Crush the coast – Stage 3
Reedsport to Gold Beach, OR – 114.3 miles – 5,279ft – 7hrs 08 mins
We woke up to mechanical and an insulting amount of McDonalds breakfast. It was cold and day three is always the most painful. The ligaments are locked into place and the weariness has settled into that special place where the muscle touches bone. We managed to get the mechanical temporarily fixed simply by taking off a rear brake... it'll have to do until we get to bike shop that knows has the stuff to bleed disc brakes. That turned out to be a tall order and three bike shops later the group of seven to split into one group of three and one of four. The four went up the road in search of mochas and the hotel. Two hours behind, Michael, Patrick and Jake got the brake taken care of, then launched an all-out assault to catch the four. Pain be damned, the group was caught just ten minutes from the hotel. What was three and four was seven again. We rolled along through the dusk on what may be the most serene and beautiful three miles of the whole ride – the approach to Gold Beach.
