We’re here, Lewis!

Lewis and Clark spent over two years getting up the Missouri River from St Louis, over the Continental Divide, and down the Columbia River to the Pacific.

Here’s that ocean view:

We had a tad easier journey.  First we flew to Portland, Oregon, and we could tell even on the plane that this was another Portland indeed.  The man next to me had just graduated from Yale Divinity School, and the guy in the window seat was reading Ovid.

Portland airport has space dedicated to assembling bikes, with tools provided.

The next day we drove to Astoria, on the coast. I wished we’d had had an extra day to explore here because it’s beautiful, dramatic, funky, and full of history. We dipped toes where the Columbia River empties into the Pacific at Fort Stevens State Park.

Then for the fussy work of assembling the bikes, FedExing the bike boxes back home (with some delay when all I could find at the FedEx address was a marijuana dispensary), and returning the car.
This:

 Packs up into this:

One risk of bringing bikes on planes is that TSA always opens the boxes. We worry they will break something trying to make the carefully arranged pieces of bike fit back into the box. This time they broke my pump.

The first afternoon of biking was about 35 miles on Route 30 to Clatskanie, up and down.  We got a bit blasted with logging and shipping truck traffic but enjoyed the tailwind and the chance to get acclimated to the notion of biking every day for the foreseeable future.

We’re staying at the Bike Inn, a place only for bicyclists, offered by a jack-of-all-trades couple who think the area should encourage biking. They turned the rec room into lodging when their daughter went off to college. They invited us to help bottle their wine crop tomorrow, but we must pedal on.  And now, good night.