Adventure Cycle Association

Today was the first day of real riding.  WAHOO!!  The weather looked like it was going to rain on us and threatened with a little thunder.  However, we stayed dry and the sun didn't even peak out until mid morning, which made for some nice cool riding.  

The people I’m with are super nice and lots of fun.  There’s a competition between many as to who is going to be the last one to make it to camp.  I hope to stay in the middle of the pack.  I’m not the fastest, but hopefully not the slowest either.

We did this quaint loop out of Missoula and our destination was the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) headquarters.  Now, as a side note, I didn’t really know what to expect fully of touring cyclist.  There's my wonderful husband who rode across the US with 1 pair of underwear and he’s pretty fantastic and then some.  We’ve had some really neat people stay at our house through warm showers, a network of touring cyclists that stay at each other’s houses, either camping in the yard or staying on a couch or a guest bedroom.  But I didn't know if that was an accurate sample of neat, cool people that was consistent with the rest of the cyclists.  Well, it totally is.  

We walked into ACA and were greeted with an invite to help ourselves to the ice cream in the freezer.  THESE ARE MY KIND OF PEOPLE!!   There were also fantastic photo graphs on the wall and bikes hung with awesome stories behind them.  We were given a tour of the facility and saw the cartographers that work on all the ACA maps.  So cool!  Plus we had individual photos taken and then a group photo.  They've been doing this for I think they said 40 years.

Then was weigh ins.  It’s sort of a tradition to see how much your bike and kit (all the stuff you're bringing with you) weighs and you have to estimate it first.  Real life math for you right there!  We had all left our tents back at camp, because we're sleeping there tonight, but it’s still a good representation.  The lightest bike in our group is 43 pounds.  But I think Jerri is a little on the extreme side for trying to be light.  She told me she had taken a capstick tube, emptied it and filled it with deodorant to be lighter.  That's great for her- I have two deodorants.  Our heaviest bike is probably 90+ pounds loaded.  Everyone that is packing with panniers has 4, two in the front and two in the rear.  I only have the two in the back.  I weighed in at 49 pounds.  I was shocked!!  When I flew to Missoula my bike flew in a box with some of my stuff and it was over weight at 54 pounds.  Yet, that didn't include the weight of my two panniers and some of my stuff that they had in them.  So how does my 54+ pounds of weight turn into 49 when I didn’t add or take away anything?  United, I think you need to check your scale… and I will make sure to never stand on it!

We finished up at ACA and headed back to the campground.  While here, we’ve been eating from Costco, but soon enough we’ll start taking turns cooking.  I’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Before dinner, a couple of us went over to REI. Two people in our group, the married couple Barry and Cathy, came with these cool REI lightweight camp chairs.  We’ve all admired them and slowly I think we’re all going to buy our own.  I decided if I was the second lightest bike in the group, I could splurge and get a chair and bungee it to my rack.  As I type from it, I’m saying it’s a good investment. :)