Day 21 July 8, 2001

Astoria, OR

            This will be short. We thankfully did very little today but go to church and eat. Of course I should tell you that our group was split up among the Astoria Ward so I can't really speak for Jake, Dan, or Joey. Who knows what they did? Maybe they went for a bike ride. But I do know that Rocky and I did nothing today but rest. That's not true. I've been misleading our readers for some time now and I feel I should come clean. If you are a EB Trek Daily Update regular than you know that we go long stretches without updating anything and then all of a sudden we've gone a week. I promise we're not in some tropical paradise, sipping Piña Coladas and sunbathing. We actually are on our bikes everyday, riding to where we say we are and we have the tans to prove it.

            What happened is that last week our computer broke (apparently highly sensitive electronic devices don't react well to long distance biking. Who would've thought?) and so we've had to wait until we had access to a computer to type these up. Then we have to send them to Steve Hoopes (you can blame me for any bad or missing links), who then updates our website. It's a complicated process and you needn't concern yourself with the details, but it is the reason for the delay.

            Rocky and I are staying with the Allen family who live amid the trees on the hills above Astoria. They have given us free reign of their home and we have exploited their computer and phone lines like tyrants. Wonderful people. I would personally recommend their home as a great target after a long bike ride. Come on over.

            As for Dan, Jake, and Joey, it was a biking tourist's DREAM weekend. They were housed by actual cyclists, not impostors as we obviously are to anyone who knows their stuff. Dave and Michelle Diffenbach (please forgive me if I've slaughtered the spelling of your names) were their gracious hosts for the weekend, and their adorable children, 2 year-old Sariah and 8 month-old Donny, provided the entertainment. Sariah puts together puzzles like a champion (apparently she's some kind of super-genius) and Donny tears around the beautiful hardwoord floors of their home (deisgned and put in by Dave and Michelle themselves) in his walker like a Nascar driver. The dietary highlight had to be the fresh-picked raspberries from Michelle's mother's patch just next door. Fresh raspberries on ice cream is HEAVEN, for those of you poor creatures who haven't tried it yet. They swapped stories from the road with their hosts and quite enjoyed the anecdotes and pictures from their European honeymoon bicycle tour. Marrying a woman who loves to tour would be paradise on earth for Dan, but as for me, I'd be happy to find a girl who's never even heard of cycling.