The Absent Mind

We've made it partway down the Oregon coast now, after spending last night in Astoria with a friend of my mothers. Today is our next day off, so relaxing and seeing how thigs go. Currently sitting at a RV park/tent campground in sight of the Tillamook factory (I can see the sign from where I'm sitting.. it's basically across the street. Will have to upload videos at a later date, as this isn't currently powered. Sprinted down to Tillamook yesterday, and I'm damn sore today, so it's good to have a day of rest again. I think our next day of rest is going to be in about 5 days in the northern reaches of CA. We need to be averaging aroud 75 miles daily for 10 days to make it back in a reasonable amount of time, which is not going to be easy for that many days in a row.

Everything is being cross-posted over here: http://www.soundcyst.com/biketrip2009/ and it has Kevin's side of the story as well!

So, we hit what was apparently "More rain than Washington has seen all summer" yesterday and were drenched to the bone. After about forty miles we saw the first sign of habitability (yeah, there really was -nothing- and stopped at the Hungry Bear Cafe & Motel. In hopes of the weather clearing up a bit, we decided to take a day of rest here. Admittedly, I'm quite impatient at the moment and a bit irritable all in all, though it was a good time to tune the bikes back up, do some laundry and get things back in order. The weather report is looking mildly better as we head south tomorrow, and then looking poor again. Hopefully we'll be better prepared to keep moving on. It is fun to note that while tuning up I made some modifications and rode my bike without weight - it's really like riding a whole different bike. Movements are agile and the speed of it feels amazing. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have a nice long ride and make it to a good spot with minimal

We arrived safely in Vancouver sometime around 5pm on Friday night, dropped off by Eddie and Andrew. The drive up was rather long, and didn't allow for very much sleep. As a group it was decided to head on in to Stanley Park in Vancouver, at which point we spent a few minutes unloading and preparping, with a very small amount of park wanderings in between. Kevin and I took off from the park region and proceeded along the Lion's gate bridge and stayed near the water in an RV park just on the other side. On Saturday we proceeded down towards Tawwassen, stopping to pick up a few supplies on the way, like another bag for Kevin, and a cyclocomputer for me. Both have been fairly handy for us thus far. From here I had my first flat tire of the trip, which turned out to be fairly quick to fix. Once we hit Tawwassen, we took the ferry across to Vancouver Island just north of Sidney and found a little-known campsite for the night. It was extremely undeveloped as far as state or feder