Day 1 – Roy, Washington to Toledo, Washington

56.7 miles

Steve:  Day one is in the books and it was quite an adventure.  We started out in Roy, Washington at the home of Alex’s high school friend, Paul Groschel.  We had checked our bikes on the plane, but had shipped our trailers full of gear to Paul’s house.  When I opened my trailer box, I found that the Gatorade powder (Fruit Punch) had been crushed and spilled pink, sticky crud all over everything in the trailer.  Nice start.

Alex and Paul

Bikes and trailers packed. Ready to go.

We got all our gear loaded up and discovered that we were overpacked.  The trailers were over their weight limits and that made riding a delicate balancing act.  The trailer would start to wobble and make the whole bike wobble.  Not fun.  The wobbles got worse going downhill so we had to use the brakes on all the downhill sections.   Having worked extremely hard to climb the hills, this was a serious bummer.

Alex:  The first 15 miles were just what we needed to get going.  Smooth, flat, along a nice wide bike path with no cars.  This trip is gonna be easy I was thinking.  After we got off the path, the next 15 miles was a whole different animal.

The town of Centralia is where we met up with the bike route (now we can rely on our trusty maps).  We stopped there for lunch in a nice cafe followed by a rest in the town’s public park/square.   I noticed a post office across the street and took the opportunity to ship home some “non-necessities” that were adding weight to the trailer.  I managed to offload 6.6 lbs (we’ll see if this doesn’t happen again sometime during the trip).

Steve:  Next stop…Toledo, 30 more miles.  The weather had been patchy all day, but the rain started failling more seriously about 10 miles outside Toledo.  This made controlling the trailer a nightmare.  We stopped at a gas station to rest and decide what to do next.

Alex:  Travelling mercies followed us the whole day.  At that gas station we were at a decision point.  Do we bike the few more miles and camp in the rain or try and make it to Toledo (10 more miles) on our already spent legs and look for a hotel (which we found out later that there wasn’t any)?  Either option wasn’t looking too good.  This is where we met Lance walking into the food mart (retired Navy man and doctor).  After a short discussion with him about Toledo and hearing about the history of the area, he offered to let us stay at his place up the road.  He did this for us even though he wasn’t even going to be there.  What a blessing!  His place was nice…very nice!  After visions of what could have been, it was great to get a hot shower, have a dry place to be, and have a comfortable place to sleep.

Day 1 was an adventure with most of our objectives met.  Day 2 should be interesting too as we coax our tired and sore bodies back on to our bikes.  Thanks for your prayers!