A little over a year ago, three daring young men and I set sail by bicycle upon a perilous trail from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania into the heart of our nation’s capitol, a journey of three hundred and thirty miles of adventure in the wild open jungles of America. A bond was forged. A team was born. We became known as the Five Seamen. Aran the Brave, Joseph the Gallant, Chuck (me) the Wise, and Jared the Wandering Jew. The Seamen Five, numbered One, Two, Four, and Five. We almost died. Like, a whole lot.

This year, the Seamen put their wills together yet again (and put the wills in a safe place in case we all died which, really, we all almost did, a whole lot). We sought out a native guide by the name of Sam (pictured to the right in the photo above), a Portlandian, and he became, for us, the honorary Sixth Seaman, known as Sam the Virgin, or Samagawea.

Hold on to something, dear reader, because adventure awaits.

We sailed by aeroplane into the vast swaths of tree stumps known as Oregon on a Friday. My particular aeroplane had fallen ill to the vapors, a case of Malaise of the Light Bulbs, which was a non-repairable malady. It took me seventeen hours of airport food, airport beer and sitting next to grossouts on aeroplanes to finally arrive in Portland, Oregon. Thankfully, my steed had made it there in advance of my arrival and had been assembled, oiled and fed in plenty of time. Jared, Aran, Joe and I spent a lovely weekend in Portland with our guide, Sam. But that is a tale for another day. It shall suffice to say that our acclimation to the mindset of Portland (via successfully discovering examples of each personality type portrayed on “Portlandia”) did nothing to prepare us for the trek ahead: an adventure to the western coast of America, and into the wilderness that is the Dark Left Spine of Oregon.

For the night was dark, and full of hippies.

DAY 1: BLACKBERRY STREAKS

I had my totem attached to my handlebars, Mary-Kate. She was our Weather totem from the first voyage. She imparted upon us some totally party weather vibes, which were very effective. “I’m surprised at the clear weather we are having,” Sam mused later in the trip. “It usually rains a bit.” I knew in my heart it was Mary-Kate.

Our first day out (after a wonderful breakfast at Pine State Biscuits) had us escaping the clutches of Portland, over bridges and up a few sudden inclines rising straight out of hell. “The easy road is closed for construction,” we learned. “Only the hard roads are open.” Truer words were never spoken by Sauron. And then, suddenly, we were on the trails. We stopped so that Jared could bless our hard-boiled eggs with some burning sage, which he had procured from a local Portland co-op market.

Later on, we found some blackberry patches. We stopped to pick and eat a whole crap load of blackberries.

Jared decided he needed to eat the blackberries like a bear.

We later realized that eating blackberries basically turns you into a jelly donut for a bear. We stopped eating the blackberries. Because there are bears.

We stopped at a ridiculous brewery outlet and sat at an enormous slice of tree where we got prematurely drunk.

We rode through Oregon, armed with alcohol of the blood, up and down strange streets with no bugs, past cows and alpacas. We hastily consumed almost all of our energy gels and clif bars, which we later learned was just premature freak-out eating.

Later, we got really high. We had to find a spot on the trail out of direct sunlight so that God could not see us get high.

We needed to break into a camp site for sleeping and eating purposes, so we decided on one called “Dairy Creek” or something like that. Aran speculated that there would be dairy maids, or that at least the local grandpa would get up and make fresh cream every morning.

Alas, we also needed firewood to make a proper camp, but had none. Jared, “Ol’ Mono,” had the bright idea that I should download an app called “Tinder” onto my iPhone and use it to ask for firewood. “Tinder the campsite,” Jared would say. I did. There were, alas, no dairy maids. Or, at least, none that would talk to me.

DAY 2: THE LONG ROAD TO ASTORIA, or, HOLY SHIT DOES THIS ROAD EVER END

The next morning we got up way later than you should get up if you are planning to ride a bike for 85 miles. Alas, we got up late and wasted a lot of time putting on fake tattoos and finding out if the water was poisonous or not.

Jared had to act like a hawk. I forget why, but this turned out to be his thing.

Later on, Jared had to pee, and he didn’t know that I took the following photo.

Shortly, we stopped to put on the customary face paint of the Five Seamen.

Just when we thought the day was reaching a middle, we had some serious climbing to do. Going uphill is something that you sometimes have to do on a bicycle. Going sharply uphill for five god damn miles is something that you do when you hate yourself.

At the summit of this mountain, I made everybody get into the shovel of a piece of construction equipment, for, I dunno, laughs or whatever.

We then rode on for a while, then another while, then a long time, and then we rode more than that. Eventually we crossed the tar pits of Vernonia and made our way into Astoria, where we went to a brew pub and pigged out and got drunk enough to cross a scary bridge. “Tinder the brew pub,” spake Jared.

Then we drunkenly rode to our campsite by way of some weird old beach front stuff,

…and made camp for the night in a place called Fort Steven. They had showers. Good lord.

DAY 3: ENDOR AS FUCK

The day began with a fresh coat of face paint:

…and the ceremonial shotgunning of the last can of beer from the previous night:

We went to a beach in Astoria but I forget the name of it, because by this day our brains were slowly oozing out of our ears. Here are some things I saw upon the beach.

I walked into the Pacific Ocean for the first time ever that day. It was so cold that it sucked. I promptly walked out, in a disappointed manner, in hopes that the water would notice and feel shame. There was some driftwood, so I made this, afterwards:

Later, we stopped in a touristy beachy crap hole of a town called Seaside,

Aran had his first or second or third flat that day, I can’t remember which. While changing the flat, a helicopter just, like, took off behind us, which was “not weird.”

We rode our funny little two-wheeled toys over some hellish car roads that were made for engines only, as our legs discovered, and then ended up at a pretty little beach.

And then the most insane biking part of this bike trip happened. In order to get to our “Endor as Fuck” camp site on top of a mountain, we had to climb the mountain. With our bikes. The road up that mountain was the worst. The incline was so extreme that a regular car would not be able to make it 30 feet up that thing. And it was gravel, so of course everyone was falling off their bikes. I ate a packet of “Sport Beans,” to no avail. We all almost died getting up that mile and a half of hellshit. I have no photos of this climb because I thought I was just going to die anyway.

But, lo, we did make it up there, or perhaps we hallucinated that we did, but either way, we made it into “Endor as Fuck Camp.”

Since we were on top of a mountain, we did the only logical thing you can do, which is get drunk and high and sit on the edge of a god damn cliff for some reason.

That night, we realized we were out of water. Oops. The nearest water that we could get ourselves was an insanely hilly couple of hours away, which of course was out of the question in the dark. “Tinder the campsite,” Jared said, but to no avail. There was some streamy water nearby, but it had giardia and cryptosporidium in it. So, we rationed our water, and decided to hope for the best in the morning. I stopped consuming anything that would make me thirsty or have to pee, including sour candy, god dammit. God dammit.

DAY 4: SEAFOOD BUFFET

The next morning we rode our bikey bikes back down that death slope back into the beach place, where we begged car-equipped beach goers for water by which we could make our morning espresso.

The danger over, we pressed on, back over the other mountain, again, and through some more towns.

On this day, we did a minimal amount of riding so that we could “beach it,” or as the locals liked to say around those parts, “hang ten,” or “brunch.” We stopped at a bike shop, as well. Aran had a gash in his tire and so he kept getting flat tires, and when this was mentioned to the shop owner he mentioned that he had a replacement tire which was, like, 30 percent off, and it wasn’t a great tire but for twenty dollars it sure beats getting a flat every ten miles, but Aran didn’t buy it. This report may be slightly biased. He decided instead to put the twenty dollars into the tire behind the gash, which didn’t work. Anyway. The shop kind of sucked because they didn’t have chamois cream, and the owner told me instead to just go get some butter and shove it into my shorts. I bought beer instead. The hell with that.

We traveled on to the next beach and the best part of the adventure.

Camping on the beach is illegal, but fuck the police, so we made camp on the beach. It turns out you can ride your bike directly on the beach and not fall.

We made camp.

Jared blessed everything with the sage so that we would not get put into jail for this.

And then the glorious thing happened. Jared and I had this idea where we would pick some mussels off the local boulders at low tide. “Can you just eat mussels?” Jared asked. We decided that we did not need to know the answer. A Seaman stares uncertain gastrointestinal comfort in the face and says “bring it on.” And so we got our mussels.

And we steamed our mussels.

And we ate the shit out of those mussels.

And then we did “sparklefeet.” It’s this thing where if you run on the beach after sundown at the end of summer on the west coast, the phosphorescent algae will glow like sparklers around your feet. Around this point I thought I was actually dead from the descent that morning and was in heaven, because god damn is that cool. This was the coolest night I have ever had.

It was too dim to take a video, but here is an example:

LOOK THE HELL AT THAT.

We slept, knowing everything was right with our souls. The sage had worked.

DAY 5: CHEESE AS FUCK

We awoke to find that the cops had actually discovered us, and, like much of Oregon, they did not care. We packed it up.

We hit the road again, this time in search of the Tillamook Cheese Factory, where the promise of free cheese samples danced in our little hungry brains.

On the way, we stopped at another shitty beach town and ate a hot dog. Jared got mad that we kept stopping for dumb things.

There was, um, a train for some reason.

And THEN we pressed on to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. It was a terribly strange little tourist trap full of free samples of cheese, dairy maids, things to take your photo in, a food court, and no less than three gift shops.

I collected dinner items and we made our voyage into the final camp site of the trip. Yet another Endor as Fuck Camp. This one had a beach.

Joe found a crab.

And we picked even more mussels from the rocks, this time to add to our pasta because we were going to hobo it up like god damn masters tonight.

As the sun set on the final night, we cooked our little foods.

That night, we put the rest of the eggs on the fire grill, and they all exploded, and then when we went to sleep, a raccoon ate all the rest of the crackers. I could hear his chittering little snarly laugh. I could kill that creature. But I was too full of mussels and pasta and PBR and marijuana to care enough.

DAY 6: FUCK IT, LET’S TAKE THE BUS

On the final day of the voyage, looking at a 100 mile ride back to Portland, we cleared up our camp, packed it away in the rain, gave the rain a good long think, and biked it into Tillamook, where we caught the god damn bus, because, I mean, seriously, to hell with all the rest of whatever the day would have been. The best word to describe my feelings about that day would be “ugh.” Gimme that bus. We ate omelettes on the bus, with pancakes.

Back in Portland, we all did this:

And then we ate pizza and went to a heated pool in a former middle school and sweated it all out and drank more beer at the pool (Portland is sometimes amazing) and then ate tacos and drank more beer and went to a “short shorts” themed dance party and then we all died.

Thus concludes the second voyage of the Five Seamen, in which we became the Seamen of the Northwest Passage, or How Many Seamen Does It Take To Fill Up a Pine State Biscuits, or The Seamen Just Won’t Stop Coming (Up With Gross Puns About Seamen).

Basically, the whole trip can be summed up in this video:

THE END