Great morning for a bike ride...shame I'm in the van today, but someone has to do it.  After yesterday's bike assembly and orientation, I think everyone was eager to get on the road this morning.  I think the first clue was the fact that breakfast opened at 6:00 and when I went in at 6:30 almost everyone had already eaten and were starting to lurk around the luggage van.  The good thing was they were just socializing...or at least that was their cover.  Underneath that calm facade lurked AAA personalities just begging to explode...except for Dan and Craig who seemed to still be trying to get out of the motel after everyone else had already been gone for...well, let's say quite a while.  Seems like a good group and I think we'll all get along quite well.

We changed our route this year to depart out of Astoria instead of Portland.  This change made our departure much less stressful than highway 26 to the coast.  Now we ride a back road for the first 20 miles then pick up our regular route...nice fix.  The morning started out great.  Me and the rest of my able bodied staff, Barbara and Karen, were busy sorting through the luggage marking computers and nonessential bags, helping with rider prep, and sorting mechanical gear.  We have so many alumni riding with us that everything went smoother than a normal cross country ride (11 of the 15).  The weather was cool and foggy plus it was a Sunday morning so the traffic leaving the motel was pretty light to non-existent.  The weather didn't take long to get almost perfect...well, perfect as the temperature started to rise and the sun started beaming down on us...it promised to be a great day along the coast. 

The thing I really appreciate coming from the hot south is the flowers and landscaping of farmhouses.  Everywhere we'd find colorful flower arrangements that just perked up the countryside.  In Alabama, anything that pretty would just wilt in the sultry summer heat. 

I finally got on the road and started to chase down the riders with the van.  I got about 10 miles down the road when I came upon two self supported riders who where having trouble with flats and spent a little time with them getting them back on the road.  It took two tries, but I think we finally got them taken care of with new rim tape and a new tube.  We'll probably see them again along the way someplace...we usually do on this ride.  If you guys see this post, email me and I'll send you the photo I took of you after you were moving.

It didn't take long for the reality that Oregon isn't flat to sink in as we started our ride a bit inland where the foot hills rose above the landscape.  I'm sure the riders were wondering where the ocean was as we started out.  We were greeted with small farmland, grazing cattle, and rolling terrain for the first 20 miles.  Then we popped out to the coast at Seaside OR...and what a sight.

Seaside is a great little coast town complete with touristy things to keep everyone busy.  It also gave us our first view of the ocean...just a taste of what was to come.  Several riders went exploring town and spent some time at the beach...why not, town was flat.  There was a car show in town so several riders took in the sights for quite a while before venturing down the road. 

Today was a relatively short day of only 66 miles...but sometimes even that mileage is long especially when there's so much to see along the route...and what a spectacular route.  At 11:30, most of the group had pedaled a whopping 24 miles!  Of all the rides we do (and we ride in some beautiful places) I think Oregon's coastline scenery was right up there with the best.  At times we were surrounded by trees, other times we had the cliffs on our left and the ocean crashing into the rocks to our right.  At times we were riding along the water while other times we were 1500 feet above the surf.  I've seen photos of the northwest coast, but seeing it first hand is something special.  I hate to rave so much about the scenery today because I'll run out of steam when we get to other worthy of praise areas, but it was really impressive to a boy from the midwest who only knew bodies of water that were pond size and had catfish.  Out here you can't see the other side of the water and the fish are a bit larger...can you spell whale?