well... i guess this is what we should have expected..

so as it turns out, it rains just as much as everyone says it does in oregon. Yesterday we biked from portland to cascade locks, it was only about 45 miles. But they were some terrible 45 miles. It rained on us all afternoon. If you want a quick way to get depressed, bike for 4 hours in the rain!

Initially i was all pumped for the rain. I wanted to try out my new rain gear (shoe covers, rain coat, waterproof bags, etc..). But then my rain coat became soaked with my own sweat, i crashed once which put a whole in my shoe covers, and i was left miserable.. with a wet jacket (but only from the inside), and soaked shoes..

oh. the crash.. the edge of the road decided to cut in a little without telling me, causing my front tire to slip right off the edge and laying me on my side.. all in all, no harm done. I have a scrape on my elbow and a pretty good strawberry on my hip, but the other guy's positive attitudes nursed me back to good spirits..

Last night was the worst because we had to try to setup camp and get all our stuff organized in the rain.. we made it happen alright, but had to deal with all wet stuff when we woke up this morning (which is just as terrible as one might imagine)..

But once we got going this morning we all felt pretty good! We biked from a little east of Cascade Locks to a little west of Biggs today. It went really well. We had a couple decent climbs; one that was about 2 miles and pretty steep, and then one that was about 8 miles and not so steep.. The only big mishap was when ben and i got seperated from the rest of the guys..

we were a little ahead so we pulled off at a scenic overlook to wait for them.. little did we know, they actually weren't far behind us.. So as we're high-fiving and taking pictures of ourselves, the other guys bike right by us (they didn't know we had pulled off). We, assuming they are still behind us, wait by the road for another 10 minutes until we realize that there is no possibly way that they could be that far back.. So we bomb down the hill, give eric a call, and realize that they are about 10 miles ahead of us (which is alot on a bike).. Needless to say, we felt like idiots..

We are at camp now.. its not raining, which is awesome.. We just ate dinty moore soup for dinner, with a appetizer of southwest airline peanuts and pretzels (which have been perfect by the way Jane and Susan)! Hopefully I should be able to post more soon..!

Hope everyone is having a good week! Any prayer for us would be greatly appreciated!



p.s. power bars are awesome!

p.s.s we have been taking some videos, in hopes that we can upload them.. but we haven't been able to get a strong enough signal to upload them.. hopefully we can get some up here.. they are pretty entertaining!