5 Down 4195 to go

So after a lovely visit in Bandon OR we've finally got our first day in, a whopin' 5 miles.  We've spent the past few days visiting with friends and doing a little bit of packing on the side and today we scrambled all day getting things shoved in bags, bungeed down, unpacked, reorganized, bickered a bit, repacked, discarded, crammed, jammed, cried, and a bunch of other verbage, until we set off at 4:30 in the afternoon with a 25 mile destination ahead and few hours of sunlight. We started off to town and had to stop at the truck weighing station to satiate our curiosity, Ryan weighing in at 450, bike, trail-a-bike, and trailer, myself weighing 400 with a similar load, Sam at 150 and Lilly 100. Lilly looked fully road savvy with her bucket panniers covered with stickers and an Oregon license plate to boot.  We had to stop a few times to stop and adjust our loads on the way into town with headwinds coming at us the whole way and all the shifting, we figured that at the rate we were going it would be dark by the time we got there. Even though we were expected to be at some friends house for the evening, we decided it would not be worth the risk, major readjusting sessions and other delays, I could just see us trying to set up camp in the  dark on the side of the road and trying to disconfigure our all set-up and that just settled it, we pulled over and decided to stay at some good friends right conviently at the edge of town.  I was not real excited to stop but could see the wisdom in getting a good early start in the morning since we have some serious bugs to work out.  Basically it boils down to having way too much stuff, too many clothes in particular, I think we all had to make some major sacrifices today, Lilly and her life-size doll, got enough of those, my hand drum, which I tried to strap unsuccessfully to the front of my bike and removed after I realized it was screwing up my steering, Ryan was an exception who says he really didn't dicker with leaving any of his belongings, the rest of us however were not that detached from material hang-ups.  I have to say though that it is quite satisfying and frightening to see all of your worldly possessions moving down the road, pretty trippy, especially considering that I have been a bit of a packrat the past several years, collecting magnets, plastic army men, lamps, books, marbles, etc. not to mention all of Ryan's tools, our furniture, kitchen stuff, on and on, all of it gone and in it's place, a seriously loaded band of bikes and trailers. Thrilling! Even if it was 5 miles.