September 1, 1999

Portland, Oregon

Leaving Whitehorse I decided to head down the Cassiar highway since I had already done the Alaska highway. I had heard a lot about the Cassiar and most of it was bad. Fortunately the tales I had been told of this evil road where greatly exagerated and I had a great time going down it doing 615 miles in one day which is the record so far for this trip. I also managed to come down with a rather nasty cold on that day which plagued me for another week. I followed my longest day by riding close to 500 miles the following day and a little over 400 miles on the third day when I arrived in Vancouver.

Vancouver is a real nice place and I had the good fortune of meeting up with John Sharpe who did a great job of showing me around the city and made me welcome in his home. Before arriving in Vancouver I had made arrangements through John to get my bike worked on as it was over due for its 16k mile service. While I was getting the bike worked on I also decided to replace my front tire which was showing signs of being on it's last leg. Unfortunately Carter Honda didn't have a D205 to match the rear tire so I took a rather long and expensive cab ride out to another shop to pick up a new tire. Deciding that another cab ride would make this the most expensive known to man I decided to hitchhike back to downtown Vancouver. Humping down the road with the tire over one shoulder and a 30lb tankbag I really started hating life untold these kind people stopped to pick me up. Which restored my faith in humanity and the kindness of strangers.

Having spent a great weekend in Vancouver with John and Heather I proceeded down to Seattle where I was looking forward to meeting up with Ryan an old housemate of mine from DC who had moved out here a few years ago. Unfortunately Seattle is really close to Vancouver so it kind of screwed up my travelling pattern of travelling for 6 days and spending Friday evening and Saturday in the city. I met up with Ryan on Monday evening and not wanting to overly burden him with my company during the work week I decided to head out into the bush for a few days and comeback to Seattle on Friday. This actually worked out quite well as one of my current housemates was out this way for work and I was able to meet up with her while heading out towards the penninsula. After riding around the penninsula and spending a couple of nights on the beach I headed back to Seattle. Back in Seattle I got to spend a couple of evening with Ryan as well as meeting up with various members of the VFR list and the Wet Leathers list. I really want to thank Kenn Engstrom for organizing a ride on Saturday , letting me stay at his place on Saturday night, and rounding up a group of listers to break bread and spill beer with on Sunday.

Leaving Seattle on Monday afternoon I've decided that my next destination is San Francisco where I plan on meeting up with yet another old housemate from DC. Since Seattle and San Francisco are practically in commuting distance from each other (I think my perspective may be getting a bit skewed) this has given me the oppourtunity to explore a bit more of Washington state which is a pretty nice place.

Looking for phony hippies and psychelic dungeons.