I stayed
reasonably dry.
The ride to Portland wasn’t too bad, the rain let up around
15 miles west of there and although the sun didn't make an appearance the wind
dried most of my gear out. I had a couple of stops to make; one to see my tax
guy and two, to have lunch with my youngest son Brian. The accounting office
was an easy stop and by the time I’d finished with them Brian showed up and we
went to lunch. He bought so it was especially tasty!
Afterwards I headed east on I-84 to put as much distance
between the bad weather as possible and ended up at the Motel 6 in Hermiston.
There was only one other biker, a nice guy riding a Yamaha FJR and we hit it
off right away. He was on his way to the National BMW rally to meet up with
some buds and invited me to go along. I really wanted to continue with my ride
so we had a couple of beers and dinner and called it a night.
As it turned out
his offer was probably a better option than what followed.
LL
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