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Day 1 in the books! I can’t believe we’re officially underway. And as expected, Day 1 had a little bit of everything to give us a flavor of the journey ahead.

We had a fabulous send off from Christin and Caroline after baptizing our rear wheels in the Pacific Ocean (seems like that was a week ago). There was no press, no mayor of Newport, nobody even asking what we were up to at 7:30 AM clowning around on the beach with our bikes. But it seemed exactly like it was supposed to be.

After a short ride through town, we took a left turn on Highway 20. Fun fact: apparently Highway 20 is the longest US Highway. It may be long, but as expected it did not start out very enjoyable. Two miles in after an immediate climb, we were screaming downhill at 37 MPH where there was a steel guardrail next to a narrow 12” shoulder, and we were passed by a logging truck doing 55/60 MPH. This was a white knuckler and we were only minutes into our day; we were about .05% complete with our coast-to-coast ride and feeling exhilarated in a not so good way. We expected this at some point in the morning; we knew we had to travel 15 miles on this road. But… sheesh. Talking about starting the day eating a live toad.

Most of the Highway 20 opening miles were not horrible. Certainly this brush with the logging truck was the worst. But, we did have 2 pickup trucks that didn’t give away any road and stomped on the accelerator as they were passing just to signal their position on the highway food chain (I told you it’s always the pickup truck guys, though not every pickup driver is a jerk). And we had 1 similar experience with a couple guys on angry sounding motorcycles. (Thanks Sutes for your prayers this morning – there were no incidents on this most treacherous stretch and we felt we were being looked over.)

Then at 15 miles, we took a left turn on Crystal Creek Loop to find ourselves in road biking heaven. The asphalt was smooth; there were no cars; we were greeted by curious goats, sheep, cows, horses and chickens along the way; the weather was perfect… Lecy was gushing with praise about the chosen route. All was right in our biking world.

We rode on in bliss until mile 30 to stop for lunch; and what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a black Nissan Rogue with our bevy of gear! (If you’ve noticed from the photos, we made a judicious decision to take advantage of our one day of support vehicle to haul our bags.) We had a nice visit with my girls while we snacked, then pressed on with our day.

Around mile 40, we unfortunately had to leave our blissful backroad and head out again on the highway to the danger zone. To steel ourselves for another few Hwy 20 miles, we stopped at the Blodgett Country Store, where they suggested: “Slow down, you’ll live longer”. We had a nice break where Lecy paid $21.99 for 8 ounces of beef jerky. Then we met two curious customers who wondered about our ride. Ken and Cheryl were from Tennessee and were headed to Newport for vacation (where Ken grew up). They seemed impressed by our Newport-Newport plan, though I told them we were only about 1% of the way to our final destination. They were a lovely couple with encouraging words that lifted our spirits before we went back to battle with the logging trucks.

Back on Hwy 20, the shoulders were wider, the drivers were courteous and we mostly screamed downhill at 30+ MPH. In a few very quick miles, we made another left to return to serene backroads. We passed a few vineyards (Lecy nearly goaded us into visiting a tasting room) and we traveled to the end of the road. Where the road stopped, a gravel trail began, where we faced the biggest challenge of the day. We rode up 10% grade a few times earlier in the day, but after a few miles of undulating hills on the trail, we hit a new challenge: 12-13% incline that was the start of a 1 mile climb. We powered through for a half mile or more, but after 50 miles we hit the 17% grade and sputtered out. The demand was great enough that we didn’t feel any shame in dismounting and walking our steeds for another 1/2 mile. We did remount and ride the final 0.2 mile, then hit an equally steep descent. I gripped both brakes hard was hard until my planar eminence started cramping; after a mile we were back to asphalt and a wonderful coast into Corvallis.

Tired, thirsty and in a slight mind fog, we marveled at the glorious day we were granted. We had a few beers at the Hotel Corvallis, I beat Lecy in the inaugural cribbage game, and we showered up for dinner. Caroline had never had oysters; Lecy promised a proper oyster experience for dinner tonight. Corvallis oysters (fresh? from Seattle) were very forgettable. At dinner, after photographing Caroline with her intro to oysters, I knocked my beer mug off the table. This would’ve been quite embarrassing, but Geeto did a similar trick last night at dinner, backhanding and smashing his wine glass. Lecy’s turn tomorrow, though that will be a challenge at our campsite with freeze dried food.

Tonight, I have to include two songs in the playlist. Firstly, my mother-in-law saw some earlier photos and critically accused me of cheating. “It looks like there’s some things missing from his bike!” was her first thought. As I said, we made a wise decision about our resources and chose to travel light today. If been listening to a bit of J.J. Cale lately and this is appropriate for today’s journey: Traveling’ Light. (Note: When I paddled the Mississippi, my mother-in-law used to text me every time I stopped into a bar or brewery; it’s not surprising that she throws me some shade on day one and I expect more tavern texts in days to come.)

Before I left Batavia IL, a friend of mine from church gave me some bike gifts (thanks Dale!) Some of these (like the horn and the bell) I already had, but I was excited to put one of these gifts into action for the first time today. You’ll notice from an earlier photo, we try to travel in a straight line as a train engine with two cars. Today’s lineup had Lecy behind me, except when he led and I was in caboose position. So, for 2/3rds of the day, Lecy got to stare at the blinking heart light on the back of my helmet. This Neil Diamond classic is for you Mark: Heartlight. I hope this song plays in his head every time he sees my heartlight blink. Sorry to everyone else who may be enjoying this playlist (Pedaling Pilgrims), but we all have some guilty music pleasures; I might have a few more coming in the future (wait for it Bill Rohde!)