March 23rd

To Langlois 5:56, 55.3 mi

Today was one tough day...

We started by having to cross into North Bend- which included a mile long bridge which requires all cyclists to walk on the side walk (I hear they have even given hefty fines to cyclists for not walking)- there isn't a shoulder, and the sidewalk is too small to ride on anyway with the winds coming across so we weren't too upset about having to walk. It was slow and boring, until the end when we hit the construction and it was just slow- the sidewalk got just small enough so I had barely half an inch of either side of Surly's trailer to naviate with... urgh long mile.

Soon after passing through North Bend, we turned off of 101 onto Seven Devils Road- it even sounded ominous.... and it was. It had the steepest grades we've seen in Oregone- and after going up to about 600 ft, it continued to go up/down for the next 15ish miles. Really though riding, there were notes spray painted on the ground meant for other cyclists with saying things like "are we having fun yet?" and counting the 'devils' which I assume were the climbs. Luckily the rain heald off until nearly the end.

We stopped off in Bandon for lunch (we've been having our favorite 'Daves Killer Bread' with Tofurkey slices, mustard and spinach-sometimes tomato and once an avocado- on the days after going to Fred Meyers. Yum...) We stopped off at one of the many, many shops that also sells espresso and got a fancy coffee drink and some of their"Bandon Famous" kettle corn. Hot coffee really helped warm us up and keep us going for the next 20 miles to our campsite.

The rest of the miles were suposed to be 'rolling hills' - which they certianly were but as the rain cleared the wind picked up and really slowed our progress. The kind of wind that makes us have to pedal down hill! There was a little food store about 3 miles from our campsite that advertised homemade mustard. We loovvveee mustard, so decided to stop in and see. They were all made with eggs, so no luck there- but oddly the owners of the store drive all the way out to Trader Joes to buy food to resell, and don't mark up the prices! This is really funny because for a few days Cook and I hav been craving Pad Thai-so I jokingly said that I also wanted Pad Thai from the little store....and so Cook walked out with a package of 'ready in 2 minutes' Pad Thai from Trader Joes! Awesome.

Getting though the last few miles took forever because of the aforementioned wind...but we did finally arrive. We did some needed laundry, and ate a big dinner. We bought some firewood- but unfortunatly it was wet so we couldn't get it started. Always frustrating to pay for wet wood- kind of defeats the purpose of buying it in the first place... oh well-we were exhausted and sore. So sleep worked just as well...