Is this still Oregon?

Joel eatin' a banana and Allison's new best friend Jennifer (an 8 year old riding a triple with her parents!)

Joel's ditching his bike and riding a covered wagon to New Hampshire; Allison with Sarah, from Berkeley


The group leader of the ride told us at orientation that we'd be brain dead after 48 hours on the road; I thought that that was a bunch of BS. Now that we're seven days into the trip and after 552 miles "in the bank," as a 68 year old Coloradoan says, its apparent that he spoke the gospel truth. After missing three days writing our blog, damn if we know the details of our adventure from even last Friday. Three days ago, we know we climbed about 5000 feet over 61 miles. Two days ago, the ride was a grueling 117 miles with roughly 6000 feet of climbing over a multitude of terrains including pine lined roads, frank desert with scrub pine and lots of minutes out the saddle slogging away climbing to the top of two passes, but a lot of payback descents. Yesterday, we had a 81 mile ride to Baker City, Oregon which had two passes, the first about twenty miles from the start. Joel was having a BAD day and Allison nearly dropped him multiple times until he recovered mid-day. We were rewarded when we got into town just in time for the Elkhorn classic bike race; we had a great dinner at a local brew pub then watched the pro/1/2 criterium on the city street just down from the restaurant. Stanford riders Evan, Ryan, and Max were in it, which was fun and gave us someone to cheer for! Today, we rode 83 miles to Ontario, Oregon, a gift of a ride featuring mostly all downhills including 6 or seven miles on the interstate, I84. We found Oregon's bug paradise when we had to ride a few miles through swarms of flying insects near what we think was the snake river. Bet the fish in that river are humongous and well fed; we couldn't talk during that stretch lest we swallowed our protein requirement for the day. Generally speaking, our bodies are holding up, except for our butts, shoulders, necks, and knees. We're looking forward to a day off (our first after eight days straight in the saddle) after tomorrow's ride to Boise, Idaho (hurray; we're finally out of Oregon). Plans for Tuesday include sleeping in (we've been up every day between 4:45 and 5:45 AM), a good breakfast of our choice, a visit to the local bike shop to fix some nagging bike concerns, and TWO HOUR massages for a ridiculously cheap price. Yessssssssss.