Tales of the bike boxes

Hello all! First post from east of the Atlantic!

We had an easy time with the big boxes on the Tube and train in London, once we figured out that we could use a trolley instead of carrying the damn things. The morning commuters didn't seem to mind much, though maybe they'll tell their spouses about the weirdos on the Underground.

We spent yesterday in London, walking. And walking. And...walking. Saw the sights. London Bridge is kind of boring. The Tower, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Eye, the "Temms," Buckingham Palace, a couple Banksy stencils. Okay. Done with London. Onward!

We're in Bratislava now. Much nicer feel than London. Bit of an adventure with the bikes here. It was pouring when we got off the plane. The airport's not much, so the boxes got a little wet. They were on their last legs. On the advice of the tourist lady, we put the bikes together to take them on the bus. But the bus wouldn't take them, so Erin had to cry and sniffle a little. First time, though!

We eventually took a taxi. Or, we took a taxi and our bikes took another. But we got here okay in the end. Just spent a bit more money. That's okay. Tomorrow's payday!

We walked into the old city for lunch, where we ordered a sandwich of some sort. Talked to an odd lady from Alabama who said it was deathly hot the other day. It's definitely warm here, and if she thought it was bad, us Washingtonians are in for it.

We'll post pictures when we find a USB port. For now, you'll have to use your imagination.

Talk to you soon!

Packed up and ready to go

Dang it's hot around here. But it's hotter where we're going! We spent the afternoon under the sun today, and a bit under the shade of the crab apple tree, taking apart and boxing our bikes. It went like this:

1) Take off wheels (Easy!)
2) Take off front fenders (Easy!)
3) Put padding on tubes (Easy!)
4) Took off 3 pedals (Relatively easy!)
5) Got pissed
6) Took bike to shop to get pedal off (Annoying!)
7) Took off handlebars (Easy!)
8) Put bike in box (Easy! --but)
9) Rack sticks up, seat tube sticks up (Getting pissed again)
10) Calm oneself (Not as easy as it should be)
11) Took off racks (Easy!)
12) Shifted, tweaked, stuffed, jammed (Easy!)

We leave early tomorrow morning! Fun, flights, and five hours in Toronto! Exciting! Check back early and often; we'll try to post as often as possible.

Miles so far: 0
Bike shops utilized: 3 [Kulshan Cycles (packing trinkets), BICycles (packing foam tubing), Classic Cycle (pedal removal)]

Four Days and Counting...

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, no days.... Nervous, yes! Excited, yes! Ready, yes! Today we will try our first test pack and make sure we have enough room in our paniers. And room for things to bring back...it might be a challenge, especially for me! We will keep you posted as we go along... till then....

How to pick up chicks

Two new additions to the coop. A Barred Rock and an Australorp. No names yet. Feel free to give your suggestions. Our current chickens are Edith (for Edith Head, prolific costume designer of yesteryear) and Aung (for Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese political prisoner).

We got these two as a preemptive measure. Aung and Edith have already started to slow down their egg-laying, and will likely slow down significantly more in the next year, just in time for our new two to start pumping 'em out. It's quite a return on the investment. We bought them for a whopping $1.75 each. They'll eat all of our food scraps, provide us with an endless supply of high-quality manure, and will hopefully lay about an egg a day for a while. The only real expense is chicken feed, a mere $15 every couple months or so.

It's good to keep chickens in the city; I knew I wanted to do it from the time we started looking for a house. And it happens all over. A chicken in every backyard! Huzzah!

Bellingham to Bainbridge

We made it! Barely! Whew! And I've got soccer tonight. So much for fresh legs.

Day One - Bellingham to Deception Pass State Park
Miles: 42.77 (42.77 total) Riding time: 4 hours, 29 minutes

All packed up and ready to go!

Still happy on the Chuckanut

Adam on the nice, easy flats of Skagit County

Erin on the Padilla Bay Bike Path

At Deception Pass State Park, with the first bridge of terror in the background

Setting up camp at Deception Pass

A hearty first day dinner, direct from the Corner Mini Mart

Erin braved the bridge, and lived to get her picture taken

The San Juans look okay from the beach at Deception Pass...I guess

The sunset was okay, too...actually, it's better on film than it was in person

Day Two - Deception Pass State Park to Port Townsend
Miles: 30.11 (72.88 total) Riding time: 3 hours, 34 minutes

A bit rainy and cold on our second day. Less pictures. Sorry. But we have a few.

Whidbey zigs and zags...we rode the background part earlier

Saw this sign in Coupeville...hard to tell but yes, that car is a squash

Just before Fort Casey and the ferry to Port Townsend...notice the matching jackets

Day Three - Port Townsend to Bainbridge Island (Erin's "Day from Hell")
Miles: 47.98 (120.86 total) Riding Time: 5 hours, 47 minutes! Yikes!

Erin's self-titled "Day from Hell." As there was Hell involved, we've got even less pictures than before. When you have to pedal hard to go downhill because of the massive headwind, you're not really thinking about pictures.

Lots of hills, and especially steep ones on some side roads. Also, two nasty bridges (Hood Canal, about two miles long!) and Agate Pass (with devilish sneaky crosswind attacks), which we mostly walked across because of minimal shoulders, lots of traffic and, oh yeah, WIND. Bridges, by the way, are worse than hills or traffic. They are tricksy little bastards.

But if that was a rough day (Erin had a medium-sized meltdown with about 12 miles to go), we should be thankful. We made it, with no flats, broken spokes, crashes, injuries, or other possible disasters. But dang.

Before the big hills, but the road that had the first really nasty one...my new favorite road name

Ever heard of "helmet hair"? I've got my mohawk!

Erin recharges with a granola bar on the Egg & I

We made it!

Getting ready for our first overnighter

We leave early Tuesday morning for our first overnight bike tour, hopefully a good warmup as we inch closer and closer to Europe. Bellingham to Bainbridge--three days, two nights. It works out to about 44 miles the first day, 30 the second, and 30 the third. The first one will be a long haul, and hard, but I have no doubt that we can swing it. We just might have to ride for a long time. A long time. We'll see.

We're busy preparing mentally, physically, and mechanically. Today I finished putting fenders on Erin's bike and adjusted my panniers so that my heel won't hit them as I'm riding. I rode to school last week, and I was bumping them a bit. But they're adjustable, so it shouldn't be a problem now. We got a few tools for the ride, as well, but hopefully we won't have to use them.

Dang! It's exciting! Yahoo!

Match-makers

We're matching, a little too much, perhaps. Our bikes are exactly the same, our jackets are exactly the same, our panniers look the same (though at least they're different colors). Even our new helmets are close to the same color. Yeesh. Is this a good thing, a bad thing, or just too cute to specify? The problem is, when we find a quality piece of merchandise that we need, why keep looking for a different one, just so that we won't look exactly the same? That's my opinion anyway. Erin's doesn't seem very happy about it. But we'll survive.

Maybe people won't notice. They'll think they've got double vision. Either that or they'll develop a strange hankerin' for Doublemint gum.

Random mumblings

Wow. This is my first ever blog post. Adam seems to think that I should post something but I am not as good at writing nonsense ramblings as he is :-) I could tell you all about my day but that really isn't exciting. We haven't really ridden our bikes since Sat, except the .5 miles to our soccer game yesterday. And Yes I know that it was almost exactly .5 miles because of my new fangled computer that sits on my handlebars. It also, so nicely, lets me know how slow I am going, especially up hill. I like to think of it as a way to gauge that I will hopefully get faster and I will have the evidence to prove it. I will tell you that our ASSes were very sore after our ride on Sat. I guess that is to be expected.

The next big step

Went on a 25-mile ride around Lake Samish today. We think the seats on our new bikes are a little harder than the old ones. Er, we feel the seats are harder. We'll probably feel it tomorrow, as well.

Now we just have to figure out where to put them.

So it begins

This is our test run! Our maiden voyage! Our first foray!

We're thinking about the possibility of using a blog to record our Europe trip this summer. So we're trying it out. And why not start now? Why not? There is no "Why not?" There is only "Yes." So here we go.

Our inaugural post features our brand new 2006 Novara Randonee bicycles. Yow! We picked them up this evening, took a quick ride to the library, which was closed, and the grocery store, which had exactly the tortillas we were looking for.

See for yourself! We're dang excited. And I mean dang.