Portland to Pacific City June 12, 2012

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If it’s any indication of how my first day of riding went let me apologize for keeping this post short. I am so zonked from riding I’m not sure I can keep my eyes open much longer.

We left Portland around 10 AM and followed a route suggested by Ryan Barrett. It took us along the beautiful Nestucca River.

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It did turn out to be a very epic and amazing ride but it was LONG and we had to climb a massive mountain to get out towards the Coast. Once we hit the coast we then had to find a hotel and surprisingly to me there are not hotels or city everywhere on the Oregon coast. All in all we did some 107 miles and a pretty intense pace including our outrageously big climb. There were points on the climb where I just felt like I couldn’t keep up with the guys and my legs were struggling to turn the cranks over. It went on for what seemed like ever.

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The cool part of the day was an hours long decent from the top. I didn’t really ever feel comfortable on the long mellow downhill though, I kept expecting to round a corner and be faced with another massive climb. I guess I should have studied the map a little more closely… maybe we could have a few stressful miles of riding down a busy highway!

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Saw a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean when we rolled into tonights stop at Pacific City. Tomorrow we’ll check the beach out a bit and enjoy things a bit more. From here we’ll be doing shorter jumps along the coast. Riding was particularly good today. The majority of the ride was on a route with almost no cars. Unbelievable scenery and great funny friends around to boot.