 how you feeling Ryan? I feel great mainly because I just ate a whole plate of beans and I feel great because we're moving it's exciting to finally be doing this after talking about it for so long and I feel great because you are with me and I feel great because we're here this is it there's no place in the world I'd rather be than right here right now with you we are in Astoria Oregon and this is where my favorite movie in the entire world was filmed the Goonies. Do you like the Goonies? I love the Goonies. Goonies, it probably set me off on a life and adventure. Goonies! This is so cool. Go ahead and lead them wherever. Yeah all right good. This is my new buddy John. Hey! I came out of nowhere he's like oh you can stay at our place we have a bike place. Chris, this is amazing. You can tickle that right there. What is that thing? It's a microphone to make sure the audio is good. Well I think part of it is just trying to figure each other out every single day. Yeah. You would never get it figured out. You're like okay so this seems to be a common trait with John how am I going to deal with this for the rest of my life. See actually you're on the planet you know and you're a bunch of molecules and so you might be attracted to each other but then again you might not so that's it you see this this trek may be the decisive thing. I went on a bike trip with one of my boyfriends not him and yeah we got it was pretty intense so we didn't last. You didn't end up marrying him. No. He was an awesome guy but no I didn't work. How long have you two been together? 27 years. Wow. What's the key? What's the made at that work? 27 years. I think it's just we share we share this common bond of creativity so we're constantly bouncing ideas and stuff back and forth. You know we use each other's brains quite effectively. I really think that this is great that you're doing this because you're really going to be able to see the United States. And you're so fortunate you have each other. You know no no noises from you know and you're not enclosing a little capsule in a vehicle. The reason we started the bike in is because Columbia County has this reputation of not being very friendly to bicyclists so because we have a lot of log trucks a lot of red rednecks and stuff and then I used to bike a lot and then I thought oh we need to accommodate we need to make these people feel welcome so after they've got smoked out and you know ran off the road and stuff they need to be able to come here and let you know let them know that there's some normal people in Columbia County really there are so that's why we started it. This is the kind of stuff I was hoping to find you know just small town weirdness. We found it on our first night and John speaks fluent Swedish so we said a whole conversation in Swedish. This is just keeps on getting weirder and weirder. All right lead the way to the bamboo forest. Look at that windmill. It's like we're in Sweden. These ghosts are watching us. Hey guys you can tell they hang around humans sometimes because they're not really scared but they're like who are these people. Is there a lot of bamboo in Oregon is this something that happens in Oregon. Let's go into the forest. If you had told me when we woke up today that we'd be walking around a bamboo forest with the guy that speaks Swedish hanging out with goats I would say that doesn't sound right but hey here we are. This is what happens when you're just kind of open yourself up to the world. Through the squeezy. Now we have a great view of the shell station. Allie you have a lot of reading to do. There is an amazing selection of books here. How to live be 100. How to live to be 100 look at that guy. Sex can be fun after 80 after 90 after 100 and after lunch. So Allie this is a big moment. It's your first day of bike touring across America. How do you feel? I feel wonderful. We've met already so many cool people. Can you believe it? I can't believe it. This is going to be a good ride. Good morning beautiful Allie. Good morning Ryan. So I forgot to teach you something. For my very first bike tour I've been chanting this and I go no crashes no whammies no windies no flaties and it's just like a chant that I do at the beginning of every morning and so now you need to do it too. So that these bad things don't happen to us like crashing and whamming and flatting out all that stuff. It's weird. I know it's weird. No flaties no whammies no crammies. We'll get on we'll get on the same page here soon enough. The point is we're warding off evil spirits. Okay I can do that. And bringing in the good spirits to protect us on our bicycles. This right here is a very beautiful road. No cars. Totally lush and green. The trees create like a tunnel of foliage. Nice to get off the highway for a little bit. What do you got there? I got some flowers in my hair. I think that it's really good that if you ever have an opportunity to put flowers in your hair you should do it. Take advantage. Look at that. It's hard to be anything other than blissful when you have flowers in your hair. This looks really cool. Yeah it's looking good. Yeah. Should we pull it right here? How's it going? I think he wants food. Do you have any horse food? Unfortunately I forgot my carrots. I'll give you scratches. I'll give you scratches. That's nice right? He wants in. Give him a cliff bar. You don't get any cliff bars. Why don't we just dish the bikes and ride the horses the rest of the life. All right see if they're into it. You want to go for a little ride? I don't know if track will be cool with that though. I hate to say it Ali but our beautiful byway is over. We're back on the highway. The problem with riding on highways is your left ear goes numb because it's just cars whizzing by the whole day. Like that. It is raining and I guess that makes sense because we are in the Pacific Northwest. We're gonna wish for these cold days probably about a week or two down the line when it's like 95 and hot. We have made it to Portland and we're back at Hillary and Jason's. How's it going? Sorry we're spending one more night with you but we thought it'd be a good place to hang out. We're always happy to have you. Ali how you feel your longest day ever? Oh I feel great. Yeah it was hard. On my neck mostly. Well your neck looks cool at least. Oh yeah well I try to keep stylish. Oh my god it's Jason and Hillary we're in your backyard. Hi. My old University of Colorado Farron Hall buddies. How do you do Zernation? Go buffs. We are seeking love advice along the way. Relationship advice. How do we make it work? You've been together 20 years. Yeah tell us how long you guys have been together. Yeah you're there in the magic. The magic happened in the dorms 20 years ago. That's true it's 20 years ago 98 99 yeah. Make sure I think for us what's worked is to make sure to encourage your partner to go on their own adventures and also to have some together but to like I think the autonomy that we have is certainly something that has worked for both of us and made it fun to come back together and share those stories. Yeah I think that's right. I think having a life together and your own separate life is a huge thing as well knowing your own people. Being having each other and being but not being completely dependent on each other and certainly the adventure side is huge. I think you've done a really amazing job of knowing when I need to just like get out and be by myself for a little while. But we've done some amazing trips together like surfing in in Baja and diving all over the world. Yeah a lot of scuba diving and all that good stuff so I think like having the having those things that you love to do together and you can share and enjoy I think is essential but also to yeah be able to play on your own and pursue your own things and and figure out whatever that balance is for you because it's going to be different for everyone. That's right don't forget who you are but know who you are as a couple in the dichotomy I think it's very important. Everyone deals with stress and anger in different ways and knowing how the other partner deals with I think is very important and like I said Hill's a little independent she'll need some space and then I've learned she wants to talk about it and she doesn't need me to give her any like advice which I want to do she just wants to kind of unload a load or not unload is the wrong word but download that's a much better word and so I've realized that kind of give her a space and then she'll come and just download and I don't have to solve her problems I just need to listen to the problems and I think that's important it took me a little while to figure that out and I'm still figuring it out of course you guys are gonna have a blast have so much fun take the good with the bad and I know it's mostly gonna be good