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.
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.
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!
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.
