more from Oregon

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Columbia River is very busy. This was taken just outside my balcony sometime in the late afternoon, it's one of the many ships that passes through on it's way inland or out to the Pacific.





Yet another ship from the balcony...
If you listen carefully and the air is just right, you can often hear the PA announcements to the ship's crew over the sound of the waves outside the windows. You might also hear a sea lion exhaling before it dives under water for salmon, or a cormorant beating its wings against the water to clean the tips.





Nike, the sponsor of the Hood to Coast Relay, gave each team these large magnetic posters to put on the team vans. They're for counting your 'roadkill' or the number of runners you pass during each segment. Neal's team passed 111 over the course of 197 miles. Not bad!
Although the roadkill tally counts the number of people passed, it doesn't take into account the number of times the runner himself/herself was passed.


After checking out of the hotel in Astoria, we headed down the road to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, one of the largest museums devoted to maritime history in the United States. As it turns out, the Columbia is pretty significant to American commerce and the early settlement of the western US. The museum is very new and includes many interactive exhibits. Click here for a link to the museum.

humor from the relay

Each HTC team is required to have two vans to ferry six members each between transition areas. Many of the teams decorate their vans with magnetic posters, washable window paint and other items so that team members can find them easily at a transition point. Since each team is required to have a name, most will decorate their vans with their team names or drawings that are somehow related to their team name. Many of the team names, in the spirit of the light hearted nature of the race, are humorous: 'L.O.S.T: Lack of Speed and Talent', the 'Go-Nads' (the winner of last year's best team name contest), 'Physical Fatness,' etc. Here's a photo I took of one team's van (click to see detail). The vaan seems pink at first glance, but the team has actually painted the entire vehicle to match their 'Inky Oinkers' theme.

on the road

This sign greeted us late last night at the Nike store -- apparently this relay is a Big Deal. There were dozens of runners waiting for the store to open this morning, teams from all over the world are here to run. Many of the people awaiting Nike's opening were dressed in team uniforms and it seemed that they took this race fairly seriously. Results are based on an honor system of self reporting individual times and adding them up for a team time, so there aren't really any official times as runners are not given a timing chip for the relay.