achilles heel
Starting location: Umpqua River State Park
Ending location: Battle Rock Motel, Port Orford, OR
End of day cumulative mileage: 526.5
If I remember correctly from my Greek mythology, Achilles was held by his heel and dipped in the river Styx, which made him invincible everywhere except for his heel. This really has nothing to do with anything except that my Achilles tendon has been starting to hurt. It’s funny that my quads, my hamstrings, calves and knees are ok, but the seemingly non related tendon at the back of my foot is hurting. It’s also weird that this showed up now, nearly halfway into my ride. I popped a painkiller and researched a solution on Google. The websites I looked at suggested adjusting my seat lower, so I did that and continued on.
In the afternoon today I passed through a town called Bandon. I had passed through many seaside towns in the past couple of days, but so far this was my favorite. It had a lot of beautiful scenery, and had a nice waterfront district. As I did in many seaside towns in Oregon, I stopped for some seafood. Dang, why is almost all American seafood fried?
I really wanted to stay in Bandon, but I decided it would be better to continue on down the road to a small town called Port Orford, about 25 miles further down the road. That would put me within a day’s ride of the California/Oregon border. So while eating I booked a night in a cheap motel in Port Orford. $55, not too bad.
On my way out of Bandon, I missed a turn and end up at a dead end road by the ocean. I didn’t mind too much, it was pretty nice there.
In the ocean outside of Bandon there were a bunch of rocks, which supposedly were named like what they were shaped like. This one was called Face Rock. I didn’t see the resemblance.
I would soon regret my decision to continue on toward Port Orford. The ride was pretty miserable because there was a stiff headwind which tired me out. The last hour was grueling, but I made it to the tiny town and found the motel. Port Orford was nothing like Bandon, it was pretty tiny and rundown. The motel I had booked was pretty shady looking, but after camping for the last couple of nights I was really glad to be able to shower and sleep in a bed. After riding in that cold, stiff headwind, a hot shower never felt so good.
After my shower I looked for a place to eat. According to Yelp on my phone, there were only two places open within walking distance, and both looked expensive. This town is weird. All the motels look really run down and old, but the restaurants are fancy and expensive. I ended up at a small French Bistro. I figured I would splurge and celebrate making it to the halfway point of my ride.
On the menu the cheapest item was $25 and the most expensive was the rack of lamb at $30. So I decided I might as well go with the rack of lamb. It came with a really tasty pea soup and a simple arugula salad with good balsamic vinegar. The bread and butter was amazing. Apparently the bread was baked fresh in house, and the butter, a sun-dried tomato butter was the best butter I had ever tasted. The rack of lamb was amazing, with a nice tarragon red wine sauce dusted with goat cheese. The tanginess of the cheese mixed well with the sauce and savoriness of the lamb.
During my ride I had been drinking a lot of Coke and Pepsi, the sugar in the soda provided a burst of carbohydrates that kept me riding. At this meal it was upgraded to Coke and rum. I figured in for a penny, in for a pound, so I ended up ordering a dessert as well. They had a lavender creme brule, which was pretty incredible. It tasted like a sweet bouquet of flowers, if that makes any sense. When all was said and done, I ended up spending more on this meal than I spent on my night’s lodging.
As I walked back to the motel it started to rain. I was glad to be in a motel room that night.
