Day 14 Sept 22, 2018

Spokane Valley, WA to The Dalles, OR

303 Miles

Tough guy Mike, he did this pose on his own.

When we first woke up, the weather seemed to be quite lovely. Slightly warmer than expected. Mike again got off to a good start, and we were off to The Dalles. I again...slept pretty much the whole time. Mary and my mom think it is quite funny to take pictures of me sleeping. I am not a "cute" sleeper. I'm surprised I didn't have drool hanging out of my mouth.

For the riders the drive was probably the worst yet. The roads were crap, especially with bikes that have little to no suspension. The body takes a lot of the shock. Mike noticed that the bolts from his gas tank started coming loose. He actually lost one of them. The bike was shaking and moving that much. On top of all that movement, there was a crap-ton of wind. When we pulled into the parking lot (about the time I woke up) the trees were almost horizontal. Okay, I may be exaggerating slightly, but you get the point. And if you've ever driven a motorcycle, these are not ideal conditions. I guess that's why they call it an endurance run.

We got back to the hotel a few hours prior to the riders. These were the afternoons we had been hoping for the whole trip. Everyone decided to just relax and pretty much do nothing, because lets be real, we have been doing something since Sept 3rd. or whatever day we got to Portland, Maine.

We went to downtown The Dalles, where they had some roads closed off. We were tracking Mike so we could cheer him on when he came through the checkpoint line, but somehow we still missed him. Go figure. Anyway, we did find him. He actually had some stories for us!!

If you've ever been told a story by Mike, you know he tells them with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I am unable to fully show this enthusiasm through this blog. The first story goes something like this; Mike and Charlie were just riding along on the motorcycles when all of a sudden a cow just comes out of the ditch and decides to come onto the rode and doesn't move so Charlie and Mike both have to weave. The cow goes back into the ditch, and then the cow comes back!!! Luckily no one or cow was hurt.

The second story was something about how this other rider was cold and decided to get in front of some female riders and do some push ups right in front of them. Apparently Mike thought this was quite hilarious.

Lastly, and I am unsure if I should even put this out there, but hell, I'm going to. Another rider, who will be left unnamed, had just filled up his tank, was trying to get his bike started and somehow manage to fall over, with his bike. Mike could not control himself and continued to laugh. While telling this story he realized that maybe he should have helped the guy. He said the guy stayed on the ground for awhile, but thought maybe out of embarrassment. Holy moly, I just wish I would have seen that one. I would have been rolling on the ground laughing.

The Sedition Brewing Company put on the dinner, and let me tell you folks, this dinner was delicious. Fresh Salmon caught today! I truly wish every one of you could be on this trip because we are just pure entertainment. There is always something going on. Either it's Mom and I messing around, Mary goofing around, Magic (he's a support crew member who has been adopted into our group) and I picking on each other, or Starry and Mike making weird faces. There is just something going on at all times. Today was one of those days were stuff just kept happening that was funny. One of the last examples was Starry trying to back the truck up to the trailer. It was like Austin Powers, backward, forward, backward forward, about 5 million times.

Mike was EXHAUSTED. He fell asleep at about 8:00pm. He was pooped. But we don't set off for the 50 miles until 11:00am tomorrow. We cannot believe that our journey is almost over.

In the midst of a story