Day 5 - Bandon to Powers (September 15, 2011)   

    It was a cool morning again.  I woke up Ellen at 5:30am for breakfast and to get to the blue rooms without too much of a line.  The main egg dish today was listed as a vegetable frittata, which seemed like a Greek eggs with feta and spinach in them, but Ellen didn't prefer them.  No mist or fog this morning, just a little bit overcast.  We got packed up, and we found that it was actually quite nice to pack on.  No dirt, and no additional water other than the condensation on the tent.  It was definitely chilly as we rolled out of town.  We had a short detour due to construction that kept us on highway 101 for a few miles, but it wasn't too bad.  The first water stop was only 10 miles in, but we stopped to put Ellen's booties on.  For some reason, I can't convince her to just wear them from the start.  The next ODS rest stop was 20 miles away over rolling road along the Coquille River. After a while, a dad with his 16 year old daughter on a tandem passed us towing 5 single bikes.  We started a half-hearted attempt to catch up because Ellen was pedaling hard to stay warm.  Much to my surprise, we actually gradually clawed ourselves back to them.  We tagged onto the end briefly before I asked Ellen if she'd like to pull through since she kept driving the pedals creating an overlap in wheels.  So we pulled out and passed everyone to pull up alongside the lead tandem.  I jerked my thumb back towards the line of single bikes and said, "since these guys are too lazy to pull through, I thought we would."  So we went to the front and started setting tempo around 20mph.  When he felt like pulling through, the rest of the single bikes created a gap in the line for us to slot in right behind the other tandem.  We traded pulls all the way to the ODS rest stop.  It was fun.  I wish I had been brave enough to take a picture over my shoulder while we were pulling, but we were going too fast.  I hadn't gotten to participate in a pace line in a long time.  I've pulled lots of people with the tandem, but we never got to draft anyone else.  At the rest stop, Ellen got to meet the 16 year old, and I gave the dad the usual thanks for the ride hand shake.  We kept hearing the single bike guys bragging to their buddies about being pulled along by 2 tandems conveniently leaving the part about the 10 and 16 year old girls on those tandems powering their free ride.

    We met up with the other 10 year old and her dad at the rest stop as well.  They played and chatted while we made stops at the blue rooms and refueled.  We rode with them from the rest stop to lunch, but it wasn't the same sort of paceline riding.  I'm not sure if he just didn't like to paceline on the tandem, which is understandable since it's not easy to do, but he kept hanging back when I came around.  We rode together into lunch at the park in Myrtle Point.  We had chicken breast sandwiches which were pretty good.  I sat on the merry-go-round to eat mine while Ellen and her new friend went off to sit on the swings.  I set my solar charger out on my trunk to start re-charging.  I rigged it up so I could keep one solar panel out on the bag while I ride as well.  I talked with another tandem captain, the one from our San Juan Island tandem rally, about his trip to Spain last year.  Ellen's friend left a little before we were ready, but we caught up pretty quickly.  I passed them on a downhill, but they never caught up again.  Eventually, we started riding fast through some hills and windy road.  We saw a sign along the road on pink road signage that said "Good Job, Ellen".  We don't know if it was for our Ellen for sure or not, but it's possible.  Everyone loves her.

    We went ahead and stopped at the last ODS stop to grab a quick snack even though it was close to the end.  On one downhill, I ran into a bee that got trapped between my helmet strap and ear, and it stung me as I tried to get it out.  It really hurt, so we pushed on to the finish in Powers.  As soon as we crossed the finish line, I went straight to the medical tent to have them make sure the stinger had come out, and my ear wasn't swelling up around the puncture.  Luckily the stinger was gone, and there was no swelling.  They gave me a little topical anesthetic wipe to rub on the area that was burning a bit.  Ellen really wanted to camp near her new friend, but we couldn't find their tent, and there wasn't a lot of space on the grassy field near everything, so we ventured a little farther afield and found a nice spot right next to the pond.  Luckily, just as we were setting up, one of the Roto-rooter guys stopped by and informed us that they were planning on setting up some blue rooms right behind where we were assembling our tent.  So we moved a little closer to the pond.  It ended up being a lovely setting.  Then we were on our way to the showers by 1:30pm.  I also washed a pair of shorts for Ellen since we were one pair short.  We had a little bit of sun left to try to get them to dry, but they didn't make as much progress as I had hoped even with the winds blowing through.  Ellen spent a while playing with her friend while I finished setting up the tent.  Since it was early, we took the shuttle into town to finally mail our postcards.  Then since it was almost 3pm, we happened upon the Northwoods Country Inn for a snack.  I had a burger, and Ellen had a tuna sandwich.  Luckily they took credit cards because I was down to my last $4 of cash.  On the way back to camp, we stopped off near where the county Sheriffs were sitting in the shade with one of their horses.  They let Ellen feed it an apple.  The horse's name was Jewel.  Ellen found her friend again when we got back to camp, and I sat by the pond to write in the journal. 

    At 5pm, I went to get Ellen and head to dinner.  Dinner was some sort of stroganoff type dish with cheese cake for dessert.  Ellen wrote her journal after she finished eating.  With the sun going down, it started to get a little chilly.  So we brushed teeth on the way back to camp.  By 6:44pm, Ellen was just about ready for bed, but she was distracted by bugs that had gotten into the tent.  She read for a bit, and I put her to bed by 7:30pm.  The wind was blowing a bit as I lay in bed reading Ellen's journal . She mostly talked about Bike Rodeo . I think she may want to join the Bike Gallery rodeo some day.

Continue to day 6.