Trish & Phill's Tandem TransAmerican

Tour 2003 

Jul 26  Eugene - Florence 63mi     (Last Day)

We went to the bike shop (Collins Bikes- same name no relation) before we left town to confirm the details for boxing up the bike to take back home. We also asked them if we could leave the Bob trailer and bag at the shop. We didn't want to take the trailer with us so we just took a pannier on the front wheel and the laptop in the back pack.

We set off from the centre of Eugene around 10.30am for our final destination, even though we had rode over 110 miles yesterday we were in fine form for this mornings ride totally focused on getting there.

True to form the wind was against us all the way and why should things change we started off that way so why not finish in the same manner ha-ha.

The pleasant ride soon turned very nasty, highway 126 which was the Adventure Cycling route turned out to be very dangerous in places, the traffic was so heavy and the shoulder was minimal and in some places absolutely none existent.  At one point we had to go on the other side of the road and walk up the shoulder as there was none on our side, it was the safer option of the two evils. We found out afterwards that Hwy 30 would have been a much safer road to ride on.  Adventure Cycling may need to look at this for their future maps.

An interesting section of the ride was a tunnel through a hill. It was about 300 metres in length located just before Mapleton. There was a button to be pushed when cyclists enter the tunnel to warn motorists of bikes in the tunnel.

The tunnel was on a 7% downgrade and there was lots of lights along the inside. We went through about 30MPH to get out as fast as possible. We felt ripped off today in finding a hill at all.  Hey this is our last day after all !!

It would be silly to say Trish was excited, she was jumping for joy at the thought of finishing. it was like New Years Eve counting down every mile marker from 10 to 0 into our final destination - Florence.

When we entered into Florence we had trouble finding a spot were we could actually dip our front wheel into the Pacific. We followed the coastal road round and rode past privately owned housing that kept us from the beach front or there were rocks and high edges so we could not get the bike in. Eventually we pushed the bike into someone's driveway and used their private drive/launching point to get to the water. Should have been really cheeky and knocked on the door and asked them to take a picture of the two of us dipping the front wheel. 

 .

Smiles all around

Trish happy as can be to have finished

The gloves I had used for the trip were worn out and holed, with salt (sweat encrusted) markings - got flung into the Pacific. They are now drifting out to sea on their way out to Australia.

We celebrated with a drink of Champagne at the Beachcombers Tavern in Old Town Florence.

THE END

"Hey Trish, I was thinking maybe next year we could......"

Page owned & maintained by Trish Collins email to  trishphill@aapt.net.au.  Last Updated 28/07/2003