Getting To Astoria – Travel Day, May 25

Well, we made it, to Astoria, OR, today! All in all, a good day to start off this adventure.  Kim and I got up at 5am (I was up from 2-4am) to do our final pack and the final clean of Dara’s house, our temporary accommodations in Blaine, to lead us up to our bike tour and fundraising campaign and we were on the road by 6:25am.  Old Red, my trusty hand-me-down 2001 Yukon, took us to our daughter Amanda’s in Chanhassen for our lift to the airport.  Upon arriving at Amanda’s, we were greeted by the whole family and family dog.  We loaded Amanda and granddaughter June in Old Red for June’s daycare drop-off and out of there by 7:45.

Old Red’s dashboard light came on mid-trip letting me know it needed some fluid due to a leak in the radiator. Old Red is a classy character and still has some life left in it at 330k miles and will spend the summer with Amanda’s family.  After dropping June off we stopped for some radiator fluid and filled her up.  Amanda dropped us off at the airport at 8:30am.  Ticketing, checking in our four luggage bags of gear holding eight saddlebags and two rack packs and security went very smooth and we were sipping coffee at the gate by 9:15.  We boarded the A-318 flight and hit the friendly skies by 10:30am.

Sleeping on a plane is natural for me.  The buzz of those engines puts me to sleep before the plane lifts off.  Kim played word games.  We arrived in Portland on time, by noon. 

Richard from DCS Taxi picked us up from the airport at 2pm and we were at our Astoria motel by 4pm to check in.  Richard was super cool and we gave him our four suitcases, as they were on just a one-way trip, for his family’s travels back to his homeland. He was appreciative. Richard was full of information about the area and said that the Goonies and Kindergarten Cop was filmed here and Astoria, population about 10k, was the first settlement West of the Mississippi.  After checking in to our clean and simple accommodations we walked the half-mile to Bikes and Beyond to pick up our trusty Kona steeds and added a simple odometer/speedometer to Kim’s bike to match the one Jamie from Michael’s Cycle in Chaska put on my bike.

After having a bite to eat, we reminded ourselves that we will need to do a much better job of eating during the day.  Toast and coffee at 5am, a half sandwich during the flight and half a power bar will not be the plan to get us to dinner going forward. We rapidly shoveled in everything that hit the table at the Silver Salmon Grille.  Great clam chowder, which I normally do not like, but it sounded good and tasted better.

Tomorrow should be clear and about 55 degrees.