Friday marked the beginning of our big adventure, and as is typical for Ducatisti we met up at a Starbucks to start our day. I headed out a little before 7am and met up with the guys at the Starbucks in Dupont, WA. I was actually able to spend the night in my own bed as we had decided the night before to head South into Oregon instead of East into Idaho due to some bad thunderstorms. Here is the list of miscreants who were on the journey:
Me - '08 Ducati 848
Mark H - Ducati Multistrada 1000 DS
Bong - '06 BMW K1200S
JD - '06 BMW K1200S
Mark C - '08 BMW K1200S (Brand new, he picked it up only 2 days prior)
Marv - Honda Blackbird
Steve - Honda (not sure of the exact model, but it was some sort of sport touring bike)
Kurt - Yamaha (again, not sure of the model, but it was a big cruiser)
I was moderately disappointed that only two Ducatis showed up, especially since this was a ride organized by members of a Ducati Owners Club! Oh well, I got big points for being the only one on a crotch rocket.
After leaving the Starbucks we headed directly out to the coast and down into Astoria at which point we headed inland to hit some really nice twisties only to have it start raining on us which meant we weren't able to go nearly as fast as we would have liked, but it was still very nice to be out and running. It was a nice road through the forest and you could easily tell that this was lumberjack territory. After that we made our way down to Hwy 26 and had lunch out at Camp 18 which was a big hit with the guys. We sat inside and watched it rain on our bikes, but it started to clear up just as we were finishing and headed back out once again.
From there we found some really nice roads that led us into Tillamook. Would have been cool to stop in at the cheese factory, but we were running a little late already so we just kept on running. After that it was down to Newport (again, missing the Rogue brewery, total bummer) and we just continued on down 101 all the way to Florence.
All in all a fairly uneventful day other than the rain. My bike was completely filthy by the end of the day due to all of the rain and crap. The last 2 hours or so on 101 were pretty boring due to lots of traffic and people driving along 5-10mph below the damn speed limit. Very frustrating.
We stayed at the Three Rivers Casino in Florence and had a rather exciting evening. After dinner, Mark C wanted me to teach him how to play Craps so several of us headed over and shortly after we got there I started rolling and went on one hell of a hot streak. I must have been rolling for 20 minutes straight. I walked up with $50 and walked away after more than tripling my money at $160!
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