This last weekend marked the first spring adventure of 2013; parasailing, sand dunes, new faces, and great times.  Nick and I left Seattle, WA headed for Vancouver, WA Friday after work.  The only thing we really had planned was to meet up with a friend and his buddy to go parasailing at the Oregon coast on Saturday.  But our weekend turned out to be a lot more than that, and all good.  We took my Ranger prerunner with the parasailing gear riding in the bed of the truck.  As part of a prerunner the holes in the bed, to allow for longer travel shocks, are great places for things to fall through.  Nick was driving when we heard some clanging.  We listened and discussed and decided to keep driving.  With such a highly modified rig and a roll cage inside, it’s nothing new to hear constant squeeks and creeks.  But it sounded again and was nothing I had heard before so we pulled off the highway to take a look.  I climbed in the bed to find the parasail tow rope had fallen through one of the shock holes.  I pulled but it didn’t budge.  Upon looking underneath, I could see it was wrapped around the axle, twice.  With the road rash on the stainless steel eye on the end of the rope, I’m sure it made some sparks and ended up rebounding off the tire to get tossed over the axle twice.  I fixed her up a little better and we were back on the road. 

After some rest at my house in Vancouver, we woke on Saturday and prepared for the day while I discovered my wallet was missing.  I’m great at losing it on road trips.  Sometimes it’s for good, and sometimes I get it back.  I realized I left it in the restroom in some Starbucks on the way down Friday.  We remembered there being a Winco grocery store near it, so a quick map search gave us the right one and they set it aside for pickup on Sunday.  I really appreciate nice people.  And I remembered one of the reasons I don’t carry cash.  I think it’s harder to keep people honest if there is cash in a wallet.  If you turn in a wallet that once had cash in it, the owner is going to know that you took it before you turned it in.  Most people would just rather not turn it in and keep the cash.  Maybe it had something to do with it, maybe it didn’t.  But Nick earned the privilege of paying for the whole weekend!  What a great guy.

Parasailing was a success.  The wind conditions could have been better.  The wind was light, inland, and actually changed directions on us.  After three successful runs both of the flyers complained of hunger pains in the air.  Nick associated it with motion sickness like often occurring on a boat.  So we broke for lunch.  We briefly returned to the beach after lunch to play with RC cars and check the conditions.  The wind was even lighter and I had a hankering to get down and play at Sand Lake, OR.  So we decided to head south, possibly for the night, but not without one stunt right at the beach exit to the paved road.  I spun a cookie a few hundred yards from an officer and was quickly pulled over.  Without a driver’s license at the moment I feared him.  He looked pissed and I imagined he dealt with “kids” doing cookies on the beach every weekend.  But he humored us and let us go with just a warning, being sure to let me know that the fine for wreck less driving starts at $287 with years of increased insurance rates.

With a few stops like a kite shop and window shopping in Canon Beach, and the Tillamook Cheese Factory behind us, it was getting a little late to find a place open to buy a flag as required at Sand Lake.  I pulled into a random Shell gas station to ask for the best place to buy one, to save time searching.  It was the best place to stop because they had one left, with a matching red pole.  It was like it was meant to be.  After all, I guess it’s not too hard to imagine that a Shell quick mart would have a dune flag in Tillamook, OR.  The dunes looked promising.  We aired down the tires to about 8 lbs in the back, and 20 up front.  I had to beg for some tape from a guy we’ll call Chevy boy to tape my dune flag and pole to my cb antenna.  Seemed like a nice guy.  Then we were off and running.  I nosed up to the top edge of the first bowl as we looked down a virtually vertical wall and Nick asked, “You aren’t going down that are you?”  And I replied with “Of course I am.”  We got into the bowl and found our first place to get stuck on the other side.  Nick got out to push and I backed into a safer place to stop.  With 2wd, tire choice and stopping location are very important decisions in the sand.  Wheel speed is key when you’re moving.  And when you’re not, it’s your enemy.  If you can let off the gas right away to keep from digging a hole, a stuck situation can quickly be avoided.  Chevy boy had caught up to us and wanted to know if I actually raced that thing.  I told him a little about the track at Central Oregon Off Road Race Park as another Chevy pulled up by him.  We all decided to head to the second bowl together, them as my escort, in case I got stuck.  They were all a fun bunch, having names like Sonny, Snowball, Twinkie, and Alicia, and I gave rides over some deep whoops that ended at an uphill that gave us some air.  We moved around a couple of other places together and then agreed to say goodbye and head out to find a place to stay on the coast for the night.  I had Nick driving so he could have some of the fun as well.  He was trying to climb to the side of the bowl to go around the top and was losing rpm’s.  I told him to go left cause he was running out of places to get through the trees.  He listened and went left into deep sand, lost rpms, and slid downhill into a tree.  I got out cursing at the site of a big dent in the new bed I had just put on.  But I quickly calmed myself down and decided it wasn’t a big deal.  At least it wasn’t the cab and I was going to cut that part of the bedside off anyway to put on fiberglass bedsides.  But now we were stuck.  One of the reasons we were headed out was so that we didn’t break anything and have to do work in the dark.  We had already discussed coming back the next day to have a little more fun in the daylight.  I told Nick to “Run” as I pointed at the second Chevy Duramax that had been playing around with us.  He barely caught them as they were starting to leave the bowl to go home themselves.  I saw Nick jump in the bed and they came flying up the hill to where I was, hit deep sand like I was in, and kept throttling, about 2 and a half feet deep!  Rear axle and passenger rear tire completely underground, most of his truck was buried to the frame.  Now we had two stuck trucks and not many folks around.  Chevy boy had gone back to the parking lot due to headlight issues because it was now after dark.  After some standing around and discussing, we planned to use manpower to get my truck away from the tree and pushed downhill so I could be free to get help.  Finally a bunch of utv’s and quads showed up to add to that effort.  We got me free, after I got stuck one more time because I didn’t back up far enough.  Nick and I promised we’d be back with help and to the parking lot we went.  Chevy boy had been busy fixing his headlights before loading up to leave, and was very willing to come out for one more stuck session.  It was a pretty easy tug and the Duramax was out and everyone was free under their own power.  We stood around chatting for a bit, discovering we knew some of the same people, and finally split up and headed home around 9pm.

Nick and I aired up the tires at the Sand Lake store before heading on any highway.  We were recommended to stay in Pacific City, just 10 miles south, where we got the last hotel room a few minutes after closing and for about $40 less than the regular rate.  And it was even spring break.  We had to go into the closing down bistro to fetch the staff and because they felt bad that they just closed the restaurant and bar, did offer to serve us some drinks after we checked in.  So we enjoyed a few before we hit the local dive bar just down the street for some food and drinks.  But nobody seemed too thrilled that we strangers were there except the wait staff awaiting a tip.

The next day we decided to hit up Sand Lake one more time for some photos and videos we didn’t take the night before.  We indulged in breakfast at the Pelican Brew Pub on the water, overlooking a good number of surfers in the ocean.  On our way out of Pacific City, about to pull out from the market where we got a drink, a couple of college friends came running up to my window.  I had seen their post on Facebook the day before about being at the coast and mentioned that I was parasailing in Seaside.  But I forgot to catch up with them when we went south.  It turns out they were in Pacific City and we were glad we got to say hello.  Once we got to Sand Lake, we did the whole air down and dune flag routine again and then we both drove and got some good wheel travel shots and videos.  We got out of there just after noon to head back to Vancouver, and then Seattle.  We picked up my wallet on the way and got home around 8:30pm. 

We both had an awesome time.  We felt blessed to have so much fun without having to spend a bunch of money, to meet new people with common interests, and run into old friends.  With the ticket avoidance and the recovery of my wallet, we couldn’t have planned out a better cheap and easy weekend, even with the new dent and now angry transmission.