Day 1

Miles driven 305 – Spokane, WA to Seattle, WA – 4 hours on the bike

The route from Spokane to Seattle is along I-90 and is very uneventful. There are farms and fields and trees… but really not much to look at. Plus I’ve driven it maybe a  hundred times before, so it’s a long and boring drive for me. So no pictures.

Once in Seattle, I started to play with my GPS. I was using the MSN Direct feature which can tell you the gas prices in the area, however, I found that it leaves out many of the gas stations as I was passing by much cheaper stations. I would like to find out how the data for that service is gathered. Do the stations have to pay to be on the list? Is it supplied by users?

My next task was to locate Dave’s house. Step one was to look on my iPod for the address. That failed as I soon found out that it doesn’t list addresses unless they’re business addresses. Lame! So I called him and got it the old fashioned way. Then as my GPS was guiding me there, every exit on I-5 it would tell me to get off, then back on the freeway. It is terrible when you can’t trust the guidance as in strange areas you won’t know enough to avoid some very bad decisions on it’s part. I’ll have to keep an eye on this during more of my trip.

I arrived at Dave’s house and saw him for the first time in 16 years. It is so strange to write that… 16 years. It certainly doesn’t seem that long. He has three lovely daughters from almost 5 to 10 months, and plays Mr. Mom a lot, which is great. He cooked up some awesome BBQ on the grill for dinner, then helped his wife Sherri put the girls down for the night, and we went out for a couple of beers and chatted.

Day 2

Miles driven 430 – Seattle, WA to Albany, OR – 10 hours on the bike

Up and out by 7:15 am. It had rained all night, and I’d forgotten to put either the rain cover on the bike or the covers on the luggage I left out there. Not a smart move, but you live and you learn. The down sleeping bag was not soaked, but it was pretty damp. I put a black garbage bag over it to keep it from getting wetter, as it continued to pour down rain all the rest of the day on me. All the rain covers worked great. After 8 hours of riding in the rain I was dry and my gear was dry. The only thing that was soaked and freezing cold was my gloves. To keep my hands from getting too cold to move, I was having to place the gloves down on the exposed engine parts to warm them up for a little bit while driving. And when I would stop for gas, I’d wring them out and place them on the pipes to start to dry them out. It worked great until I started riding again and they soaked up the rain.

It rained non-stop the whole time I was in Washington. I was attempting to go through Mt Rainier National Park and then on through to see Mt St. Helens, but my plans were foiled. First the road through Mt. Rainier was closed, so I skirted around to the West and down towards Mt St. Helens, then as I got most of the way up to the Mt St. Helens viewpoint, the road was impassable due to snow. 0 for 2 today!! The clouds were low and heavy over the countryside so there  wasn’t much to see of anything at all.

The constant rain was getting annoying and my helmet was fogging up. I had to stop to buy some rain-x to help with the inside fog and the beading water on the outside. It worked wonders.

On into Oregon…

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