TravellingStrom

Tuesday – Veneta, Oregon

Well, I managed to sleep in a bit longer than I was originally thinking about. Duane had thought all the family members had an early start, but his wife and son did not start back until tomorrow, so I did not have to be up at sparrow fart and get moving 🙂 I was still up early though and after a quick breakfast I packed and went across to see Wayne, he had some cables that I may be able to use to make a USB charge lead for the TomTom.

And after a short while, I had found an old plug pack with the correct end and with some heat shrink and solder etc I managed to make a lead that seemed to work 🙂 That is, when connected via the USB port of the laptop and plugged into the bottom port of the GPS, it fired up the screen so it knew there was power there 🙂 I may have finally had some success, although it will mean riding with the waterproof flap open!

This is Duanes bike, a Beemer and it has also been down, and snapped the footpeg off 🙂 But, a local chappy grabbed a railroad spike and managed to make one that has not been replaced at his stage 🙂

It was nice meeting you all, rubber side down eh 🙂 I headed off towards the coast and had planned a loop down and back into where I was going to be camping near Eugene. It was a bit cool and foggy to start with but after an hour or so it cleared up and turned into a real nice day 🙂

I took this photo because they seemed very adamant about NOT passing anyone on a double double yellow line with rumble strips to boot 🙂

I found a couple of twisties by the sea and I stopped at this place and saw some whales, real cool, although we were so far up nothing could be seen by the camera, they were grey whales 🙂 The info boards say 100mph winds, but it was real calm as you can tell by the sea, makes me wish I had a boat and could drop a line in 🙂

A bit more winding road to another look out where there were a stack of seals on the rocks and in the water below, a noisy mob of creatures 🙂

I liked the signage on this Harley 🙂

There was a lot of beach around but you would expect that on this side of the water, but the wind was quite cool here so no getting wet for me.

Now, I took this picture to describe an American road rule which I think is quite neat and maybe us Aussies could try it. Have a look and see what the middle lane looks like, the one with the yellow lines.

Now, this is a beaut idea, you cannot use this lane for passing traffic in front of you, but if I wanted to turn left for example, once I was near the intersection I could get into the middle lane and stop and wait until the oncoming traffic cleared before turning, this means I am not holding up traffic behind me. It is also used by traffic entering the highway from a residence or car park etc. If there is a gap in the traffic to your left(right in Oz)and you need to cross the centre line but there is traffic coming from that way, you slip out into this turning zone and can now wait until you have a free spot to enter the traffic stream. I am not sure if all that makes sense, but it works very well. There is another one which I like which I will try and draw a diagram as it will be easier to explain.

After travelling down the coast a ways I stopped at a marine shop and bought a new 12V Cig socket to replace the broken one behind my seat, this is the one that is always powered, I use it for my airbed and my compressor. I turned inland at Florence and soon came to a small town place called Cushman, there was an interesting railway bridge here which had an engine on top of the structure which was used to drive a mechanism that rotated the bridge out of the way on a giant horizontal gear system 🙂

Now, also parked nearby were a couple of very funny boats, it looked like they were made from chicken wire, but they floated 😕 Everything looked abandoned and when I checked the shop to ask about them it was closed, oh well another mystery 🙂

I then got caught in some long delays with road works, I had music so no big deal today, I was early for the place I was heading and I had been told by Al that they would not be home until later anyway.

I found the small town of Veneta and also grabbed another sign for the collection, wild turkey is on the menu 🙂

The RV park I was staying at is on a lake, a very nice place by the looks of it.

I got into the park around 4.30pm but there was no one in the office and I had no idea where I was supposed to put up my tent, so I waited out front and grabbed the laptop and wrote most of a post until about 6pm. Then I phoned Al, I should have done so earlier, he told me where his RV is and just to put the tent up anywhere in his driveway, which I proceeded to do 🙂

After getting this up Al and Ann arrived and we turned to beer 🙂 We had a relaxing evening, just chatting and drinking. For those who don’t remember, Al and Ann are a couple on a Goldwing that I had met in Joshua Tree NP a few months back. They had met Beemerbird(Margaret) the other week and remembered about my website so they contacted me and asked me to stay, brilliant idea, relaxing by the lake 🙂
We had a great dinner and not a real late night, I was intending going to the library tomorrow to grab some internet to catch up on some entries and also we may go for a ride with Chainsaw who was going to ride down from Corvallis. 🙂

Day 234 miles and 377 km
Trip – 35,666 miles and 57,399 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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