Astoria Loop – Night Time Double Century

A couple buddies and I started a ride at 4 pm to meet for pizza then at 5 pm we headed off into the woods for a night of nonstop pedal spinning and star gazing. 2 of us ran 49/17 on 30s and the other with 48/17 on 28s.

Scappoose-Vernonia highway, 47 & 202 all had basically no traffic on a beautiful & cool Saturday night. We faced stiff headwinds on 30 out of Portland and into the forest, but that was reduced somewhat with the tree cover. I stayed low in the aerobars asuch as possible to pull the group into the night.

Made it to Astoria in 5.5 hours from Portland with a couple quick water stops. Fortunately I got to burger king 10 minutes before they closed so I could snag an impossible whopper and onion rings for dinner! The fellas ate gas station burritos.

We continued on into the night taking side roads where we could, but highway 30 had basically no traffic so that was nice. Lots of wandering on parallel roads like old US 30. Stopping in Clatskanie for coffee about 3:30 am, I pulled a real pro-move leaving my phone in the bathroom and of course I didn't notice until 5 miles down the road! I doubled back while the fellas took a quick bivy/just slept directly on the road, so they got a nice 35 minutes rest while I lucked out with a bonus 10 miles on the day. Beaver Falls road is a real treat, seeing that massive waterfall was a great mental boost.

Daybreak was wonderful but there was full cloud coverage which meant no actual sunrise. Still I got that wonderful dopamine boost when making it successfully through the night. We cruised along the gentle rolling hills at roughly 20 mph as the entire return trip featured a lovely little tailwind.

Temperatures all night and morning were really pleasant at just under 60 F. I wore summer kit- bibs base layer and jersey – fingerless gloves and brought only sun sleeves plus a superlight wind breaker which was perfect.

Great practice for next month's 400 mile fixed gear race – PSP!