Ride for Chiropractic

Thursday, June 7, 2001

Cape Lookout State Park, Oregon to Pacific City, Oregon -- 18 miles

We woke up fighting this morning - Lorraine was cranky, and Lenny was threatening to send her home. Then, we discovered we had lost our air pump, and Lenny had broken a spoke on his back wheel. Neal Brenner lent his pump and expertise to make the repair. After noon, we got on the road, and biked to Pacific City. We had lunch at Pelican Brewery & Restaurant, looking out at the ocean. Now that the weather is clear, we have been enjoying the gorgeous views from the bike route along the Oregon coast. When we were setting up camp, we met a few of the 15 riders who are on the Adventure Cycling organized tour. We decided that we should stay ahead of them, in case of any problems, until we got to a bike shop to buy an air pump. Lorraine spoke to her good friend Kara who is cat-sitting for the summer - to her amazement, Clifton has learned to open doors in the house!

Wednesday, June 6, 2001

Manzanita, Oregon to Cape Lookout State Park, Oregon -- 50 miles

We started biking at about 9:45 am, and met our first fellow cross-country tourer on the road. George Tregea is 72 years old, lives in Rio, and is riding his TourEasy recumbant bike to Yorktown, Virginia. We biked and had lunch together at Pacific Seafood in Bay City. He told us stories about his world travels, and we told him more about the Ride for Chiropractic. He decided to end his biking for the day in Tillamook, but we continued on to Cape Lookout State Park. There were no yurts available, so we got a hiker/biker site and camped by the ocean. On the beach, we dipped the back wheels of our bikes in the ocean and took pictures. In camp, we met another cross-country biker, Neal Brenner from Atlanta.

Tuesday, June 5, 2001

Cannon Beach, Oregon to Manzanita, Oregon -- 15 miles

It had started raining around midnight on Monday night and continued all day on Tuesday. We debated whether we should ride at all, but decided that we needed to press on. We rode about 15 miles over steep hills and along busy roads. The nonstop rain and the cold weather really made things miserable. In the town of Manzanita, we were looking for a motel room to dry out in, and spoke to a nice gentleman who helped us out. He told us about the yurts at Nehalem Bay State Park - round wooden cabins with a bed, couch, electricity, skylight, and space heater! We were able to dry our clothes and gear, and had a great night's sleep as well!

Monday, June 4, 2001

Astoria, Oregon to Cannon Beach, Oregon -- 30 miles

Lenny's sister Susan and her husband Mel drove us to Astoria, Oregon from their home in Lacey, Washington - a scenic 3-hour trip. Earlier that morning, Lenny had spoken to Darren Dunlap of the Daily Astorian and gave him an interview over the phone. Darren said he would meet us if he could, and expressed interest in covering our cross-country tour and writing about vertebral subluxation.

At Bikes & Beyond in Astoria, we spoke to Richard Fencsak, a freelance travel writer for the same newspaper, and told him about the ride as well. After picking up our bikes, we started our journey at 1:30 pm. We ran into our first obstacle - construction that had shut down the bridge we were supposed to cross. The alternate route was about 3 miles longer. We pulled into the Sea Ranch Campground at Cannon Beach at 5:30 pm. A great dinner at Mo's Fireside Restaurant (especially the tasty clam chowder) completed our first day on the road.

Sunday, June 3, 2001

Saturday, June 2, 2001

Training Schedule

Oddly enough, tours longer than one week require less training than shorter ones because you can do a substantial amount of training on the road! Care to join us for a couple weeks? Here's some training tips that we use from The Essential Touring Cyclist by Richard A. Lovett.

Your training goal should be to gradually build up to a weekly mileage that will allow you to take longer day rides or easy weekend tours without additional training.

You could do the build-up in stages, stopping at one level for a few weeks before increasing to a higher level, at no more than 10% to 15% per week. Once you've reached your desired weekly mileage, the process of maintaining it is what I call "base training."

If your goal is to complete a long, single-day tour or a two-day self-contained tour in reasonable comfort (as opposed to doing so quickly), you can manage quite well if your weekly mileage is at least 125% of the distance of the ride or weekend tour.

In other words, 125 miles a week of training will support a single-day, 100-mile ride or a two-day self-contained tour of 100 miles.

But just racking up the mileage isn't enough. You can accumulate 105 miles a week by doing 15 miles every day, but that won't prepare you as well for a 70-mile trip as doing less mileage but getting in an occasional ride of at least 40 miles. You need to train for endurance and long periods of time in the saddle.

The chart below shows training schedules for weekly mileages of 50, 75, 100, 125 and 150.

Base Training Schedule
	Day
Weekly Mileage	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
50	10	rest	10	5	rest	25	rest
75	18	rest	10	7	rest	35	5
100	24	rest	8 (I)	10	rest	50	8
125	23	10	10 (I)	12	rest	60	10
150	20	10 (I)	15	15 (P)	rest	75	15

(I) = Interval Training (optional) entails repeated short sprints of up to 2 to 4 minutes. Find a way to make it fun by charging hills, dashing to stoplights, or impulsively deciding to go as hard as you can for a mile. The speed part of these workouts should be about 10 to 15 minutes.

(P) = Pace Training (optional) workouts are longer, not at a sprint, but faster than your normal touring speed. The purpose is increasing the speed you can maintain over distances of 5 to 10 miles. If you don't want speed workouts, there's no obligation. Take the speed days as easy ones and do the mileage at your normal pace.

Friday, June 1, 2001

Packing List

We'll be carrying everything on our bikes for 3 months! The list below total about 85 pounds of gear.

• Ace bandage
• Adjustable wrench
• Airline tickets
• "Alien" bike tool
• Bag balm
• Bandanas, 1 each
• Baseball caps, 1 each
• Bike tights, 1 pair each
• Books, 1 each
• Brake cables, 2
• Brochures, 100
• Bungee cords, 2
• Camera
• Can opener
• Candle lantern
• Candles for lantern, 9
• Can opener
• Cell phone
• Chain link
• Chain lubricant
• Chapstick
• Compression sacks, 2
• Cookbook, 1-pot gourmet
• Cooking mess kits, 2
• Cooking utensils
• Cooking: 2-qt. pot
• Credit cards, 2
• Cycling gloves, 2 pairs
• Cycling gloves, neoprene
• Cycling jerseys, long-sleeve, 1 each
• Cycling jerseys, short-sleeve, 2 each
• Cycling shoes
• Cycling shorts, 2 pair each
• Dental floss
• Deodorant
• Derailer cable, 2
• Duct tape, 6 feet
• Film – slide and print
• First aid kit
• Flashlights, 2
• Fleece pullover, 1 each
• Fuel bottles, 2
• Hair brush, 2
• Headlight & tail light
• Helmets, Schwinn, 2
• Hydrosocks, 1 pair each
• Insect repellent
• Locks for bike, 2
• MAC (ATM) card
• Mallet for tent stakes
• Maps from Adventure Cycling
• Matches, waterproof
• Olive oil
• Overgloves, waterproof
• Pack towels, large & small
• Panniers, front & back
• Pens, 2
• Pepper spray
• Pillows, 2
• Pocketmail e-mail device
• Polypropelene long johns
• Rain top and pants
• Razor and blades
• Ride for Chiro. tee-shirts
• Safety flags, 2
• Safety reflective gear
• Sandals, 1 pair each
• Shaving creme
• Shoe covers, waterproof
• Shorts, casual, 1 pair each
• Sleeping bags, 2
• Sleeping pads, 2
• Soap, Dr. Bronner's
• Spatula for cooking
• 4-spice container
• Spokes, 7
• Scrubber, to clean pots
• Stove, MSR Whisperlite Int'l
• Sunglasses, with 2 lenses
• Sweatpants, Polartec, 1 pair each
• Sunscreen, SPF 15
• Swimsuit, 1 each
• Swiss Army knife
• Synthetic socks, 6 pairs
• Tent, Sierra Designs 2-person
• Tent groundcloth
• Tire, spare, 1
• Tire pressure gauge
• Tire pumps, 2
• Tire tubes, spare, 3
• Toilet paper
• Toothbrush & toothpaste
• Traveler's checks
• Tube patch kits, 2
• Water bottles, 4
• Waterproof bags, 8
• Wristwatch with alarm
• Writing journal
• Ziploc bags & ties