Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Day 1: Seattle to Wenatchee, WA

The first day, and all in all it was great. A few ups and downs (literally - yes I dropped the bike again -twice) but we learned a lot. Really.

First off what we figured out before we left the hotel. We had WAY too much stuff. Necessitating a ruthless weedout of all extraneous items and a deal with my friend Neal to bring back an extra suitcase with him from Seattle. Despite the smaller mound of stuff, it still was a bit of a struggle to get everything on the bikes. We managed, but ended up getting Sean some saddlebags.



Next we discovered the true joys of Seattle weather. Specifically cold, driving rain across Snoqualmie pass. After over an hour of 40 degrees and rain that was sheeting down, we stopped in Easton, WA to recover. Where we left large puddles on the floor as we downed most of a pot of coffee, more for the fact that we could use it to warm up our hands than anything else. There was a campground store next door where we decided to implement our own version of "chemical warfare".



We bought out the stock of Hotties handwarmers and put them everywhere. Feet, hands, under our jackets, etc. It was probably more psychological than anything, at least we felt better about going back out in the rain.

We took route 97 over Blewett pass, and all of a sudden the weather was beautiful. Our jackets dried out and life was much better. Despite our best efforts, we didn't get as far as we planned ending up in "The Apple Capital of the World" in Wenatchee, WA. More later.


Per Sean - Well I'll say that I brought the right bike to address the maintenance part of this "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" trip but nothing a phillips head screwdriver wouldn't address. Otherwise the Triumph decided it must be back in britain based on it's pure joy of the rain.

Liza properly initialized the right and left bar ends of the brute, I'll call it Zen hereafter but that was mostly due to the weight placed 5ft above the road and the lack of gyroscopic stability ( ie not moving fwd).

Once we cleared Blewett pass the rain left and evaporative cooling while breezing down the other side was surprising - suddenly the gear was dry and warmth returned leaving us to marvel at the beautiful scenery.

Miles would love the mile long views of rolling meadows surrounded by 600 ft hills and rushing creeks and Annabelle would love the apple orchards and windmills along the river our our way into Wenatchee ( this due to the rain slowing us a bit and causing us to be unable to get to Pearrygin Park in time to get the key for the cabin).

Logan would have liked the new GT 500 which slowed long enough to look us over in the rain and then just hammered its way up the Snoqualmie pass. We had a little issue locating the hotel as the front desk assured us that they were on Main St. and we tried to explain that, as lovely and important as we were sure Wenatchee was, they were not represented at that level on the maps available to us. As we turned around to trek back the 2 miles to the aforementioned hotel, I noticed the lovely gray green plants growing along the hills and thought that Heather would love the color. I decided that it would be best described as sage at which point I realized that there was a reason I had made that connection, doh!

More later.

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