time warp: summer bike trip with Dad

In August my dad and I took a weekend trip to the Oregon coast on his 1996 Harley Davidson Heritage Softail.

We started in Salem and headed west, stopping at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and Cape Meares on the way up to Astoria. Had never been to any of those places before, so was awesome for me.

Tillamook Cheese Factory was crowded and the store at the end of the self-guided tour made me feel claustrophobic and panicky, but watching them make the cheese in the vats, and watching the machines poop out enormous bricks of yellow cheese, and seeing how the huge bricks of cheese come out of the aging coolers onto the conveyor belt & get chopped down into 1-lb. loaves and packaged...man, that was cool!

Cape Meares was on our agenda because my friend Cheryl told me about the Octopus Tree, which sounded interesting, and it was, but not as interesting as the fat banana slug we found partially smooshed nearby.

To the left is the Octopus Tree, which is really just a deformed Sitka Spruce. Some people think Native Americans rested burial canoes in the branches when the tree was young, which is why the tree ended up that way.

To the right is the banana slug. Gross, eh? =*)

We got to Astoria after dark and stayed with a friend of my dad's who reminded me quite a lot of Grandma Mary. The impression was strengthened by the fact that she treated me like one of her own grandkids. We ate dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant on the pier (very good food), and the next day we went to see the Astoria monument and the Goonies house. We also went down to the docks, where we saw dozens of fat, ornery sea lions lined up along the docks, alternately napping and barking for no apparent reason. They were hilarious, but I could see why the local fishermen don't appreciate them blocking the passage to the boats.

Riding on the back of the Harley is always something of a challenge. I think I do a pretty good job of going with the flow and not trying to counter-balance the turns, but since I'm not hanging onto my dad and the backrest only comes about halfway up my back, it's a challenge to stay comfortably upright while we're zooming down the highway at 55mph with the wind pushing at my torso (or accelerating or going up a hill). I guess my back must be bendier than most people's. It gives my stomach a killer workout though. And I love being in the open air, smelling the breeze and the smoke from the campfires, feeling the mist on my face and the wind against my clothes. I don't even mind getting rained on a little bit.

For more photos of this trip, click here.