Lincoln City to Port Orford

It's been 2 days and we've ridden 181 miles since the last post! The pictures were uploaded in Newport, OR where we stopped to get Scott his new wheel set :) The bike shop was great and even had it's own bike tourer lounge with showers and a washing machine! On the road again we had the flattest day in a long time and spent most of the day along the coast. Georgeous views and lots of wind later we made it to Honeyman State Park where we grabbed a hiker/biker camp site and made camp for the evening! We had lots of friends for the evening, about 7 other cyclist, but we were way too tired after our 80 mile day to say much of anything to anyone! We were plesant ofcourse, our moms taught us much better than that, but nothing more than "hi" and "nice tent".

We were up before anyone else and on the road with the goal of Port Orford. It was tough going in the begining: our bodies were having a hard time getting along with our saddles, Scott's shoulder was super sore from days of sleeping on it wrong, and my achillies was NOT happy to be working again. There was one point about 2 miles in that I was going down a hill just as slow as I had gone up it! I just couldn't go :( A quick stop pulled us back together and we were on the road again (please sing the song if you feel so inclined)! We knew it was going to be a long day so we set milage goals to achieve before we took breaks; at 25, 50, 75 and done. We did a pretty good job of sticking to that and I think it gave us both good focus to keep pushing our 100 mile day.

10 hours on the bike later I had the opportunity to think about the day of riding while Scott fixed his second flat of the day... I'm hear to tell you that like all endurance events whether it be go kart racing, driving, hiking, studying, or in our case, bike riding, focus can be hard to maintain. For us there is always the fear of being blown off the road or rolled over by a logging truck that keeps us alert, but it's hard to stay engaged enough to want to keep going. For me I've worked to pick out the type of vehicle that will be coming up on us next. I'm pretty good at playing this one person game and I can now distinguish the sound of a car, truck, truck with trailer, van, RV, giant truck, and motorcycle :) Scott and I have had fun conversations as well. Yesterday we named our bikes as though they were ships: Scott's is the Perserverience and my is the Merriweather. Scott has also sang lovely songs to me and I think he's working on a blues number which will be released tomorrow.

... back to our day yesterday: yes Scott got 2 rear flats, but they got changed pretty quick with not too much trouble. We crossed a record number of bridges, the most memorible (but not in a good way) was the bridge leading us into North Bend. It was so windy that I got off to walk and still thought that I was going to get blown over! We decided that the sidewalk was the best option despite the large sign that read "sidewalk closed" because there was no room for our bikes and the cars at the same time...It wasn't so bad, they were doing construction at the end so we jumped into the traffic lane and made the cars wait! This scared the sh!# out of me and I did yell in terror at one point, but the wind was too loud for anyone but myself to hear.

We arived in the tiny town of Port Orford at around 6:30 and checked into the Castaway Motel. It's your typical funky motel, but it has great views and is an awesome place to stay for 2 nights. Yes, you guessed it, a rest day!! We went out for dinner at the Crazy Norweigen and had the most amazing fish and chips dinner, cream of green chili soup, salad, as well as homemade pie :) Yaaaay calories! We watched the sun set for the first time on our trip and hit the hay before 10pm making sure to turn the alarms off.

-L