79.8 miles, 2529 feet climbed
Today was a bit of a slog, with headwinds from the southwest for the second half of the ride. I’m not sure how I did it, but about a mile before Raymond, I managed to twist my chain such that it wouldn’t go through the rear derailleur without turning sideways and the chain would flip between adjacent gears on the cassette. Dominick was about a mile away where most of the riders had stopped at the coffee shop next to the Northwest Carriage Museum. He picked me up and we changed to my spare chain at the coffee shop rather than the side of the road.
I was anxious to get to Long Beach in time to visit its Cranberry Museum. There I learned that cranberries are not grown in flooded fields as I, and perhaps you, expected. Instead, they need well drained soils. New bogs are created by tilling cuttings into the soil. The least labor intensive way to harvest the berries involves flooding the bog to cause the newly separated berries to float for gathering but not all bogs can support that method. I had two servings of the museum’s homemade ice cream and brought back a recipe book. It rained while I was in the museum, leaving wet streets for my tires to deposit on my bike and I.
