Day One

           Today was the first time I was going to meet the other bikers. I have only talked to Bryson and Kiana a little because I found them on Facebook. My parents and Kristi took me to the Seaside International Hostel where the others would be. The van pulled in and 8 people piled out. I introduced myself and met Kiana, Jackie, Julia (the leader), Alex, Peter, Bryson, Alex (Asian Alex), and Jacob (the other leader). We were all there except David who was going to meet us the next day.

    I was really excited to finally be in Oregon so I told my parents they could leave. We said our goodbyes and then moved into the hostel (Hostels are AWESOME). We walked to a pizza place down the road and got to know each other a little. We refrained from sharing our whole life stories since we knew we were going to be together for the next 55 days. After pizza we went down to the ocean and took our first group picture.

On our walk back from pizza we ran into a lady (a crazy lady). She told us how dangerous the highways were and how hilly It was. She advised us to not go biking. I don’t think she understood that the only way out of Oregon, for us anyways, was via bike. We put together our bikes. I had already assembled mine with the help of my dad, so I mainly just watched the others. It was pretty funny to see how little we all knew about our bikes. It made me feel a little better.

    That night we played a few games in the hostel, a little Pictionary action, which eventually just turned into charades. It was a great ice breaker and I learned that none of us were really that artistic. I enjoyed the first night in the hostel, but I would soon learn that I was really going to miss that hostel.