June 20th

The first official day of the ride, 69 miles from Astoria to St Helens. This was supposed to be an "easy" day and I guess that it was since pretty much everyone was in the hotel by 1:30. Also it was a straight shot on route 30 with no turns However it wasn't that easy. There were a couple of very challenging hills in the ride. Luckily we were pretty much done with them after 40 miles. The race leaders say that this is nothing compared to what we can expect on days 3,4 and 5. The sun is still pretty much a figment of our imaginations. It came out for a few minutes today Nd then it went back to cloudy conditions. It did warm up in to the 70's today