Columbia River Lowlands, north of Kalama WA |
Yep. Left late again. It's hard to leave at a "decent" hour when you're leaving home. So out the door @ 11:30 am.
So should I take public transit to shorten the length of the day, get through some of the suburban crap? MAX would only shave about 5 miles. C-TRAN buses in Vancouver would mean too many transfers and loading and unloading of bike from the front of buses. So I rode.
And it was a good day to ride. Partly cloudy, 72f/22c.
Rather than ride out of town on US 30, I decided to cross over the Columbia River into Vancouver and ride most of old US 99 into Kelso-Longview. The first 20 miles was through urban/suburban landscapes, then the riding turned rural. A mix of flat and rolling landscapes, and low traffic.
Except for the seven miles on Interstate 5. Yes, that's right, I-5. It was either that or up and down a ridiculously steep hill. A hill that made me puke the last time I went up it. Thankfully, this section went by real fast.
I made it to Longview at 6:30 pm, found my warmshowers host (who made me a humongous meal!), showered, and decompressed. Centralia tomorrow.
The numbers:
61 miles
11.9 mph average speed
5:08 on-bike time
Nice,heeheehee,another tour I can vicariously live through! Where's the pics,my friend? Can't wait for day 2 :)
ReplyDeleteThe DC
DC, as stated in the pre-trip post, i only brought my iPod Touch. So no way to upload photos, and uploading posts via the clunky Blogger app. Photos will come after the trip
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