We decided to go for the longer ride today. At 100k it was a stretch for us as we haven’t done any long rides this year.

We got up at 6:00 and went downstairs for breakfast.

After breakfast a bunch of us decided to wait for the large tandem group from the mass start to pass our hotel and join them then. Great idea except for the the fact that the tandem organizers had changed the beginning of the route at the last minute and the route no longer went by our hotel.

We figured that out fairly quickly and took off to connect to the route.

It was cloudy, breezy and about 60°F and as we rode the clouds began breaking up and revealed a brilliant blue sky. I wish I had been able to take some photos yesterday but my phone battery was threatening to die. Fortunately Chris’s phone was behaving and he took a few photos.

I did get a photo of the line to get on the ferry.

We were directed onto the ferry 25 tandems at a time. This was at the 15.5 mile point in our ride and across the the Willamette was where we would ride a 30 mile loop before returning to the ferry and the rest of the 64.5 miles and back to the hotel.

This was also where we had decided to make our decision as to whether we were going to go for the 64.5 or just do a little over 30 miles.

I’m so happy we decided to do the longer ride, it was just beautiful and we really had no trouble. We just stuck to a spinning pace and kept going through fields and forests and wildflowers. We spent most of the ride by ourselves just humming along.

We made a stop for food in a cute little town called Monmouth and split a delicious panini. The lunch stop was just a little too far for me and I was afraid of “bonking”.

We then made our way to the actual lunch stop that was in a large beautiful park and had a bit more food before continuing on with the ride.

Well we did it! Sixty-five miles and we felt great! I can’t believe it! It was so much fun and such a beautiful area.

We rode back to the hotel with another couple we’d met at the event.

We arranged to meet up for dinner and beers later.

We had a wonderful dinner at a place called Caves Bier and Kitchen. They have a huge beer list as well as good food.