June 21, 2004
Miles: 72
Weather: Overcast in Astoria, sunny and warm in St. Helens
This
is our first day on the road. The conventional wisdom is to
take
things easy the first few days, work into the routine of riding every
day, don't burn out. Though not usually a big CW fan, that's fine
with me. My plan for the
whole ride is to watch the scenery roll by, take in a
few of the more tasteful tourist traps and take some good photos.
It's nice to hang out
with other riders, though, for conversation and to look out for each
other. Today I'll start to see whose riding style and pace is
similar to mine. (And who has a taste for obscure sarcasm.)
We we
loaded our luggage the van, named the "box" for this tour, at 5:30,
then rode the three miles back over to the Red
Lion for breakfast. From there we went behind the Holiday Inn
Express for our group picture. Following the photo, we hit the
road. The roads were pretty good, with narrow
shoulders at times. And quite a few log trucks. I
was right behind Andrew when he had a blow out--one of those little
wires but this time a good inch was sticking out of his tire.
Earlier, I
had to replace my front tire because it went slightly out of round,
enough to make the bike feel squirrelly on the first big descent.
Judith had a busy day with the
mechanics. They straightened her derailer hanger at the first SAG
after her chain had come off the big gear in back. And the
shifting required further adjustment at the end of the day.
Not a lot of pictures were taken due to the flat light over Astoria way
but here are a few. This
is Russ, who is here from a very small town (his description) in Maine
with his
son Ian:
This
is Bill, one of two recumbent riders in the group. That box behind his seat weighs
over
10 pounds--take that weight weenies (riders who obsess about the weight
of their bikes)! That's my bike parked on the left. This
was taken at
our second SAG stop.
We passed this, decommissioned, I'm told, nuclear (nucular, whatever)
plant. Someone called it the Trojan facility; I didn't see any
sign. Andrew's flat was right close to this point.
After checking in at the motel, I ate a burger and fries at Burgerville
next door and then hiked over to Wal-Mart to find a small duffel bag
and a few other items I need. The duffel is to help rearrange my
load so that no singe bag is heavier than 35 lbs, for the benefit of
the staff unloading the truck. (The motel had the strangest room
numbering system. Some of the 200's were on the first floor and
the second floor had both 200's and 300's.)
At 4 pm, I visited the maintenance van to replace the rim strip in my
rear wheel. In the course of replacing my front tire this
morning, we discovered that the strips I had weren't wide enough.
It looks like I've finally rid myself of a bottom bracket noise that
I'd been hearing before packing the bike (George, it was the chainring
bolts) but it appears to be replaced by another noise, this time from
the rear hub; the following day I finally figured out that this was
just my name badge, which I'd clipped to my seat bag, flopping around.
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