Toprak and I left Phoenix last week finally on September 15th. We packed all our gear into her Prius, Esa, with our bikes dangling behind in the breeze with front row seats as we drove off into the desert sunset, Yosemite bound for a few days before a 30 hour Amtrak adventure to Seattle. We were to meet her longtime friend Kim in San Luis Obispo, where we would leave her car and get everything ready to take onto trains with us, couchsurf in Seattle for a night, and take another train first thing in the morning to Vancouver, BC, where we would begin our 2 month bike tour back down the coast to SLO.
With the exception of our driving exhaustion on the way to Yosemite and inability to sleep in the back of the car as we have before, (which required us to get an overpriced yet wonderfully rejuvenating motel just outside of Fresno) everything was going really well. Thanks to a netbook I impulsively bought the night before we left Phoenix, we managed to find the directions to run endless errands, and make all necessary preparations to box up our bikes for the train and also find extremely cheap luggage at Goodwill bins to stuff our overwhelming supply of panniers, clothes, food, tools, spare parts, and everything we have thus far dreamt of that might be necessary for a 2 month bike tour. We saved $30 on boxes thanks to previous cyclists returning theirs. Kim let us take showers and do laundry after our 12 mile hiking excursion in the Yosemite wilderness and everything no matter how big or small that befell us we seemed to be overcoming with ease, with the Universe on our side, patting us on the back every step of the way. "You can do it!"
Upon arriving in Seattle we unpacked and reassembled our bikes and finally felt the seats under our butts for the first time in almost a week on the ride to rendezvous with our couchsurfing host Rebecca, a friend of a friend of a friend, and her roommate Yuri.
No comments:
Post a Comment