Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Day One
Due to my extremely late arrival last night, I did not get dinner and then I was too slow getting up this morning to get breakfast. I am diabetic, so this is not a good thing. To that, add the fact that it was very cold this morning, and the result for me was hyperthermia. All I really remember of the morning ride is hanging on to the Blur for dear life while my body was racked with chills and shivering. During that time i wandered off course in a large way.
I finally stopped way south of where I'd started, got a coffee and some food and warmed up. As I came beck to my senses, I began to realize that I was not where I was supposed to be. I asked the man at the store if he could help me get hooked up with the route. He didn't bother to look at the map, just asked me where I was trying to go.
When I told him that I was trying to connect with Route 20, he laughed and motioned south and said, "You're in luck becuase Route 20 starts right down the road in Newport."
I rode a couple miles south and, sure enough, there was a sign that proclaims, "Route 20 Begins Here." I dismounted, touched the sign, said "Tag" and trundled off into the interior of Oregon in search of the Cannonball Route.
Many Many hours later I was hustling down the road in the middle of nowhere when I made my first sighting of the entire day of a fellow Cannonballer. It was gpPeej and he was lying prone next to his gorgous Lambretta by the side of the road. It turned out that both his Lammy and his cell-phone battery had chosen the same moment to die. was so happy to see a fellow Cannonballer with a working cell-phone that it actually made me feel way better about the fact that I was so late and so far behind the others.
After a few communications glitches due to cell phone coverage problems, we finally got in touch with the second support vehicle. The first support vehicle, driven by Scooter Libby (Heather) was almost already in John Day and would have been no help owing to the fact that, as Heather piut it, she already had a full boat with all the broken scooters she had aboard.
The second support vehicle came quickly when they finally received our distress call.
On the way to John Day we saw a family of deer cross the road right in front of us. That sighting alarmed me enough that I flipped up my visor so I could see better. A big bug flew into my helmet while I was rifing along and started crawling around on my scalp. This was not the highlight of my day, either.
The support vehicle sheparded me all the way into John Day. Needless to say, I was the last scooter to arrive in John Day and it was quite late. Oh well, tomorrow is another day...
------------------------------
Sent via PocketMail
Email Anywhere
www.pocketmail.com
