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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.....
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.
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
The Capitol Building
The sky is threatening....
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.
there are only 2 kinds of bikes: It's a Ninja... look that one's a Harley... oh there's a Ninja... Harley...Ninja...
