July 6, 2010
Last night we got some much needed sleep in, but we woke up as tired as ever. As I wrote about last night, we’ve been upping our mileage this whole week (today we rode about 54 miles). I swear the only thing that got us moving in the morning was knowing that we are taking a rest day tomorrow. The morning started off rough again coming out of Humbug Mountain. We never really got a stretch of level road today, but it did get better for a while. We stopped for lunch at Gold Beach, but had Cape Sebastian right afterwards and the hills didn’t stop for the rest of the day. I told Taka I would make sure to mention the headwinds we got today as well. We really did have some nasty wind against us for the better part of the day. The wind pushed us back and sideways, and was extremely cold on top of that. It makes riding pretty uncomfortable not only because of the extra work involved, but because you can never settle into a comfortable temperature. When you’re going uphill in the sunlight you’re burning hot, and when you’re flying downhill in the shade you’re freezing.
In spite of the terrain and temperatures, we did have some great scenery today. It’s hard to get tired of the sea stacks and rugged profile of the cliffs along the Oregon coast. I don’t stop and take pictures all the time because when we’re moving well we just don’t want to break our momentum. Also, the pictures just don’t do the view any justice.
We’re in Brookings now, staying at Hannah’s grandparent’s place. They were nice enough to offer their home to us and we’re incredibly grateful for it. I can’t tell you all how nice it is to stay inside a warm house for the night. We are going to take a rest day here tomorrow as well in order to let our bodies heal up a bit. We are less than 10 miles from the California border and want to start the state on a good note when we do get moving again.
-Chris
