ROAD MODELS

TILLAMOOK TO BROOKINGS, OR

AFTER A WEEKEND SURROUNDED BY DEEP WOODS, the return to coastal scenery carries a rush, a spring-loaded punch of sea, rock, and salt-limned trees. The sharp lick of tidewater mixes with scents of decaying leaves. My body feels great, superhuman. Calves and quadriceps flex with the ease of freshly greased gears.

From Tillamook we ride southwest, detouring from Highway 101 to cycle the Three Capes Scenic Route along the jagged coastline. A dull, insidious rain continues; traffic trickles by. Alisha and I follow the southern sweep of Tillamook Bay, then tackle our first ascent toward Cape Meares. We inch up the pitch, the road’s zigzagging strip of asphalt overrun by greenery. My muscles accept the call to action; I tick off the turns until the slope plateaus and Cape Meares lighthouse peeks out of the fog. A lightning-fast downhill pilots us back to sea level where the road cuts a plane almost level with high tide. Headlands retreat in the distance to the south, a reminder that with at least two more capes to conquer, we have an ambitious day ahead.

I departed Lee’s Camp with a new haircut, courtesy of Alisha. While I was in desperate need of a trim, now I could pass for a fourteen-year-old boy. I promised not to be mad—I was the one who forced the scissors into her hands—but can’t help but wonder if my unfortunate haircut may have been payback for all those years of bullying.

Bicycling the Pacific Coast has become an undeniably useful resource. For Oregon, it’s provided a wealth of unfailing advice, such as “Expect heavy rain from October through June,” and “Fenders are a much-appreciated accessory.”

Alisha and I have come to rely on the guidebook’s daily mileage logs, which list sights and amenities, as well as detours to lighthouses and state parks. While we choose to stealth camp instead of stay in the recommended campgrounds, the guidebook has been essential to our day-to-day route planning.

From Bruce and Mary’s home in Lee’s Camp, I had arranged a couchsurfing host in Lincoln City, a sixty-five mile ride from Tillamook—we should arrive by nightfall. After Lincoln City we’ll continue south along the ragged fray of Oregon shoreline toward the California border, now less than a week away. Our guidebook tells us the final fifty miles, from Humbug Mountain to Brookings, are the most stunning. Apart from our couchsurfing host in Lincoln Beach tonight, and another I’ve lined up a few days south of here in Coos Bay, Alisha and I will continue to camp. The tent pole we mended in Washington is holding strong and we’ve converted a dumpster-scavenged length of plastic into a waterproof groundsheet.

IT’S NOT LONG BEFORE MY TIRE TROUBLES return with a vengeance. While mending the day’s second puncture on a gravel pullout just after lunchtime, I notice that the hole in the sidewall of my tire has exploded to the diameter of a poker chip. Again, I curse myself for not taking care of it back in Astoria. Right now, all I can do is try to block the tear so no more debris works its way in.

“I heard that a folded up bill works,” says Alisha. She has removed one of her panniers to use as a stool where she rests, reading Silent Spring, a 1960s book by Rachel Carson documenting the devastating effects of pesticide use.

I fold a one-dollar bill and slip the square between the rubber tube and tire. Perhaps cash in my tire will bring good luck, or at least get me as far as Lincoln City. I think back to the MEC in Victoria, where, between racks of fluorescent green windbreakers and blinking bike lights, I’d noticed a few spare tires, conveniently boxed into rectangles. At the time, I wasn’t convinced a spare was worth the forty-five dollars, not to mention the burden of hauling a rubber brick that I might never need several thousand kilometres down the coast.

Later, I’d learn from some cyclists I met near Big Sur about something called a tire boot: a small rectangle of strong vinyl that adheres to a cracked tire to protect the tube inside—a nice compromise between carrying a spare and using a flimsy bill. If only I’d known about the tire boot when I started out. The other cyclists chuckled at my inexperience, but admitted that they too had struggled with the learning curve of touring: “No matter how much you plan, it all changes when you hit the road. You just have to figure it out for yourself.”

I’m certain that I’ve uttered similar sage words to beginner cyclists I’ve encountered since then, spoken with the humbled air of someone who has made the same mistakes twice.

The one-dollar bill holds, but we’ve lost time dealing with my flats and admiring too many views. I don’t want to get caught out on the highway at night again. Twenty miles north of Lincoln City I phone our couchsurfing host—an early twenties surfer-type who lives in a basement suite with three of his buddies—to let him know not to expect us. He sounds stoned, or perhaps ambivalent: “Yeah, sure. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

I wish I could be so laid-back. Nonchalant in that Bob Marley, take-life-as-it-comes sort of way. Instead, I’m anxious to suss out a place to camp. The last straggling rays are fast departing and the highway reveals little: a scruff of bush on either side, beyond that shark-bite cliff edges breaking off into Pacific.

We settle on a small clearing in a regional park, hemmed by tall grass. Fallen logs screen us from the view of passersby on the trail. Together we prepare dinner, unwind to the soundtrack of our makeshift kitchen: knife against plastic cutting board, the fuel-burning hiss of our camp stove. Away from home and the city’s conveniences, I wonder about the people who make life on the road, hitchhikers and drifters, and recall my father talking about our Grandpa Hackinen’s stint as a Depression-era hobo. Twenty-one and near destitute, my grandfather left his family’s drought-ridden farm in Outlook, Saskatchewan, to hop the rails with his tenor sax. He met up with other jazz musicians to play tunes for entertainment-eager crowds at prairie dance halls, catching sleep in boxcars and abandoned buildings.

Huddled over the stove as we wait for the pot to boil, the tapatap-tap drumbeat of evening rain against the tarp overhead, I wonder if this is the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing the kind of hardship that my grandfather took in stride.

Later, we trade the dryness of our tarped sanctuary for a pair of driftwood logs and the pleasure of watching gulls reel over frothy surf as we eat dinner. Couchsurfing would have been nice, but doing our own thing isn’t bad either. We have the perfect spot near the ocean and time to enjoy the quiet beauty of the evening.

WHEN ALISHA AND I WERE KIDS, a lot of experiences with our father could be summed up as “doing our own thing.” On January and February weekends we’d drive to Manning Park, two hours east of the Lower Mainland, to go skiing. Instead of staying at the rustic lodge with a games room and sauna in the basement, the three of us would fold down the back seats of the minivan and crash at the base of the ski hill, listening to one of our three road-trip cassettes—An Innocent Man (Billy Joel), No Fences (Garth Brooks), and Harvest Moon (Neil Young)—until Dad switched off the ignition so that the battery didn’t die. Nights were cold fingers and layered sweaters. But in the morning we’d hitch our snow pants over pyjamas bottoms and clomp to the chairlift in stiff-buckled ski boots. Later, we warmed up in the cafeteria, with peanut butter and jam sandwiches and a hot chocolate between the three of us.

Spoiled brat that I was, I resented these stringencies. Where was my double cheeseburger with fries? My night in downy bedding at the lodge? Part of me knew that our family couldn’t afford to pay for a typical ski weekend—complete with meals out and two nights at the lodge—though it’s only in retrospect that I realize just how lucky I was. Not every kid gets to spend weekends knee-deep in powder. Looking back, I can see how my father was imparting the lessons that he’d learned from his own parents, the father who rode the rails in the Depression and the mother whose thriftiness was legendary.

ALISHA AND I RIDE ONE BEHIND THE OTHER alongside a collage of evergreens and birch trees whose falling leaves recall soiled, crinkled napkins. The shoulder is generous, terrain sweetly rolling rather than heartbreakingly steep. A yolk of sun forces its way through the white of clouds as we arrive at the outskirts of Neskowin, a scattered little town of motels and hotels bordering a reach of sandy beach.

“Coffee time?” I ask. Just past ten a.m.

The back of Alisha’s red-and-white helmet tips up and down, nodding agreement.

We duck into a café to fill Alisha’s thermos. It’s fortunate that we take our coffee the same—plenty of cream and a packet of sugar. The two of us share everything these days: coffee, donuts, and of course, our smaller-than-a-single-bed tent. From the café a short detour takes us to the coast. We prop Blue Steel and Mrs. Bicycle against a No Parking sign and head for the sand. Wind-raked evergreens spring from a wild looking lump of surf-battered rock—Prospect Island—joined to the mainland by a spit of low tide. Next to a windbreaker log, the two of us sip our coffee, half-watching the shell collectors and beachcombers that freckle the bay. Given the abundance of accommodations, I’m surprised to find so few people. I suppose the weather isn’t ideal, but with the lush green of Prospect Island and an ethereal fog rolling in over distant breakers, Neskowin Beach is postcard perfect.

We return to the parking lot to find a foursome of RV People closing in around Blue Steel and Mrs. Bicycle. You can always pick out people who travel in RVs. They walk on shaky legs, uncertain of their footing. Overcompensate for their lack of physical prowess with an excess of high-end photography equipment. The ones we’ve encountered so far have mostly been retired couples, but this group is different: two couples. One middle-aged and the other about our age, from the looks of it a daughter and son-in-law.

“We’ve always wondered about you folks,” says the father, watching us unhitch our bicycles. His calves are hairless and surprisingly muscular. A camera pendulums over his paunch.

“Cycle tourists,” says his wife, clarifying. “Do you carry everything on there?”

“Yup,” Alisha grins, ever the diplomat. “Everything but a toilet!”

She jumps into an overview of our packing scheme, pointing out where the tent, sleeping bags, and clothes are.

“In here’s the kitchen,” she says, rapping a closed fist against her back pannier where the food, stove, and cookware are stored.

The RV People shake their heads and wonder at all the stuff we’ve managed to load on our bikes. I take a look at their vehicle—a bus-length behemoth that sprawls over two parking spots—and consider what it would be like to travel in an RV, hermetically sealed from the wind and the rainbows. I look down at Blue Steel with new appreciation.

“You two are just about ready for anything,” says the daughter. She and her mother both wear those garish Pandora charm bracelets.

“Just like Thelma and Louise!” her mother chimes in.

“Let’s hope this story doesn’t end with us plunging over a cliff,” I say. A discomfortingly real possibility on some of these narrow roads.

There’s more that sets us apart from Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis’s characters. While we’re both pairs of free-spirited women on the road to Mexico, Alisha and I aren’t on the run from the law or shackled to controlling husbands; as much as I may wish it, chances are slim that a dashing Brad Pitt is going to whisk either of us off our feet. Still, I can’t fault the RV People for making the comparison—there are so few road trip stories with female leads.

It’s half past eleven when the RV People wave their goodbyes. Time to get moving. Soon Highway 101 narrows, the beach and Prospect Island dissolving into the mist as we begin another ascent, this time into Cascade Head Scenic Reserve. We follow a creek until that shrinks away too, the road pushing into denser woods. Ahead, a northbound cyclist appears, a rangy man sporting a springy red beard, shopping bags festooned on his handlebars. A yellow milk crate bungeed to his back rack is piled high with tarps and camp gear.

We wave across the yellow centre line. It’s as if we’re figures passing in a dream, not quite able to make contact. In a moment, we have gone our separate ways. I watch the cyclist crest a hill in my side-view mirror, shopping bags rocking to his cadence.

I imagined there would be more cyclists. Including Bag Man, we’ve only encountered two other cyclists in Washington and Oregon combined. I suppose most people tour in summer months, when daylight lingers until ten p.m. and the baking sun seduces riders into the ocean for afternoon cool-downs.

ALISHA AND I CONTINUE TO PEEL INLAND. Douglas firs puncture a blanched sky, while near leafless deciduous trees fork over the highway. Since our comparison to Thelma and Louise, I’ve been racking my brain for other road models, without success. Of course there’s my Grandma Hackinen. Though she never tackled the Pacific route, she pedalled across Canada the summer preceding her seventieth birthday, scaling the Rockies and battling Maritime crosswinds with the stamina of a high-school track athlete.

My grandmother had always been her own woman: single-minded, unconcerned about anyone else’s opinion. As a young schoolteacher in the forties, she’d arrived at remote areas in British Columbia—places like Alert Bay and Smithers—astride her Royal Enfield. Not surprisingly, locals considered her habit of buzzing around on a motorcycle unbecoming. She endured frequent clashes with community leaders. But Grandma Hackinen kept her Royal Enfield. Later in life, her uncompromising determination was mislabelled as eccentricity, a word that always made me cringe: My grandmother may have lived against the grain, but that didn’t equate to being misguided or unbalanced. She knew damn well what she was doing.

FROM THE SUMMIT AT CASCADE HEAD Alisha and I witness the quick sweep of ocean before tacking down hairpin turns into the congestion-filled streets of Lincoln City. We track down the bike shop only to discover that they don’t stock the touring tire I need either.

“We don’t supply a lot of long-haul cyclists,” the clerk apologizes. “You could try a road bike tire instead.”

He points toward a few wobbly-looking tires, bald and narrow, the width of my little finger. No doubt they would prove insufficient on the sandblasted shoulders and pot-holed side streets. I pick up another box of rubber patches instead.

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS we twist in drunken cursive down the coastline, always south. On good days we do fifty to sixty miles, bad days half of that. Each morning we spill from the tent, bleary-eyed, bundled in long johns and merino, too tired to dredge sleep from eye creases, but awake enough to know that we’re hungry. Spiky conifer needles bead moisture and moss pillows up from dark corners, the air steeped in precipitation.

I cram sleeping bags into stuff sacks and collapse our tent while Alisha kicks up the stove. Wake up, tear down. Eat and cycle. Our snaking tracks and a flattened rectangle of grass where we pitched camp are the only mementos we impart. Steam wafts from the pot of boiling oats and our stomachs quake in anticipation. Bowls licked clean, we tuck them into the pot and bury our dishware until next time.

We tighten our pannier straps and bungee cords, pluck spokes and check our tires with the quick pinches of nurses examining patients for healthy disposition—luckily, my one-dollar fix has held. We shove off from our wooded refuges like lovers skulking out of dorm rooms after one-night stands. No looking back.

There’s something beatific about us. Our slapdash outfits, knee-high woollies. Smiling unwashed faces and charcoal crescent moons under fingernails. We’re not Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, but we’re on the road, each day wheeling farther into the unknown.

I FINALLY PICK UP A NEW TIRE IN FLORENCE. While Alisha takes off to find groceries, I hunker down under the bike shop’s awning to complete the switchover out of the rain. After an initial struggle to fit the stiff rubber over my wheel rim, the new tire slips into place. I toss its predecessor into a dumpster. Good riddance.

It’s eleven o’clock by the time Alisha comes back with groceries. I’m hungry, but with David, our couchsurfing host in Coos Bay nearly fifty miles away, we throw back handfuls of trail mix and hit the road. We zigzag out of town, avoiding the main thoroughfare in favour of residential streets with character homes and lavishly green lawns. A steady tailwind and the goal of sleeping in a bed tonight propel us onward. We pause briefly or not at all at scenic pullouts, silently admiring sandstone ziggurats protruding from the moody sea, headlands sheathed in fog. We don’t bother with photos or conversation, each existing in her own orbit—forty miles to go.

IF MY GRANDMOTHER WERE STILL ALIVE, I know she’d tell me I was lucky, that it’s easier for me than it had been for her, a woman doing the unconventional, the unexpected. I carry a part of her with me, though I doubt she worried about serial killers or bears like I do. Even my mother, the eternal worrier, has nearly always supported whatever wild endeavours my sister or I proposed. When I wanted to borrow the family minivan to drive my friends to Nanaimo to go bungee jumping for someone’s sixteenth birthday, she gave her unenthusiastic approval. It was the same when I decided to pack off to Southeast Asia halfway through my degree.

While I was building toward this cycling trip, my mother had pestered me with agonizing questions about details I had yet to work out.

“What will the weather in Washington be like during October?”

“Where will you sleep?”

“What if your bike breaks down in the middle of nowhere?” I’d heave a sigh, answer something vague—“I’ll deal with that when it comes,”—and she’d back off, though her steady gaze, those fixed chestnut eyes underlined by creases, would follow me from room to room.

But as in my past experiences, I knew that I had her support. She bought me a set of rain gear for Christmas—I was two weeks post-op from knee surgery, barely able to walk without crutches, certainly not able to ride a bike—and later, Blue Steel as a graduation present. Thinking back now, I feel regret about my earlier annoyance at her text messages—I might not even be out here on the road without her generosity. But why did she always have to accompany her gifts with an unpalatable side order of fear?

My mother completed her diploma in horticulture and landscape design at BCIT not long after my father moved in. She was still working part time at SuperValu when she graduated, and though she had intended to leave the grocery store, an opportunity to work full-time as a cake decorator came up and she accepted it.

“I just wanted to pay off my student loans,” she’d told me during a conversation we had a week before I’d moved to Terrace. “It was temporary, or supposed to be. Until I could find something better. Then your father broke his neck.”

It was a hang gliding accident. “I knew, I just knew something bad was going to happen that day,” my mother said. “I told him not to go.”

He was out on the sagebrush hills up the valley north of Kamloops. After an abrupt wind change, he nose-dived, faceplanting into an anthill. Full speed. Came to in a hospital bed three days later. Ants still climbing out of his ears. A broken vertebrae, jaw, and wrists so wrecked, it looked, in the doctor’s opinion, as though someone exploded a pair of grenades in his hands.

After a few weeks, he was released from the hospital, expected to make a full recovery. However, he left confined to an upper body brace, prone to terrible headaches, and still unable to use his hands.

“Couldn’t even wipe his own ass,” my mother said. “And who do you think took care of him?”

It was nearly a year before my father went back to work. My mother, meanwhile, returned to SuperValu as soon as my father no longer required full-time care. When he could finally move around without the brace, and doctors had taken most of the screws out of his skull, he resumed his position with BC Tel. Soon, they put a down payment on a two-storey house with walk-in closets and two-and-a-half bathrooms, got married.

After less than two months of marital bliss, my mother’s youngest brother, Little Dan, moved in. Little Dan, who at seventeen stood six-and-a-half-feet, shoulders as broad as a doorframe, had been expelled from school in Kamloops for reportedly—he denies it—lighting up a joint in the parking lot. With his own parents recently separated and working out of town, the plan was for Little Dan to live with my mother until he could complete his grade twelve. He stayed with my parents until I was eight, and my mother, who had spent her youth babysitting siblings, once again found herself watching out for her younger brother.

“Between paying off my student loans, caring for your father, buying the house, and then taking in that smart-talking uncle of yours, I didn’t have the opportunity to consider changing careers,” she told me.

While my mother didn’t seem upset about how things turned out, and my sister and I loved Little Dan—he was like a cool Uncle Jesse from Full House—I’ve always wondered: Did she feel like she was losing her own life in the pursuit of helping others? Was there ever a time during my father’s recovery when she just wanted to say, “Screw it, I’m out of here?”

I’ve never asked. I guess haven’t shored up the courage to hear the answer.

THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON PASSES IN A WASH of green and grey. Tattered fog alternating with pounding rain. We wheel into Coos Bay after six o’clock.

“Ice cream?” I say.

It’s far from frozen treat weather, but ice cream has been on my mind, the image of a giant cone outside a café in some small town I can’t remember from three days back. To my surprise, Alisha is on board, and we scope the Safeway dessert aisle for a pint of the most chocolaty, fudge-infused ice cream we can find. Then we pedal over to David’s house, inconveniently perched on an impossibly steep hill, the incline so vertical that we have to hop off and push our bicycles, heaving our weight forward with each step so as not to lose momentum and tumble back down the slope.

We arrive at a palatial building, pearl-white, adorned with massive columns and a U-shaped drive.

“You sure this is it?” asks Alisha, unbuckling her helmet to squeegee the sweat from her forehead with the cusp of her long-sleeve.

I double-check. “It’s the address he gave us.”

We walk our bicycles past an immaculately trimmed hedge and ring the doorbell.

David answers in a tacky retro sweater and ripped jeans. He’s trim, looks about forty. Unkempt black hair frizzes over his eyebrows.

“Good to see you!” he says.

We introduce ourselves and hand over the ice cream so that David can store it in the freezer. Alisha catches my eye and gives me her “What is going on here?” smile as David leads us into the garage to store our bicycles. I’m wondering the exact same thing: How did we end up in this guy’s mansion?

“I’ve set you up in separate bedrooms,” David says. “There’s another couchsurfer as well. We’re just making dinner. I suppose you’ll want to shower first.”

As if he’s read our minds, though more likely it’s our wet-gear musk and not telepathy that gives us away. We follow David to an L-shaped tile bathroom, larger than my parents’ kitchen and living room combined. Along one wall is a changing bench with a selection of towels, on the opposite wall a pair of enormous mirrors over countertop sinks where water trickles past polished stones into the drain. Oddly, there is no barrier between the sink, toilet, changing area, and shower.

“It’s a rain shower,” David explains. “The water sprinkles from the entire roof. You can set it to steam as well.”

I can’t strip down fast enough. The second we hear David click the door shut, Alisha and I peel away our water-logged clothes and skip into the shower, alternating blissfully hot water and steam until the guilt of draining Coos Bay’s water supply sinks in. We dry ourselves with plush towels and wander back to our room—we only need one—to change for dinner.

The rest of David’s home is just as impressive as the bathroom. Art-adorned hallways bend toward the kitchen and living areas, an open concept space with a grand piano and breath-catching views of Coos Bay. We meet the other couchsurfer, a headstrong woman named Monica with hair like black satin curtains. She’s on her way back to Seattle from visiting friends in Portland, taking a side trip along the Oregon Coast.

Monica is a seasonally employed ranger in Denali National Park, Alaska. For the four months of winter that she’s unemployed, Monica travels, catching up with West Coast friends and reconnecting with her family back East. While we chow through dinner, she tells us about her solo treks in Denali, a hiking area known for its grizzly and black bear population.

“The first time I went out on my own, I was terrified,” she admits. Her green irises glow like crocodile eyes in the lamp-lit room.

Monica explains how her anxiety had given way to an appreciation of the enigmatic wilderness. Though not quite the highway road model I’d been seeking, I envy Monica’s spirited bravery, her sense of adventure. As she describes the precautions necessary to keep seven-hundred pound grizzlies away from camp, I’m reminded of my own mistakes: the number of times I’ve tossed our food bag into the bushes instead of securing it from a tree branch; how I absent-mindedly brought two Snickers bars into my tent while I camped alone in Vancouver Island hinterland. I’d be lucky to last a single night in Denali.

After dinner, David serves the ice cream in whopping big bowls garnished with sticky caramel drizzle.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” I gush, my tongue buzzing with sweetness.

Everyone laughs.

“She always says that,” explains Alisha. “Remember the pizza, at Bruce and Mary’s?”

“Well, that was the best pizza ever. I suppose being in a state of perpetual hunger just makes everything taste better,” I muse. “Lately, even Clif Bars taste good.”

WE SPEND TWO NIGHTS ON TOP OF THE HILL at Château David. We hadn’t planned to, but it’s not every day you go from sleeping on an inch-thick Therm-a-Rest to a king-sized pillow-top mattress—and chances are slim that we’ll find ourselves in such luxury again.

The funny thing is, David himself seems nearly as surprised to be here as we are. A piano instructor by trade, he’d only recently built the house after inheriting an absurd sum of money.

“I’d always wanted to design my own home,” he says over breakfast, dressed in another one of his 80s-TV-Dad sweaters. “I just didn’t expect it to ever happen.”

In less time than it took me to complete my Bachelor of Arts, David went from teaching piano lessons out of his rental suite to owning some of the best real estate in Coos Bay. But over the course of our visit, I get the impression that something is missing—what’s the fun of living in a mansion all alone? Perhaps the pleasure of sharing his good fortune is one of the reasons why David is happy to have a motley crew of couchsurfers breezing in and out. Last week, he had a Swedish photojournalist by the name of Hannah stay with him, also on a bike, on her way to Argentina.

“Lovely woman,” he says. “Maybe you’ll catch up to her.”

ON OUR SECOND AFTERNOON we take care of laundry. I spread my still-warm, spring-scented clothes on the mattress and realize that I’ve only been rotating through half my wardrobe. Practical-looking cycling jerseys have been cast off for more comfortable clothes, my rainbow plaid button-up short-sleeve—a shirt I bought at Value Village because it reminded me of my grandmother—rising through the ranks as a favourite. Cycling jerseys made sense when I was going for after-work rides in Terrace, but now that I’m pedalling daily, I’d rather attire myself in clothes that don’t resemble sportswear (except for padded spandex—there’s no getting around that). Besides, Alisha has never even owned a cycling jersey, and she’s doing fine. I’d like to ship my jerseys home, but Alisha convinces me to wait until we hit a warmer climate so we can ditch some wet-weather gear. Maybe San Francisco.

I’ve noticed that my physical appearance has been changing as well, more than just my tomboy haircut. My thighs are tight and toned, my cheeks and nose wind-burnt, pink. In contrast, my wrists and the tops of my hands have darkened, the outline of my rings and beaded hemp bracelets pale underneath. I like it; feel pride in how my body and clothes bear the marks of our journey, my MEC jacket stained with chain grease and punched by brambles, repaired with duct tape or not at all. The soles of my runners peel away from the base, but I’ll keep wearing them until they disintegrate entirely. I flash back to when I dressed up for my job at the museum—respectable shoes, pencil skirts, and ironed blouses—thankful I don’t have to dress for anyone but myself anymore.

Alisha has changed as well. Firmed up and grown calloused from this life on the road. She still looks sweet—a grown-up Heidi when she wears her hair in French braids. Her trademark accessory is a purple pashmina shawl whose versatile functions include shoulder wrap, skirt, beach mat, apple collection container, and bandana.

DAVID DOESN’T DRINK COFFEE, so when Alisha and I leave the Château, our first stop is a drive-through espresso stand on the way out of town. On a parking lot curb, we pass Alisha’s thermos between us, trying to prophesy the weather. At this early hour, the downtown is cold and bleak, a ceiling of uniform grey above two-storey buildings.

The drizzle starts up after lunch, thirty miles south of Coos Bay, near Bandon. I regard hotel vacancy signs with envy, momentarily reliving the comfort of a king-sized bed and steam shower. I realized a few miles back that I’d forgotten my gumboots in David’s garage, but we’re past the point of return. Alisha and I should reach the California border in two or three days, and in my mind the state line is more than a bold dash on a map—it’s a precise delineator marking the transition from wet to dry. But for now I bear the rain, the endless procession of hills. It doesn’t take long before I slip into video-game mode.

I played a lot of Nintendo as a kid. Lost in pixelated worlds, I’d stay up past dawn. Tracking down pieces of the Triforce in The Legend of Zelda or working my way toward Bowser’s chambers in Super Mario Bros. 3. Gaming brought out something unyielding, determined. Even when frustrated or set back by the same boomerang-wielding Koopa seven times in a row, I would persevere, quietly headstrong. Always calculating. I spent those nights in a trance, body systems in perfect equilibrium. I didn’t eat, didn’t pee. Then suddenly it was five a.m. and I could hear my mother steaming milk for her morning latte.

I’ve long since packed my Nintendo into storage; however, I find myself in a similar trance cycling. After a while, I let go of the periphery—my hunger pains, the ache working its way behind shoulder blades—and hone in on the road ahead. Satisfied, simply to be moving forward, toward new worlds and unknown surprises. On the lookout for a trunkful of glistening gold coins around every bend.

FIFTEEN MILES FROM BANDON, we pull off at a roadside market. The downpour comes like a tap locked in the ON position. Alisha hangs our drenched gear under the awning while I pop inside for a hot chocolate, topped off with drip coffee and two inches of cream to make a roadside mocha. At the till I pick up a few Andes chocolate mints to boost morale.

On a wooden bench out of the rain, we sip our mocha from fog-blue lips. Change into dry socks. Droplets ping against parking lot asphalt like previews before a film I don’t want to watch but can’t turn away from. From the distance a figure materializes, the glow of a yellow rain slicker like a bright smack of sunshine. It’s another southbound cyclist, I realize, as he weaves an S-curve through the parking lot. Alisha and I perk up, attention suddenly focused on this other cyclist instead of our own small miseries.

“Where you headed?” Alisha asks as he pulls up to the awning.

“South America,” he says. Water sticks strands of hair to his forehead, drips roll from his jaw. He’s young, lean. Handsome. Could this be our roguish bad boy, our Brad Pitt?

“I left Corvallis a few days ago,” he says. Corvallis is a liberal-minded inland community, a few hours south of Portland.

His name is Zach, and we invite him to grab a hot chocolate and join us under the awning. In Corvallis he had been living in an RV, flipping pizza and dreaming, like us, of blue skies and palm-lined avenues. After a long year of saving, Zach had put his RV up for sale and hit the road. Now, he flourishes his Lonely Planet guides and Spanish phrasebooks, a wellspring of untrammelled enthusiasm.

It takes all my willpower not to beg Zach to take me with him. It may seem crazy—South America—but I feel content in our day-today existence on the highway, its tonic of tall pines and the contradiction of sticking to a routine, but never being able to predict who we’ll meet or where we’ll bunk down for the night. Nearly three thousand kilometres from where I started, I’m coming to believe that cycle touring is what I was meant for all along. How will it be possible to return to the daily grind after experiencing all of this? Even now, I can see how skull-numbingly dull it will be when I get back, applying for minimum-wage jobs from my parents’ basement—I won’t be able to afford to live on my own. The thought depresses me already. I want to escape, and I’m not even home yet.

ALISHA, ZACH, AND I CONTINUE SOUTH toward Port Orford and Humbug Mountain. In miserable weather, it only makes sense that we stick together. For some reason—his boyish enthusiasm perhaps—I trust Zach. He’s more similar to Jeremy than Montreal Creep. After another fifteen miles, we pull over to camp in an undeveloped lot near a cliff where serpentine vines snake up evergreen trunks, the mad foaming rush of surf echoing louder than New Year’s Eve below. Under our camouflage tarp, the three of us crowd around the camp stove like fledglings in a nest, molting waterlogged socks and sweaters.

Alisha and I act differently around Zach. He’s easygoing and good-looking, with flaxen-blond hair and an eager grin. Suddenly, we’re self-conscious about the trail mix morsels between our teeth, bike grease smeared across foreheads. We hold our chests higher and listen attentively as he talks about his job at the hipster pizza joint and explains the rules of bike polo, his presence flipping some kind of hormone switch. Suddenly, Alisha and I are teenagers again. In our tent we giggle.

“Do you think he’s cute?”

“I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”

But the next morning, we realize that Zach doesn’t have a clue about what he’s doing, and some of the allure wears off. Our change of heart begins when he emerges from his tent with a bag of snacks.

“You slept with your food in the tent?” Alisha asks.

Zach retrieves a block of artisan cheese and begins to knife off a chunk. “I didn’t want the raccoons to get it,” he says.

“You know what’s worse than raccoons? Bears.”

Alisha continues in this vein, and while I agree with her, I can sympathize with Zach. Besides, he doesn’t deserve to be harped on by the two of us. He’ll figure it out in time. I shift the conversation by asking what he usually eats for breakfast.

“Cheese and bread, or granola bars,” he says. “I’d like to fry eggs, but I don’t have a stove.”

“You didn’t bring a stove?” I ask.

For all my high-minded tolerance of beginner’s errors, I find it hard to understand why someone would pack a pannier full of guidebooks that he’s not going to use until he arrives on another continent, but neglects to pack a basic cooking device.

“I planned to build one of those pop can stoves, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

He’ll starve or go broke before he reaches South America—how could someone be so unprepared? I glance over to check Alisha’s reaction, but her face remains neutral as she spoons oatmeal into a bowl for Zach. Alisha and I share the pot. Zach thanks us for the oats and slices up an apple to share. Beyond the cliff, the sky appears liquid blue. Rainclouds gone. Already I feel giddy about the day ahead.

THE THREE OF US CONTINUE SOUTH, first climbing the foothills of Humbug Mountain, and then on to Gold Beach and Brookings. Everything is coming up roses; we’re living the dream. The final stretch to the border is just as rewarding as our guidebook said it would be, the highway vacillating from sea level to the precarious edge of the bluffs. The ocean, which only yesterday appeared the oppressive grey of overhead clouds, suddenly transforms into a brain-jamming aquamarine blue. It feels like a miracle. As though someone has come along with a paintbrush and coloured the water overnight. Weathered sandstone formations pierce the waves like schools of shark fins, and rock arches invite photographs. It’s easy to forget about the tiresome, damp-weary days behind us—most of Oregon, in fact—our past struggles swept up by the tide of our current good fortune. Washed away by true-blue skies and a lung-cleansing breeze.

Zach regains some character points when he proves to be a competent bike mechanic. During a morning break, he helps Alisha adjust her brakes so they wear more evenly, something we’ve been fiddling with for a few days now. Afterwards, the three of us share a picnic, adding Zach’s cheese and tomatoes to our bagels and avocado. We’re all in high spirits, Zach adding a fresh voice to our conversation.

We end our day in Brookings, five miles north of the border. The sky blushes pink and cantaloupe orange as we roll up to the Safeway to pick out a few things for dinner. Zach and Alisha have been chatting and she’s decided to teach him how to cook wholesome food on a shoestring budget. She pushes Zach’s money away as we reach the cashier.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “You can get it next time.”

“Sure,” Zach says. “Thanks.”

From that moment, the three of us recognize we’ll be riding through California together. Friendship cemented by a pact of shared groceries.

Before heading off to make camp, we call home from a payphone in the parking lot. Reaching the border between Oregon and California feels like a milestone. Something that should be shared. For the rest of my days, I’ll live with the Oregon Coast ingrained into my retinas.

When Zach phones his mother, we eavesdrop as he tells her about the “lovely Canadian girls” he’s met. We like this label. More flattering than describing us as the filthy, apple-filching Canadians that we really are. Despite the fact that neither of us is still enamoured by him, I find it reassuring to know that we’ve made a good impression.

Then we call our mother.

“You should see the places we’ve pitched camp,” I say. “In closed state parks or hidden out of sight just off the highway. It’s been amazing.”

She listens, not saying much, though I detect the concern in her silences. Then I tell her about Zach and her mood lightens.

“There’s safety in numbers,” she says.

We chat a few minutes more before I hand the phone over to Alisha. Afterwards, as three of us investigate side streets in search of a place to pitch camp, I wonder what it must be like for our mother with both daughters at such a distance. It must gnaw at her. Forever balancing contradictory desires: for us to grow up independent, and for us to remain safe.

I don’t envy her.