A Recap and A Century

Sorry that we haven't updated the blog recently, we have been without wifi for the past few days so I apologize for those of you who look forward to reading about our adventures. So I will recap the few days that we missed and give an expansion on the day we had today. So essentially the day after our last blog post we rode the rest of the scenic gorge route. We rode up to Rowena Crest and back down a windy road for a 75 mile day, I believe. Apparently car commercials are filmed on the road descending from Rowena Crest, an interesting fact that speaks to its beauty. We then proceeded the next day to ride from Maryhill State Park to McNary, Oregon. It was a 90 mile day that took a short amount of time. That same day we met a guy named Niel who is also riding cross country, and we hope to ride with him for much longer than that day. The next day we proceeded from McNary to Walla Walla, which was only 45 miles. We originally intended to ride past Walla Walla but disaster struck when Ty's back derailleur broke completely free from his bike, which I have never seen before. We would've been camping out in the woods had it not been for a very nice guy named Tony, who offered to let us stay in his barn for the night. We took up his offer and we stayed the night in his barn. Because none of the bike shops had the proper derailleur for Ty's bike, we had to stay the day in Walla Walla - possibly putting in danger the time we were supposed to make it to Missoula to have our party. No worries, we will make it on time; we just have to ride a little further each day. Our rest day in Walla Walla was refreshing to say the least. Walla Walla is a nice college town with many shops that we went to and explored. That morning we went to a delicious breakfast diner called Clairettes where we ordered the most food I've had the entire bike trip. After that fantastic breakfast, we visited the local farmers marked where we bought some fresh and juicy strawberries. We rented a few movies for the night and watched them until we fell asleep. The next day it was back to the grind. Mac and I packed up early in the morning intending to ride without Ty due to his broken bike. Mac and I proceeded out of Walla Walla to brutal climbs the entire day until the last 20 miles of blissful downhill. On top of that it rained the last 40 miles with a hard downpour, with continued storm warnings here throughout the night. We did however, receive some good news that day. Ty bought an entirely new bike due to the frustrating and non-fixable nature of the old bike. The owner of the bike shop who attempted to fix his old bike gave Ty a 10% discount on his new bike - a fantastic deal. We soon met Ty on the road after about 60 miles of riding when Tony, the guy we stayed with in Walla Walla, gave him a ride out to our location. After all of the misfortune and bad luck the past few days has brought us with the rain, the bike, and the tough ride, our total distance for the day came out to be 100 miles - our first and possibly only century of our entire trip. Hopefully after all of our misfortune some good luck will finally come our way.

90.5 miles of suffering

Today was probably the best and worst day I've ever had biking. Mac, Ty, and I awoke about 15 miles outside of Portland to a gorgeous day. We quickly rode out of where we were staying and rode into Portland to fetch some much deserved voodoo doughnuts. Voodoo doughnuts were the most delicious batch of pastries I've ever had in my life. We had doughnuts such as the bacon maple bar, the Portland cream, and the old dirty bastard - it was fantastic. We also visited Powell's bookstore - the largest bookstore in the world - which was a block thick and four stories tall.Ty and I purchased some books before we headed out at about 11:00 from Portland. Once out, we quickly rode to the Columbia River Gorge - perhaps the most scenic portion we will have our entire ride. This section of the ride was awesome as we climbed for about 8 miles at first and then we went down a windy descent through thick forests, waterfalls, and old buildings. It was the most beautiful bike ride I have ever partaken in. However, Mac, Ty, and I were behind our riding schedule a lot. Portland caused us to gain extra miles on an already long day, and we still had 40 miles left to go at about 6:00 pm. Once we realized this, we swiftly rode the remaining Columbia River Gorge route and entered onto the freeway to make up some time. At first we were doing great, we were in a drafting formation and we were riding at a speed of about 17-20 miles per hour on flat ground; which is very swift even for a non-loaded road bike. However, after a while Ty's right leg began to experience some pain so Mac and I would ride a little ahead and wait for Ty to catch up. Mac and I would use the breaks to take gels, and drink water, seeing as it was a little above 80 degrees today with much humidity. Towards the end, we were exhausted after spending 12 hours on the road. We eventually reached our destination at 9:00 pm after a brutal, yet fun, 90.5 miles.

Day 2

Hello Everyone!
Today was day to of our cross country bicycling extravaganza! We ended up riding 52 miles total, three miles past a town called Scappoose. Tonight, we are staying in a large houseboat on the Columbia River, it is really cool! When we were riding here, however, we accidentally missed the turn off going an extra 4 miles down the road, we were just luck my father was monitoring the GPS or we would have biked all the way to Portland. Tomorrow we will be going 80 miles to Hood River, and stopping b Voodoo doughnuts in Portland on the way!

Day 1

Hello!
Today, Mac, Ty, and I began our 67 day bike ride when we drove from our hotel in Portland to Seaside, Oregon. We began the ride by dipping our back tires into the Pacific Ocean and we will later dip our front  tires in when we reach the Atlantic Ocean. After we dipped our tires we rode from Seaside up along the coast until we reached Astoria. Astoria is an awesome little town with a giant bridge that I estimate spans about 2 miles. We continued our ride from there in fair weather and sunshine, riding over rolling hills with dense green foliage. The scenery in Oregon was great because of how much the road winds, as well as, the number of water falls and overgrowth it has. However, the day was also filled with some mechanical problems as well. Ty's back tire kept rubbing against his frame and it seems that we will have to go to a bike shop in Portland in order to get that fixed. However, Mac was able to fix it temporarily and we were able to complete our 50 mile ride through some great scenery. We look forward to our ride to Portland tomorrow. Also, we hope to have the first of our photos up soon for everyone to look at.

TOSRV

This weekend, my dad and I participated in the annual TOSRV bike ride, which is put on by MOBI. It was a total of 230 miles and was two days long. The ride went to Big Fork by going through Seeley and Condon then back the following day by Flathead lake and Arlee. It was pretty hilly and really hard, but, overall I enjoyed myself. It was a great learning experience and will really help while we are biking across the country!
We are leaving for Seaside on Sunday and will head out on our journey next Monday,YEP, three days and counting! We are getting really excited and very anxious, lets hope we are ready!

Hello!
Today, Drew and I went on our final MOBI ride to the top of Lolo Pass, 66 miles total. We had a lot of fun, especially because we will be riding over  the pass on our actual trip when we are coming into Missoula. This ride concludes our Ride-A-Thon, putting us at 320 miles!
Also, we have ordered our jerseys that we made, Again, we would like to thank Dan Cook for drawing the logo, we would also like to thank all of our sponsors (listed on the left side of the page) for their generous donations!

This weekend's ride...

Hello!
As many of you know, Drew and I went on a three day, two night training ride this weekend, our bikes were fully loaded with our gear. For our ride, we went a little past Hamilton, two days getting there and one day getting back. Arlen rode with us the first day and part of the second day, my dad rode with us for the second half of the second day and the last day. For our first day, we started at 6 PM and made it to Florence. We woke up the next morning and rode to Stevensville where my dad met us, then continued to Hamilton. The next day, we made our way home at break-neck speed, going about 15 mph the whole way! (with fully loaded touring bikes, this is quite an accomplishment). We got home around 1:30 and had some well deserved Dairy Queen. We learned a ton about touring and biking in general from this trip, and we are hoping to do another one soon. I can tell you this though, on the actual trip, we will NOT be going 15 mph..... Drew and I had to wake up the next morning to the hardest track workout of the year, and boy were we sore!