Kinda Crap First 2 Days

Today I'm sitting here in a hotel in Sedro-Woolley, WA typing out this very blog post on Michelle's bluetooth keyboard. It's kinda untinutive, as there's a notable lag between my input on the keyboard and when I see the letter appear on the screen of my phone. This wouldn't be a huge problem, except that every so often, I get two of the same letter in a row but often don't notice until I'm on a different word. Groan.
So here's how the first 2 days of this tour thing have gone, in brief terms because this keyboard is a bit of a pain.
Day 1: We made it from Squamish, BC to a town called Mission, BC. Navigating through Vancouver on a bike is the worst thing I've ever done on a bike, and something I will never repeat ever again if possible. It was so frustrating that I'm still upset about it even now. Even more than the rain (more on that later). Because Vancouver made it so that covering 60 km took 5 hours, we were both emotionally and physically toasted, and since there was no real place to camp, so we stayed in a hotel instead. This was great, because we could do laundry, as well as take showers and be comfortable and warm for the evening.
Day 2: The day started out rainy, and remained rainy for the entire day. Today was a hotel-to-hotel jog since the rain soaked through every single thing I've got. Camping in this state would be all kinds of miserable and soggy, so to hell with that.
This blog post has sucked, but I'm ending it here anyway and blaming my emotional state and this keyboard, so deal with it. A more in-depth post of all this stuff will come hopefully when I get to Steamboat. Bwuh...

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The Deets: Part 7: Ellensburg, WA to Toppenish, WA (Day 9)

The next morning, Michelle and I spent almost all of our free time examining the map and trying to find a way south that didn't involve riding on the freeway. Our map wasn't very good, though, and so we eventually put our trust in Google and went to breakfast. It was a pretty tasty breakfast, mostly pastries and chocolate, and after that we fueled up at the Safeway or City Market or whatever before taking off down the road towards Oregon. The ride out of town was mild and easy, and the weather was sunny but not yet hot. The streets were effectively empty as well, and so the spin to the edge of Ellensburg and off into the wilds of Eastern Washington was a fairly easy one.

One thing our map did have was an alt-route of sorts for highway 97: it was a twisty little piece of tarmac that wound its way through a canyon along a river. Everything we had learned about touring told us that that would be the best way to go, not only because it wasn't a freeway, but because it was an t…

The Deets: Part 2; Mission, BC to Sedro-Woolley, WA (Day 2)

The morning of day two came earlier than I hoped, and Michelle and I were greeted by a grey, drizzling rain which set the theme for the whole day. Again, I had the "I really don't want to do this" feeling, although somewhat less potent than the morning before, and since I had even fewer options for postponement than I had had on day 1, we slowly suited up to the white noise of the TV and left the room for the continental breakfast downstairs.

Breakfast was in the room adjacent to the lobby, as per usual, but the room was not attached from the inside. This forced us outside into the drizzle to take almost 10 whole steps in my extremely inconvenient road bike shoes to get to food, and gave us a quick taste of the weather for the day. While we sat inside eating mediocre omelettes and drinking watery orange juice, we could watch the weather from the comfort and warmth of the indoors. At least, temporarily. The more we watched the weather, the harder it seemed to rain. Still,…

WE MADE IT!!

So we made it; we did the whole tour (more or less) and made it back to Canada before class started again! So here for you now are some stats on the ride. That's all you're gonna get on this post. And a picture too, I guess.
Distance Covered: 2993.9 km
Time In The Saddle: 144 h 55 m
Average Speed: 20.66 km/h
Days On Tour: 47
Days Ridden: 37
Days Actually Touring: 27
Rainy Days: 3
Flats: 8
Chamois Butter Used: 5
Other Tourers Seen: 3
Elevation Gain: 32,481 meters
Nights in Tent: 13
Nights in Hotel: 15

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