Blue's Big Blog......The Road Trip Section

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blues2cruise
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Blue's Big Blog......The Road Trip Section

#1 Unread post by blues2cruise »

Saturday, September 30, 2006 Day 1

6am......odometer reading.....23,354km

The day started off 2-1/2 hours late due to a series of incidents that I was asked not to mention. :laughing:

Dr-bar...who I sometimes refer to as Charles Atlas....wanted me to wait until he got to my place to help find the wiring that had slipped under the seat when the yamaha tech neglected to put the wiring back where it was. Dr-bar had also asked me to wait until he got there to load my bike. :roll:

Well, I removed the seat myself and retrieved the wire and I also secured my famous blue crate myself. After all, I have had a bit of experience with that crate. I hauled all my gear out to the bike and had most of it loaded by the time dr-bar got there.....2-1/2 hours late. :twisted: :P

Even at that, he still had to tie another webbing strap on and wrench on the tie downs even more.....They were so tight, a tsunami wouldn't have dislodged them. They were so tight, I could not undo them at the end of the day.
I used my camera bag as a handlebar bag...sans camera....it worked quite well. :)

We were finally ready to leave....thank goodness....because I was baking inside all my gear. I was dressed for the outside...at speed....not standing around in my garage while Charles Atlas was making sure I could never get my stuff off my bike. :P

Getting to the border line up was easy. Getting to the actual border took us an hour. Once I was at the border, the guard asked the usual questions and then we were riding down the highway for roads unknown.

Our adventure was about to begin. We had decided to use I-5 South for the beginning to make up some time. We stopped in Bellingham for our first stop. We went for late breakfast and to talk about the next leg of our journey. We got back onto I-5 and headed toward Seattle.

What a nightmare!!!

Travelling I-5 between Everett and Tacoma is like a suicide mission. Prepare to meet your maker. :shock: It was approaching rush hour and almost every single vehicle had a driver in a frenzy. There are several lanes of traffic and exits on the left and exits on the right. You need to be extra vigilant if you want to survive I-5. The pollution is horrendous. At one point we pulled of the freeway under an overpass. Dr-bar was feeling drowsy and we think it was from the bad air. While we were there, dr_bar had to fix his pants and inadvertently left his expensive leather belt on the side of the road under the overpass. :laughing:


By the time we got to Seattle, my shoulders were hurting from tension and stress. My hands and wrists were hurting from hanging on to the grips for dear life. I put on my blinkers to let dr_bar know I was leaving the freeway, so he could follow. Not knowing the city at all you take your chances of where you will end up.

We ended up in construction mayhem. It must have taken us 30 minutes to get through the construction area. While we were sitting in the lineup we had a chance to talk. Dr-bar was feeling the same way about the freeway. We decided we needed to go for a tea and regroup before carrying on. We passed by the famous space needle, so we turned into the parking lot for a quick look and a phot op.....



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After that we decided to find a Starbucks. They have tea that each of us like. Now...you would think that in a city where Starbucks was founded it would be easy to find one, wouldn't you?
Nope!
We rode around for awhile....even asked for directons...and still could not find one....so just when we were thinking of giving up, I made a right turn onto the street that would take us to the freeway and I spotted a coffee and tea shop on the corner. I immediately put on my signals and parked. Once we paid for our parking spaces, we went in to order our teas. staring us in the face, was the best looking pumpkin pie...yes, we had one each. :mrgreen:
I was glad we couldn't find a Starbucks, because this was such good pie.

We got to the freeway and bolstered up our reserve to tackle the traffic again. We rode for a while until we got close to Olympia. Dr-bar and I decided to go into Olympia to get rooms for the night and have a look around. After the stress of the freeway and feeling the fatigue, it felt good to get into Olympia. It's a pretty town and the air felt fresh.

Dr-bar and his Valkyrie at Olympia

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The Capitol Building


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The sky is threatening....


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It did rain in Olympia....but during the night. When we left in the morning, the roads were drying up and the sun was breaking through.

We did a brief sightseeing ride around Olympia before we actually left the area. It's very beautiful, clean and fresh there.

We left Olympia via Highway #8 to make our way to the coast.

More to come....right now it's late and I need to get some sleep. Darn this having to go to work everyday. :lol:
Last edited by blues2cruise on Wed Sep 09, 2009 7:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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#2 Unread post by NorthernPete »

Nice pics blues!

I envy you peeps who can still ride right now (The highway 2 hours south of me was closed for 6 hours due to snow storms on Friday)

why the new blog, just out of curiousity.
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#3 Unread post by blues2cruise »

NorthernPete wrote:Nice pics blues!

I envy you peeps who can still ride right now (The highway 2 hours south of me was closed for 6 hours due to snow storms on Friday)

why the new blog, just out of curiousity.
cuz this is going to be a long story with a lot of pics......I thought it would be easier to read.....
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#4 Unread post by jstark47 »

How does the V-Star do keeping up with the Valkyrie?
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#5 Unread post by KarateChick »

Blues, glad to see you are back and have begun your story. Sounds like a great time and I'm looking forward to the reading and pics. Maybe another time (warmer months, not October!!) you'll consider heading east sometime and meet the piles of us this way. :)
Ya right, :wink: there are only 2 kinds of bikes: It's a Ninja... look that one's a Harley... oh there's a Ninja... Harley...Ninja...

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#6 Unread post by sv-wolf »

Hi Blues

Glad to hear from ya!

Sounds like you and the Doc have set up one of those entertaining kind of relationships for a long ride together. :D

Pity about the traffic and the building works. That kind of achey, stressed out feeling really tests your committment to biking. May it be brief and passing.

Nice pics. I liked the darkening evening sky around the Capitol building. Very atmospheric.

Here's to a brilliant ride for you both.

Ride safe and have fun.

Richard
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#7 Unread post by dr_bar »

jstark47 wrote:How does the V-Star do keeping up with the Valkyrie?
Before she comes on and tells stories, it can't touch it... 8)

Well maybe that's a bit of a story... :roll: :oops:

I haven't ridden a bike that big before and if you'll notice, it was loaded for bear and so I had a bit of an issue with it. Blues couldn't beat me on the straight, but I had troubles keeping up in the corners, besides, she found her groove and had a ball. But this is her story to tell...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Two wheels move the soul!"

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#8 Unread post by blues2cruise »

jstark47 wrote:How does the V-Star do keeping up with the Valkyrie?
Given that there were more twisty roads than straight roads on our trip...I was usually waiting for dr_bar to catch up. :lol:

It is true though that on the straight stretches the Valkyrie has power to spare. When dr-bar needed to communicate to me, he would move into the passing lane and with an easy twist of his throttle would be abreast of me in mere seconds. A lot of sign language gets used such as pointing at the gas tank or mimicking drinking.....
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#9 Unread post by blues2cruise »

DAY 2 The next leg of our journey started by going out the wrong road. It was such a lovely ride we road for a while before we determined we were in fact going the wrong way. We stopped in at a state park before leaving. It was nice to be in the trees and enjoy the view over Olympia....and it smelled good there.

We managed to find our way to Highway #8 to cross to the coast. It was a nice easy scenic ride. When we got the junction we pulled into the service station for fuel and a coffee break. The sun was out in full force and we had to strip down to the bottom layer. Even at that we were still sweating sitting in the sun.

The ride from that point started to get even more scenic. Making our way to #101 we passed through many small towns. You cannot be in a hurry if you plan to go this route because the speed limit goes down for the towns.
We passed through places like Elma, Montesano, Cosmopolis, Raymond, Willapa, South Bend, Long Beach, Ilwaco, Chinook and finally to the Astoria Bridge.

wow oh wow oh wow!!!

Here is a pic of dr_bar across the road from me. I went across the highway so as to show the road.

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I was waiting for traffic to clear so that I could cross the highway again and rejoin dr_bar. I was looking in my mirror and when traffic cleared I started moving. I signalled my intention and then I saw a glimpse of something so I stopped. When I looked again I saw a solo biker....I thought it was dr_bar doing the usual routine of pulling out and blocking traffic. So, I pulled out onto the highway and when suddenly I heard a beep. I glanced again and then I could see that it was not in fact dr_bar, so I rolled on the throttle and got out of his way fast.
He was a 1%er......at least that's what dr_bar said....the rider was showing colours ( and for our southern friends, colors :P )
He was far enough away when I first started to move out that he could have slowed a titch.....but..oh-h-h-h, n-o-o-o-o.....he had to keep speeding and beep at me. I truly thougt it had been dr_bar or I would never had pulled out. :oops:

Shortly after that we stopped again to show how wide the Columbia River is....with the bike of course. :wink:


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If you look carefully you can see a portion of the bridge above the saddle.....
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Then I had to stop yet again....

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It would be good to be there at a different time of day for better exposure, but sometmes when you're travelling, you don't have a choice.

We then crossed that bridge from Washington into Oregon. Halfway across there is a small sign saying "Entering oregon", but with two hands busy keeping up with traffic flow and no place to pull over, I couldn't get a picture.
The bridge is spectacular to see. It is very, very long and travels low over the river until you get to the Astoria side. While we were crossing the bridge, I spotted a cruise ship and was wondering how on earth it could cross to the ocean. Then suddenly the bridge takes a steep uphill incline and you are no longer travelling near the water. I have never been on a bridge like that before. It was quite an experience.

We wound down the ramps into Astoria. The plan had been to get to Astoria for a lunch break. We cruised slowly through this lovely seaside town glancing side to side looking to see what was here. Suddenly I spotted an old boat up on the grass....It said Bowpicker Fish and Chips. I put my blinker on to let dr_bar I was turning right. I then pulled into the curb and parked. I was going to ask dr_bar how he felt about this quaint little eatery. He pulled up beside me and before I could even ask him, he was smiling from ear to ear.....He had smelled the fish and chips cooking and was thinking how good it would have been to go there when he saw my signal come on. He was ecstatic.......

We got our food and sat out at one of their two picnic tables and were soon joined by others. This turned out to be a very popular place. It seemed like it was well known by the locals and some inlanders as well.

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While we were there we all got involved in conversation. The wonderful thing about travelling by motorcycle is how fascinated people are by the whole concept. Everywhere we went, people were chatting to us. First they would notice the out of country licence plates and ask where we were from. Often times women would come by and talk to me saying I was so brave or similar encouraging things.

So far the trip has been great...unless you count all the noisy boneheads at the hotel from the night before who kept traipsing back and forth all night talking too loud......but I digress......the travelling part has been top notch so far. :)

While we were crossing the bridge I noticed a tall thin structure on top of a hill in Astoria. When we were at the Bowpicker's I asked the owner what it was. It is called The Astoria Column. It basically shows the history of the area including the trek of Lewis and Clark.

She explained how to get there, so after lunch we headed up the hill. Here is looking down at a small portion of the road. In the background you can see the bridge.
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I snapped the column from a couple of different...ummm, angles....considering the thing is round, I suppose angles is the wrong word. :laughing:
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And of course with the blue star...

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The column is open for people who feel inclined to climb the stairs. Normally I would be excited to do just that, but I was still battling the chest condition and was a bit short of breath. I was sad to miss it. At the gift shop a person could buy little balsa planes at 3 for 75 cents (I think) and take them to the top of the column to let them fly. A lot of kids were having fun with that.

Of course two bikes loaded down with gear stirred up the usual...all sorts of people coming over to have a chat. I think our visit to the column may have been somewhat quicker if not for all the people wanting to chat with the two Canadians on bikes from the "frozen north". :laughing: Finally we made our break and said our good byes, but had to take one last picture before heading down the hill. This one is in the opposite driection from the bridge looking inland over the valley.



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We left Astoria to cross another bridge to get to us to the ocean. I must say, they do have some interesting bridges down there. After crossing the bridge, one of the first signs I saw was a Tsunami warning sign. :shock:

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My first thought was "Is this a knee jerk reaction to world events?" Then I re-evaluated as we rode along. All along the coast at the lower leels were those signs....Entering....and then "Leaving Tsunami zone. Some of them told you to go to higher ground.

I guess they are the same idea as some of our highways here that are in avalanche zones. The signs will tell you "NO STOPPING. avalanche zone. And then later there will he another sign to tell you END AVALANCHE ZONE.

There are a lot of small communities along the coast so I guess it's a good reminder not to get too complacent.

Next.....the coastal shots.......
Last edited by blues2cruise on Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#10 Unread post by High_Side »

Great pics and story Blues :righton:

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