Day 12
May 26th 2004
Tiny little day today. Only something like 300 km. Kind of a good thing, considering the weather. As I was contemplating my departure at the hotel this morning looking at the falling rain, someone came up to me and said "not really a nice day for biking". My reply was along the lines of "Oh well, I thought it always rained in Seattle". He told me that it had been almost a month without any rain. I guess it is really me who is bringing this wherever I go... I am the Rain God, all the clouds know is that they love me, they want to be near me and they want to water me.
At the first red light out of the hotel, I was stopped and realized that there was a huge puddle in the oncoming lane. It was too late to move out of there, and sure enough, every car came by throwing sheets of water onto me. Talk about starting the day on a good note. The first sheet of water kind of surprised me a bit, and I almost dropped the bike. That would have just taken the biscuit.
Since it was raining fairly heavily, I was thrilled that it was stop and go traffic on Interstate 5 well beyond Seattle. Thankfully I had put on my rain jacket under the Aerostitch, mainly for wind protection, but also as an added layer of waterproofness.
Seriously though, I'm thankful for is the invention of the carpool lane. If you're 3 or more people in a car or if you're a bus or a motorcycle, you're allowed to get on it. It was great passing miles and miles of stopped traffic while you're riding along at maybe 30 MPH or so. Funny thing, there are signs asking motorists to report carpool lane cheaters, along with the phone number to do so. It seems Seattle is encouraging people to talk on their cell phones while driving.
It actually stopped raining 20 minutes or so before reaching Blaine, Checkpoint 3. I was pretty happy about this, as the checkpoint procedure involves a lot of walking and writing stuff on receipts and taking pictures. Everything went smoothly, Blaine is a fairly small town, smaller than Fredericton I'd say.
This is the only picture I took today, so I made it a bit bigger than usual... Just so you get your money's worth.
After clearing the checkpoint, I crossed the border. The Canadian customs official was really deadpan. I couldn't decide if I should take him seriously or not. I played it safe.
After the usual questions, comes the "do you have any tobacco or alcohol with you ?"
- "Just a flask with some scotch in it"
- "What kind of scotch ? " [deadpan look]
- "Um, (memory blank, caught off guard with this question), Laphroaig 10"
- "Just wanted to see if you had good taste. It passes. Enjoy your ride. " That was it. I wonder how my next entry to the US will go...
So anyways, made it to Vancouver, got my tire changed (still had 2.5 mm tread left on it, but that wouldn't have been enough to get me home, so better off changing it now). Cost $ 293 installed and balanced, not too bad, plus they washed up the bike afterwards. It's nice to have a relatively clean bike again (it was only a 'superficial wash'), although I won't be able to take a cool picture of what 3 weeks and 20 000 km worth of bugs looks like.
I also spoke with the service guy about if he thought I should be changing the oil. The BMW Canada answer was yes, you should change it, but then when I said I had semi-synthetic in there and there's just 12 days of riding since it was put in, he seemed to think it would probably still be good. I think I'll just leave it in and continue monitoring levels and color. If it starts darkening up, I'll change it.
While I was waiting for my bike I spoke with a couple of other riders and we chatted about some neat roads to do around here. After I do my planning for the Alaska leg of the trip, I'll see if I'll have time to incorporate some of those roads into the ride.
This rest day is fun. It's now 2:30 local time and I'm done for the day. I'm staying at a nice hotel that has high-speed internet and plenty of restaurants nearby. Unfortunately they don't have a coin-operated washing machine, so I guess I'll do some laundry some other day. I'll just take it easy for now and hit the hay early for a change.
Tomorrow I'm headed up north and I'm not sure I will have internet access. Hopefully there will, but there is a possibility that there will be no update. Just a warning...
Day Stats:
Total Distance: 312 km (Federal Way, Wa to Vancouver, BC)
Total Time: 4 h 23 minutes
Overall Average 87.4 km / h