Cassandra: (Wed June 27) Lisa and I crashed hard last night after our fast-paced bike ride with the Allegro people. Even still, I had a difficult time staying asleep in the early morning hours for some reason. My sleeping bag was bugging me and the light coming in the window shone in my eyes. But the light was a good thing, because that meant sun. We set the alarms a little later this morning: 8:30 am. After a quick breakfast and packing our stuff up, we loaded everything in the car and unloaded the bikes.

Our first stop this morning was the Allegro bike shop, to get our tires pumped up and ask directions to our mid-point for last night’s ride. Lisa had lost her sunglasses and wanted to go back and get them. She also wanted to try a road bike for today’s ride, so after giving them her mountain bike for storage, she rented one of their Giant bikes.

It took some work for her to feel good on the bike. The shifting and the power cages were very different from what she was used to. We took it slow through town as she got used to the new bike and then speeded up as we headed toward the Walla Walla Mission Historical Site. The Mission was about 7 miles from town, along a route that could have been easy had the map not tried to simplify things so much. We ended up winging it when it came to several turns but miraculously made it to the front entrance without too much of a hiccup.

We locked our bikes and headed off on the trails around the Mission by foot, exploring the Great Grave and the markings of where the old Mission used to be. We even walked a little portion of the Oregon Trail, which was quite exciting. The whole area was very neat. The Mission was set up at the very beginning of the time period when people were traveling west on the Oregon Trail. It originally served to educate the Cayuse Indians and teach them religion. When people started moving west on the Oregon Trail, the Mission also served as a resting point and somewhere that people could resupply their food and medicine. The Whitman family ran the place until they were massacred by the Cayuse Indians. You see, Mr. Whitman was a doctor and the Cayuse Indians had a tradition of killing medicine men who couldn’t heal their patients. When a measles outbreak killed three Indian children, Dr. Whitman attended the funeral, not knowing the Indians were planning on killing him. They found him later in his home and attacked him and his wife, killing both of them, two of their adopted children, and 9 other people. What sadness. The area we walked around was so beautiful; without reading the placards and hearing the story we would never have imagined such tragedy taking place there.

After we walked around and ate lunch in the grass, we headed south to find Lisa’s sunglasses at a convenience store in Umapine. To get there, we retraced part of our route from last night. Now, we had been warned at the bike shop about two big things to watch out for in Walla Walla. One was biting bees that hung out near the alfalfa. We were told to keep our jerseys zipped up as high as they could go as a precaution. The other thing we were warned about was something called a Goat Head, a hard little thorn that was notorious for popping bike tires, especially on local bike paths, which aren’t adequately maintained. So we were on our guard. I kept a close watch on the road ahead of me, looking for Goat Heads. But I was not keeping a watch out for dogs. In fact, I had left my taser and my air horn in the car because we hadn’t seen any dogs the entire trip. Today, unfortunately, I wasn’t on guard against dogs, and one actually came after us on the way to Umapine.

We were riding along when the medium sized dog approached, barking loudly. It was fast, and clung close to Lisa’s leg. We had been riding two-abreast with Lisa closer to the center of the road and the dog came from across the way, near her. I think we both kind of panicked. We were screaming, “Go Home!!” as loudly as we could, but the dog was not deterred. It kept up with us and was so close I thought it was going to bite Lisa. I yelled to Lisa, “Go Faster!” but it didn’t make much of a difference. The dog wasn’t fazed. Finally, though, it got its fill of terrorizing us and turned back. My heart was pounding nearly out of my chest.

We weren’t far from the convenience store at Umapine at that point, but we couldn’t find Lisa’s sunglasses.; they weren’t on the ground and no one had turned them in. So we headed east for a jaunt and another dog came after us. I screamed at it and then at the people in the front yard who didn’t even call their dog when it started barking and running after us. I was so mad. I yelled, “Call your dog!” as loudly and angrily as I could. It was the best I could do, since I didn’t have any pepper spray for the dog or the owners.

Luckily, no other dogs came after us. We headed further south along fields of alfalfa, finally pedaling past vineyards and orchards on our way down towards Milton-Freewater. We followed a creek for a while, going up and down with the gently (and not so gently) rolling hills. Lisa started to slow down, tired from last night’s wall. After dipping down below Milton-Freewater we finally came north and rode through it, stopping to pick up some fresh apricots and cherries from a local farmer.

The ride back from Milton-Freewater was hard for both of us. I kept eating and drinking (we were very well hydrated today and spent a lot of time peeing on the side of the road) but my legs were still tired. Lisa simply hit a wall. She said she was dying, and that no amount of food or water was going to revive her body. It was just done. Unfortunately, we still had about 7 miles to go at that point, so we had to continue. We got a little lost coming back into Walla Walla (maps can be so confusing), but found the bike shop without much trouble. All in all, we had ridden almost 46 miles today.

Hot from the sun (yay!) and tired from pedaling, we did the best thing we could think of to unwind from our ride and that was to listen to live music and drink chocolate-infused wine at a local bar. Tonight we are staying with another girl we met at the bike ride last night. People have been so crazy nice to us, it is amazing. Kindness is most definitely still alive in America.

Tomorrow our plan is to ride easy, maybe stop at some wineries. We also would like to do a walking tour of the local historic homes. How’s that for cross-training? :-) And then tomorrow night we head to Ellensburg.

Our ride today in numbers:
Total miles: 45.65 miles
Average speed: 12.6 mph
Max speed: 27.2 mph
Total riding time: 3:36:44