June 15, 2018
Astoria to Tillamook
117 km (73 miles)
1099 m (3605 feet) elevation
5:27 moving time
117 km (73 miles) total

Woke up at 5:00 ready to tackle our first long day of cycling. Assembled our bikes but ran into an issue with reattaching the rear derailleur. After a few minutes we figured out that it hadn’t been attached correctly and we could finally fasten the wheel.

Had our first continental breakfast of the trip, trying to load up on calories. Pancakes FTW!

Drove to UPS to have our bike bags shipped to a friend of ours on the east coast and returned the rental car.

Packed all our stuff onto the bikes, checked out and finally at nearly noon we rolled our bikes out the door.

Our first challenge was figuring out where the proper start point of the trail was as the Garmin units kept telling us to take a U-turn even though the location was a few hundred yards in front of us.

We quickly were riding on a winding rolling backroad with almost no traffic which was amazing. Not so amazing was going through an uphill tunnel with no bike lane. Instead, cyclists push a button before entering which flashes a yellow warning sign to drivers entering the tunnel.

Had our first experience with a dog who ran after us. Fortunately he was fenced in and couldn’t reach us.

The weather was nice, rather cool but for us Icelanders it still meant shorts and shortsleeved jersey.

Met a few cyclists, including Oliver from California who is an 18 year old going the TransAm solo. Rode with him for a while and will probably run into him once in a while during the trip.

Americans are so polite. The drivers usually give us plenty of room while overtaking us and if they aren’t 100% sure about oncoming traffic they wait. Quite unlike many Icelandic drivers who show cyclistslittle respect.

Had dinner at a freezing cold Pizza Hut before finding a motel for the night. Monika is washing our clothes while I write this entry. Suits me well! 😀