"Situations"

Sunday, Nov. 21, 2010
For the past three days I've been staying at the Motel 6 in Lincoln City, Oregon, allowing certain parts of my body to recover. A day or two after leaving Seattle/SeaTac, I started developing a "situation" in my "southern hemisphere" and it was making riding uncomfortable. It had gotten to the point where I would have to stop sitting on the saddle long enough to heal. (Bike saddles are not called "seats." No idea why.) The dilemma was whether I should wait it out down here, or come home for up to a week. Either option would cost a few hundred dollars (motel and food expenses vs. bus/train and food expenses). I decided to stay here.

The good news is I think it worked. I haven't ridden the bike since Thursday and am feeling pretty good. Except for the other "situation" I've developed in my head––a slight head cold. This doesn't concern me so much because I know the cold will be gone within a few days.

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving, heading south. The question to be answered is whether my "bike-saddle-region situation" will return. If it does, I don't know what I'll do. Maybe go home and try to find a winter job. (Of course, there's always work cleaning and waxing the Tours NW coaches, right Dan?)

I'm fairly confident I'll be able to continue on the bike.

My other concern now is budgeting my finances well enough to make it another four months. I've been spending way too much money and will need to do quite a bit of camping and warmshowers.org-ing for the next couple of months.

Last night at 1:35 I was startled awake by another "situation"; the deafening beeping/buzzing of the hotel fire alarm. Fortunately it wasn't raining as everyone had to evacuate the building until the all-volunteer fire department stumbled out of bed (or the bar), drove down to the fire station, got the truck, drove to the Motel 6, established the cause of the alarm, judged the hotel safe, and shut off and reset the alarm.

We were outside for about 40 minutes.

While most of the fat hotel guests stood around smoking cigarettes, holding their yippy lap dogs and eating junk food that they'd apparently stashed in their cars for just such an eventuality, I went for a walk. Yes, I am better than all of them. Actually, I walked about a third of a mile down to the convenience store and bought Skittles (since I didn't have a car with emergency rations and wasn't comfortable asking the chain-smoking woman with a missing front tooth if I could have some of her Doritos).

Here's the Motel 6 where it feels like I've been for about two weeks:

And the view from the hotel looking down Hwy 101:

Here's the view of the ocean from the Motel 6 entrance:

Temperatures here are low to mid-40s. Monday night there's a chance of snow with Tuesday high temps in the mid-upper 30s. Don't know what this will do to my mobility. Guess we'll find out!