Tour of the Oregon Coast by bike

As the title says, I'm headed up to Portland (leaving on Sunday morning) to ride my road/touring bike south on hwy 1/101 along the coast, all the way to Crescent City CA (a total of around 400 miles). I will be with my brother Greg and some other friends (total of 5 of us). We will be dropped off in Astoria Oregon on the morning of Wednesday 8/25 and begin riding. We plan to average around 50 miles a day, staying at campgrounds every night (we have reservations all the way thru). We will arrive in Crescent City CA 8 days later around 11am, load our bikes/gear into our drop-van, then drive a few hours and finally spend the night in Willits CA, then get up and hit the road around 8am. If all goes according to plana, I should be home by sometime Thursday afternoon (the 2nd of Sept). I've never done any road-touring before, and one of the guys in our group rode across the country (solo) 2 years ago, so I will be learning from 'the master'. I don't know if I will be able to update this site via my phone along the way (never tried before)...if I can I will post a few pics here and there, if not then it will be en-mass after I get home. Getting pretty psyched, it's happening soon now. I'm packed (about 98 % and pretty ready to go. I did a test-ride a week ago with about 95% packed, and it went fine. My 19lb bike weighed 64lbs including all the racks, bags and gear (and 2 bottles of water). I have since went thru my gear and dropped out a few things, added a few others, and I HOPE to still be at or under the 64lb overall weight. Doing just 50 miles a day on the road isn't really that much. I figure actual riding time would be around 4 to 5 hours, depending on the route and weather. Add in a lunch-stop somewhere and we are looking at maybe 6 hours, departing every day around 8 to 9am (ish). It won't be a frantic pace by any means, and we hope to be at the next nights campground somewhat early every afternoon. I am carrying breakfast and dinner for 7 nights (all needing only boiled water from my backpacking stove). Oh, and fresh ground coffee..also carrying coffee. MUST HAVE COFFEE! (My jetboil backpacking stove has a French-press as part of it's kit). This should be interesting as well as fun, and incredibly scenic too! AND...it's good experience for me as I have a West Coast Hwy-1 road-tour in my near future I hope (from Whidbey Island to San Diego). Figure that would take around 3 weeks to a month...tho if I'm by myself I'd likely push the pace a bit more than what this trip will be. And after that I want to do my own cross-country-road-tour (that would have to be after I retire which will be late March 23...so the super-road-trip would maybe around June 2023 and would likely take a month and a half to two months). And THEN there is my other bucket-list-ride: The Tour Divide! I talk about his every year...it's the self-supported off-road ride from Banff Alberta to Antelope Wells New Mexico (the Mexican border) following the conintental divide. That ride actually follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) and starts annually the first Friday in June. It's just under 2800 miles long and has over 150,000' of climbing (much harder than the cross country road tour by FAR). I'd hope to be able to do this in around 35 to 40 days, as I'd plan to average at least 75 miles a day. That ride would entail a somewhat different set of gear than road touring, basicly being much less, just the bare necessities. I'd be actually riding likely 10-12 hours a day, stopping for food and water in gas stations and mini-marts, and occasionally a restaruant of some sort. The TD is more about survival and keeping going no matter what nature throws at you, and to see what I'm capable of...where-as a road tour is about seeing the country by bike in a much more leisurely fashion with the actual riding being much less strenuous overall. The TD is about 90% dirt roads, with 5% singletrack and 5% pavement. It sounds horrificly awesome! OK...I need to go over my gear list (again) and see if there's ANYTHING I can do without, or anything I have forgotten that would be essential at some point. One good thing about having 4 other guys: if I do forget anything likely they didn't (ie: tools, extra inclement weather clothes, etc). And if anything bad were to happen I won't be alone. And I will have my SPOT (Satellite POsition Tracker) running every day by the way, which updates my poistion every 10 minutes real-time. If you are at all interested in where I'm at or have been, you can look at my SPOT page here: And so...I am off tomorrow (Friday) and plan a short road ride on the touring bike on Saturday (a final shakedown ride to make sure all is fine, this will be with the racks but no gear). Have a great weekend, and wish me luck! My FIRST road-tour...woo-HOO! Cheers!