It is late and Day 2 starts at 8:30am but for me at 8am; more on that below. Today, Day 1, we rode from downtown Portland to Kelso, OR, a distance of 58.95 miles. Whew! We started riding at 8:45am and for the first hour at least wound our way through Portland. Not fast and a bit hairy with 70 riders and all the traffic. I averaged 11mph overall and the day's ride took me 5 hours and 21 minutes.

It started to rain just before we left and continued about 80% of the day. My Friedman's Hardware rain suit worked well. It was also 45 degrees so the windbreaker effect was welcome. Of course over the course of the day I sweated profusely so all the clothes are hanging up drying. Also by the end of the day my shoes and feet were soaked. I have a second pair for tomorrow and a second dry strategy; plastic bags inside the foot warmers.

I rode with Sean with his trike for the first 2 hours and 17 miles. He ran out of steam and took a car ride to lunch. Then I rode with Sandy, Amy and Mary until lunch. After lunch we had our first casulty, Karen somehow had her tires slide out on a railroad crossing. Police and ambulance responded. Several stitches over her eye, a bad wrist sprain and some lower back pain; mmm, not good. I think a few more slipped but did not hurt themselves as badly.

We had quite a lot of flats today; I missed that adventure. Repairing tires in the rain was not fun.

The two worst spots today were in the vicinity of the Lewis and Clark bridge over the Columbia River. About 4-ish miles south on US30 is a looong uphill that is a killer! Then crossing the very high and steep bridge in a rainstorm with hail, sleet and 30 mph winds, together with riding in the roadway with manical truck drivers wasn't fun. Adding to it for me was my rear shifter started to bind up requiring much strength to get one gear change at a time. I couldn't get below 4th gear which took a lot of riding leverage away. But I made it. I had a young man with bike repair experience look at it today and in the process of trouble shooting the shifter wire broke. Susan will be taking me into the repair shop at 8am to wait for them to open at 9am to fix it. Well I'm off to bed. I'm certainly earning those sponsorships! lol Thank you all! BTW, Kyle announced we're at $275,000 now! Awesome! With that, good night!