Los hombres libre ride again!

IRON PIGGY’S SNOUT is pointed east, and once more riding in the company of CCjon and Nestor. We were reunited in Woodland, WA, and started the long ride inland along the north bank of the Columbia River.

It’s a fine ride between basalt cliffs formed by a lava flow some millions of years ago.

The BNSF line bores through the outcroppings that jut into the river.

The wind never quits. It sweeps across the water and raises whitecaps everywhere.

Saw a horde of kite surfers taking advantage of the wind, took a little hike over the tracks and down the hill for a closer look.

The basalt formations thin out as you ride east. The hills flatten and the valley widens, the land turns a cornsilk blonde and the sky goes pale. There’s so much light in eastern Washington I’ve never seen the sky look really blue here.

It was a cooler crossing along the river. Traversing the plateau farther north is a punishing ride this time of year. It’s a job to keep enough water going in.

We camped last night in a grove of London Plane trees in Plymouth, WA, courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Cheap digs, $15 for our whole raggedy troupe.

Flashback a few days, to when CCjon and Nestor were still at sea. While the boat was making its way south to Bellingham, I visited the bride’s cousin, Jody, in Battle Ground, WA, met her husband Michael, enjoyed a superb dinner, a fine wine, breakfast the next day.

Then it was on to Keith and Robyn Hackett’s home in Woodland, WA. Keith is our pal from the Alaska trek in 2013. We met while I was squatting by the water’s edge in Haines, AK, cooking beans and rice. Keith pulled up on his motorcycle to see if my ride was broken down. Then CCjon pulled up to see if Keith was on foot. In a pouring rain around 11 that night we rode our bikes onto one of the ships that make up the Alaska Marine Highway and were off for Bellingham.

Two days ago, CCjon and Nestor get off that same boat, the Columbia, and turn up at Keith’s.

Nestor, from Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia. He rode to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost point in the hemisphere, then to Prudhoe Bay, the northernmost.

I had lost the muchachos somewhere in Montana, which was okay with me. The iron piggy has been to Alaska, my next journey there will  be on a dual sport.

Keith and CCjon, reunited…

Keith meets iron man Nestor. That’s what I’ve been calling him, el hombre hierro.

If you recall, CCjon pulled up in Coldfoot AK with a cracked sidecar frame, had to limp it 250 miles south to find a welder in Fairbanks. Meanwhile, Nestor continued north on the haul road, solo, in a 40-degree rain that made for muck as slick as ice. Went ass-over-tin-cup a few times and has bent handlebars and bashed up panniers to show for it.

But he made Deadhorse on Prudhoe Bay, then rode 500 miles south to meet up with the newly roadworthy CCjon in Fairbanks. Then the boat south, to our reunion in Woodland.

Keith and Robyn fed us enough breakfast to power our transcontinental carcasses for three days and we were off, headed east. We’ll probably end up somewhere in Idaho tonight.

More later…

Tony DePaul, August 26, 2018, Kennewick, Washington, USA