Stacy and I are now safely in Chandler, Arizona. We are staying with Stacy's Uncle Bill, Aunt Kathy, cousin Kyle, and cousin Collin. Our bike trip is going well, and we definitely have some stories we would like to tell. We are going to be in the Phoenix area for several days, so we will likely make a few new post while here before again hitting the road. Here we go...
Since the last post, we spent a couple days in Seattle with our friends Leesha and Brady (Stacy went to HS with Leesha). We did some last minute preparation for the trip, and on Wednesday morning April 2 we rode our bikes (with fully loaded trailers) about 12 miles from Leesha and Brady's home to the Amtrak station in downtown Seattle.
We both worked furiously for 2 solid hours taking bikes and trailers apart, building custom sized boxes from other boxes, and packing our equipment as well as we could. We had some serious periods of doubt, but in the end we had about 8 minutes to spare before they stopped accepting luggage...whew!
Since the last post, we spent a couple days in Seattle with our friends Leesha and Brady (Stacy went to HS with Leesha). We did some last minute preparation for the trip, and on Wednesday morning April 2 we rode our bikes (with fully loaded trailers) about 12 miles from Leesha and Brady's home to the Amtrak station in downtown Seattle. I had called Amtrak 2 or 3 times in the previous days to confirm our tickets and to make sure our bikes were allowed with no extra preparation. You can probably guess from that intro that things did not go smoothly...we found that on one portion of the 38 hour trip where buses are used (from Portland to Sacramento as the tracks had been covered by a landslide a couple months earlier) they were no longer accepting bicycles. Panic set in briefly as we both thought this may spell disaster for the trip. Then we got serious and disassembled our bikes so they could fit within the 36"x36"x36" size limitations of other luggage.
We both worked furiously for 2 solid hours taking bikes and trailers apart, building custom sized boxes from other boxes, and packing our equipment as well as we could. We had some serious periods of doubt, but in the end we had about 8 minutes to spare before they stopped accepting luggage...whew! The Amtrak trip went well. It was a long and tiring trip, but without further incident. We arrived in San Diego at around 1 am on April 4th and went directly to our pricelined hotel and slept. When we awoke, we went back to the Amtrak station and began the assembly of our bikes (all in working condition). At that point I took pictures of the baggage closed and open, displaying contents. Our next update will hopefully give some info about the actual bike trip. Until then...
3 comments:
You probably would have had less luggage trouble if you had left the motorcycles at home.
Stacy/Kon,
After reviewing your updates and latest pictures I came up with a Great Gift Idea for Kon. Let's all pitch in and buy him some training wheels for his bicycle. We want to keep him in one piece and he is looking a little banged up with a lot more miles to go. Perhaps you should run along side Kon and steady him like I did when you were little and learning to ride .
Be careful out there and enjoy!
Steve
...I also think that Kon could benefit from a coconut latte from the MSU library.
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