Pacific Northwest - Country roads are nice.....but

I love the luxury of riding on our Eastern Washington roads - courteous drivers and not very many of them which provides the chance to use a lot of the road. But, today I had to dodge fresh cow crap from the local cattle drive (gotta clean up the bike now), a herd of goats with their 120+ pound guard dog who was really interested in me and three freaked out calves on the road. Gees. I guess the only saving grace is I didn't have to deal with texting drivers or rain.

Down here in Eugene we have to dodge fresh human feces along the river paths, herds of pedestrians performing their version of critical mass on the paths and unleashed dogs (or dogs on those twenty-foot retractable leads that always seem to be on the opposite side of the bike path from their owners.

I still have fond memories of riding in Eastern Wash. from twenty years ago. My wife and I rode from our home in Davis, CA to my grandparents' golden anniversary in Spokane. It was great fun and enlightening to find that the log haulers in eastern OR did not make a game of terrorizing cyclists like the ones on the CA coast do. At one small town (Washtucna, I think) we were going to stay in a small hotel, but the locals would not let us; it turns out it was the local prostitution house. We were allowed to use the public pool's showers and told to camp in the "downtown" park but pack up before the sprinklers come on at 8:00 A.M. Everyone was super-nice. One wheat farmer rode his ATV out from his field to see our tandem and tell us he always wanted to do some bike touring but couldn't figure out how to do that and farm too.