Right now we’re in the stylish town of Winthrop. And luckily it has an internet cafe. We’ve spent the past couple of days without any cell reception. Yesterday was a very rough day. We spent almost all of it going up. We climbed for 27 miles to Rainy Pass, at an elevation of 4600 feet. Then we got a mile-long respite going down, only to climb back up again to 5477 feet at Washington Pass. Then, a very fast downhill to Mazama where we splurged on a delicious dinner at a local Inn. Interestingly enough, we have not yet paid for camping. We;ve also been pretty good about not eating out. We’ve bee carrying enough food for a couple of days at a time.
It’s been super hot in Central Washington since we started biking. MOst places, it’s been hotter than it’s ever been in June. We’ve been taking lots of breaks and drinking tons of water to stay cool.
Even though yesterday was hard, we started out the trip with a couple of easy days. Most of our first day was on a bike path. We’ll be going over three more passes, probably all in the next three days. Hopefully we’ll be in shape after the climb yesterday!
We learned some trivia at a diner: More people are killed each year by champagne corks than by poisonous spiders. That’s good considering the showers (yay showers!) on the second day were full of spiders.
We’ve been meeting lots of cool people, even a couple of tourists. We’re posting some pictures along with this update. Enjoy!
Note from Greg: It should be noted that Megan is already attempting to shatter the record she set last year for most broken spokes. Other than that, our steeds have been holding up well. We’ve already been meeting lots of other bike tourists, with whom we’ve been swapping stories. This is a good sign, since it hopefully means I won’t get too lonely after I feed Megan to the bears in Montana. Ok – enough of this ‘internet’ – Bikebums….Ride On!