The beginning

Beautiful Start

Saturday 4/21 Day 1
I started the trip today. I woke up to an upset stomach which I think came from my nerves about the trip. After a bit of packing we went over and picked up my buddy Pete. I had one last farewell burrito from Rigobertos. It was tough leaving Bend. A lot of good memories there and I was leaving some really great friends behind.

Hike out of the Beach

The next part of the day was a six hour drive to Astoria. It was here, well about ten miles to the west where Pete and I started the trip. We ended up starting at a wall of rocks where we allowed our bikes to be splashed by the pacific ocean. Once the picture was done had to say goodbye to Garrette. It is hard to say goodbye to someone for three months when they have been as supportive and caring as she has been for me. She clocked my speed as we were leaving the parking lot, I was cruising at a whopping twelve mph. Oh one thing I noticed to when I started I had to much food!!! My bike just weighed to much so over the next few days I'm going to drop some weight.
Two things happened on our first day, the first being me making the the wrong turn to begin my journey. Instead of going right out of the parking lot I took a left. Haha apparently I wanted to go further down the peer towards the pacific.

Garrette & I, man shes cute.

Took a quick break in Astoria, sadly i did not locate the house from the Goonies. After we were all charged up with food and Gatorade we headed east on highway 30. Maybe ten miles out if town i has my first flat tire. Apparently my tube got pinched in the tire so there was about four holes right next to each other. To save time I got a new tube out where I realized I had the wrong size tube. They were close but not as thick as mine. I spent some time patching the holes and got the damaged tube ready to hold air again. It was here when I was pumping up the tube where the valve exploded off the tire. And no I did not over pump the tire. So when it was all said and done I had to put the tube in that did not fit, because that's all we had. Had to wait till we got to a bike shop to get replacements.

Pete & I...I'm caring all the group gear...:)

This whole ordeal took two hours with a moral of the story, if you don't know what size the tires are just being the tire in. It's ok to look like you don't know what your doing when you don't know what your doing, if you don't at some point you will be forced to look like you don't know what your doing. It will catch up.
Pete and I finished our night have dinner at a small restaurant in Knappa logging town. It was good to get a beer and some dinner, we also were able to find a place to camp from our waitress. We ended up riding about thirty miles today not bed for the first day.
Tomorrow hopefully hit Portland about 80miles away.

***most often I will not post on the actual days that the events happen I will try to date my posts.