chasingsummerp.001

Chasing Summer p.001

Report initially published in the Adventure Rider web site. For more interaction and comments check it out here

Day 1 - August 16th - California

It’s 5am and I can’t sleep anymore. I’m tired though since we’ve been prepping the bikes until late last night. But between the jet lag (I just came back from France) and the excitement it’s impossible to go back to sleep.

Today is THE day, the start of a big adventure, but for San Francisco it’s just a normal foggy summer day. Turkish who has been staying at home, plays the paparazzi for us. Turkish is actually planning to join us for the South leg of the trip, from SF to Patagonia, but that’s a different story.

Map, cigars (thanks Sasha!)... we're all set!

Ready, GO!

When planning the route I’ve tried to find the best compromise between having a fun ride while making time to arrive North early enough in the season. So for our Californian leg it was a mix of 101 then the twisty 128 and the 1 along the coast.

Beautiful, but we took very few pictures...

We have ground to cover and California is our background so we'll take more pics later on.

Lunch while keeping an eye on our shinning bikes. The weather is awesome and we're so excited to be finally gone after the rush of the last days.

I'm already testing if the "tanker" system works

. The huge tank of Teryk's 640 will certainly be helpful in remote areas.

A couple of riding pictures. Please don't drop the camera the first day!

For whatever reason we wanted to reach Oregon today. The planned small routes didn't always go through...

We ended the day pretty late in Grant Pass where we found a camp close to a river.

Day 2 - August 17 - Grant Pass to Seattle

It was really cool to go to sleep while watching the stars last night. The sleep was not so good like it’s often the case for me for the first camping nights. Early wake up again while Teryk is still asleep.

The packing routine is not optimal yet but we leave reasonably early after stopping in this great place for a coffee.

We want to be in Seattle not too late tonight since we’re staying at Teryk’s friends’ house. There is no real cool route to reach Seattle without wasting too much time so we opt for the ‘5’. The ‘5’ is a real nightmare for Californians riders because it’s so straight and boring. Here it’s very different, going over passes with turns and nice scenery. Really cool, but not for long enough. Going further North, it becomes flatter and straighter, the traffic is heavier and it even started to rain. Not fun anymore!

Even if you tell yourself “Hey you’re going to Ushuaia, it’s your dream ride” the feeling for the day is still “Well, I’m going to Seattle and the traffic sucks especially when you can’t split lanes!”.

The good thing is that we were able to make the Autocom work this morning so were able to chat on the freeway. We were not sure to take them on a trip where simplicity should be key but we decided to give them a try, at least for Alaska. Boy, we were hooked right away! It takes a bit of practice to make them work fine but when that’s done it made our riding life way easier.

Keeping an eye on your unlocked valuables is a real issue on a bike so here we go

We just wanted to arrive in Seattle but the traffic was stop and go around Portland and again in Tacoma before Seattle. At this point I was really craving for the remoteness of the big North.

Fortunately all was forgotten with the wonderful welcoming of Julieann and Patrick! There were also 2 good friends of them staying for the weekend and the dinner was a lot of fun.

Day 3 - August 18th - Seattle

Computers come in all sizes!

We’re staying a 2^nd night in Seattle, with a BBQ party on the evening. Teryk takes care of electrical issues with the GPS.

I’ve never been to Seattle before so I spend several hours riding around and visiting the areas recommended by Patrick. It is a beautiful city! The water is everywhere, it’s very green each neighborhood has its own character. In the same time it’s maybe too similar to San Francisco to be really surprising without having as much charm (in my eyes). And the traffic downtown was just brutal! Did I mention I hate not splitting lanes?

The pics I took don’t represent Seattle at all, but I was just fascinated by the scale of the ‘industrial’ sites like the harbor and all.

Many freeways in Seattle...

But also a lot of beautiful houses, right on the water

I visited Mercer Island where Bill Gates lives and it’s quite gorgeous, reminding me a bit of Sausalito. I didn’t see Bill but I saw some other rich guy (at least with a huge house) who was so bored that he was making a ton of noise with his blower to clean up to the street