It should have been an easy ride. After all, it was only about 20 miles to my cousin's house. Twenty flat miles compared to the back roads we had been on. But after lunch it turned out to be a very stressful day.

We got out late and stopped almost immediately at Carrol's Diner. We ate Texas Burger's. Just about the biggest burger I've ever seen. We waddled over to our bikes. To pass time I called my cousin and tried to get directions to her house. The roar of the traffic prevented me from really hearing well. We got on the bikes with difficulty and started the day in earnest.

Patti's ankle was giving her trouble. I loosened the quick release as much as it would go but she still had pain and difficulty unclipping. The prevailing sunshine was also affecting her skin badly. She was also still really sore from suddenly jumping into mileage. We both needed a rest day badly.

We didn't get it today. The road was mostly flat, but had increasing traffic as we got closer and closer to Portland. It was also fast traffic, something Patti hadn't encountered yet. Thankfully the shoulders were wide.

Wide enough for a dead elk. Once we passed that Patti freaked. Letting me have it for letting the gaps between us grow too big. There was a lot of fast traffic, and construction. It was pretty hairy for a novice cyclist. Patti sat down for a while, (almost on top of a snake - which didn't help any) and developed a more of the insanity that lets cyclists ride.

Cycling is dangerous. You have to share the road with vehicles that weigh fifty times your weight. They also travel at three times your speed. To top it off, some of them think that all cyclists are elitist stuck up snobs, who ride just to annoy motorists. Cycling is fulfilling. It's feels great, and gives you a sense of completeness that is hard to come by anywhere else. In order to ride you have to do three things. First you must ride as cautiously as possible. Second you must be curteous, and try to dispell the cycling attitude myth. Third, you have to be a bit insane, realizing that no matter how cautious you are, bad things can happen, and lacking the mass of a car, the bad things will mostly happen to you. You have to be insane enough to ignore the dangers that you cannot eliminate in order to get the fulfillment. Patti worked up a large dose of that insanity today when she learned to deal with traffic.

Once we got into Portland. I added about ten miles to our trip heading to the wrong street. Portland has multiple sets of identically numbered streets. We got to the wrong one before we realized we had to turn around and head back up into the hills to my cousin's house. We were very releived to settle into a few days of sanity.