Day 16

Day 16 July 3, 2001

Issaquah, WA to Victoria, B.C.

24.50 miles 11.75 average speed2:05:07 travel time11:00am departed2:00pm arrived 1031.02 total trek miles

            The days of riding hundreds of miles away from our final destination are over. We've turned the corner and rounded the Horn. We're on the home stretch. Not that the trip hasn't been pleasant so far. It has. It's just that we've felt constant anxiety for our arrival in Canada and, though I'm not sure exactly why, I believe I can safely blame someone else for it. For some reason, we think, and not just in our heads - we've actually said it out loud - that riding "down" will be easier than the ride "up." "Down," of course, only means "south" and "up" only means "north," but that confusion of terms I believe is the source of both our anxiety to finish going "up" and our excitement to go "down." We will probably be surprised, but we might not; our minds might overpower the reality of being at sea level or darn near it for the next thirteen hundred miles. I, for one, hope it does - it's a lot easier to ride when you think you're going down hill.

            I've gotten ahead of myself. We're not going down the coast yet. As far as you're concerned, we're still in Seattle and Canada is just another place we're not at yet.

            We left Issaquah with time to visit the bike shop to have a few things fixed, i.e. rims trued, gears adjusted, spokes replaced. We had a ferry booked to take us to Victoria at three-thirty in the afternoon and, with only twenty-five miles to ride, we navigated the metropolitan streets at our leisure, arriving at Pier Sixty-Nine early enough to eat several pounds of pasta before the ferry left.

            On the ferry, we used Dan's cell phone to call various loved ones. Dan got to talk to his parents who had just returned from Chile after three years. Apparently Dan can't stand being in the same country as his parents because he left the United States the same day they arrived. Isn't that just like him?

(Notice the biker-typical open mouthed sleeping technique. Easy to learn, difficult to master, as Dan so skillfully has. For a look at the progress of one of his proteges, Joey, click here.)

            Arriving in Victoria, Canada at seven o'clock at night, we rode the five hundred feet to our hotel and settled in.

We hot tubbed, showered and went out to eat. Afterward, we got hold of a paper and found out that there was some live jazz playing in town and not far away either. It was cool and we just sat and listened, sipping occasionally from our ice water until the music stopped.