A Musical Interlude – Josh and Chris

A little musical interlude. Laura and I were invited to a cool little neighborhood gathering here in Eugene, OR with our hosts. Neighbors came out in a potluck celebration. We met Josh and Chris who performed during the gathering. Josh is playing the oud and Chris is the percussionist.

Change of Scenery

After spending the past few weeks poking around Western Washington, we made a command decision… to move on. We have loved Washington, and we feel that we have hardly seen all that it has to offer… but we have spent a lot of time here and there’s just so much more to see!

Our original plan had us going out to the San Juan Islands, then across Washington somehow and out to Montana. Well… we puttered around the islands long enough that it’s now late enough in the year that we need to start thinking about winter (as strange as it seems, since it’s still technically summer). So… we will just have to explore Montana when we roll back around next summer.

In the meantime, we decided to hop on Amtrak today. We’re headed to Eugene, OR and we’re enjoying the fact that, on the Cascades line, you can buy a ticket for your bike (thus guaranteeing there’s space for it), without having to stick it in a box first. (Of course, the downside is that the train out of Bellingham doesn’t go all the way to Eugene, and we have to switch trains.)

Our apologies to all the folks out in Washington, Idaho or Montana that we didn’t get to hook up with… we’ll see you when we come back around!

From Eugene, we haven’t decided exactly which direction we’ll take. But we do know that we’ll wind up working our way over to the coast and heading south (through the redwoods) to the Bay Area (so if you’re in that neck of the woods, start sending us tips on where we should go and who we should meet!).

A few screamers…

Orcas has the reputation of being the hilliest of the San Juan islands. For every uphill, however, there are some screaming downhills. Here’s a vid with some great ones. In the video, we’re following our host Carl from East Sound to the ferry landing. I was definitely going over 30 and with about 85lbs of gear on the bike it makes for an interesting ride.

All of this shot with a GoPro Hero Wide.

Interurban Trail – Bellingham

Laura and I riding on the interurban trail to Bellingham. Like riding through Jurrasic Park.

Finding a Happy Middle

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot these past few days, as it begins to truly and deeply settle in that we’re now living a very different lifestyle, is how disconnected I’m beginning to feel from the things that used to be a part of how I defined myself. I used to spend hours online, trolling through Etsy, making minor changes to my Etsy shop, connecting with fellow metal artists, reading blogs for inspiration and support. As silly as it seems to draw some self-definition from this virtual world, they were all connections that made me feel like me. And now that we’re on the road, and internet access is proving to be a bit spotty, and pulling out the computer is more of a hassle than we expected, these former connections are feeling more and more distant (and let’s not even get into the former offline connections with our Long Beach community) – and it’s throwing me for a bit of a loop.

Am I really more of a home-body than I thought I was? Am I really cut out for this? The doubts start creeping in really easily when you start feeling discouraged.

But, I don’t think that it’s really that black-and-white. I believe that there’s a happy middle ground somewhere, a happy gray area. Hard to find and hard to define, but I think I’m starting to get hints about how to re-incorporate it into my day-to-day.

We’re on Orcas Island again, hiding out from the rain and plotting our next direction. And it gave me the time to create a pair of headbadges for our hosts here. It was the first time that I’ve pulled out my portable studio and really worked on anything (and anyone out there who works at any sort of creative or hands-on livelihood will understand just how easy it is to not work and how much better you feel when you finally get back to it). And, now I’m online, blogging, reading, working on my online shop. It’s a small-but-vital connection to the me that’s been on hold for these past few weeks while we worked on figuring out the basics of how to “be” on the road for an extended period of time.

I have to believe that anyone who walks away from one lifestyle to try another, no matter how exciting the new endeavor, will feel a bit of nostalgia from time-to-time and grapple with a sort of homesickness. But, I’d be willing to bet that most of us don’t own up to it. I know it’s taken me a while to admit, even to myself, that I miss those things that I left behind (and that this feeling of being disconnected doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not simultaneously enjoying traveling and meeting new people). So, I thought I’d own up to it here, in the spirit of full transparency, so that we don’t come across as overly-superhuman (even though, sometimes, we kinda are).

General Delivery aka Teleportation

Receiving mail or packages while on the road is one of those logistical problems we werent quite sure how to handle during our trip. We knew people did it, but weren’t quite sure how. After some digging around on the internet we saw the term “general delivery” mentioned but no real instructions on how to do it. We figured that surely the USPS site would have more information. The USPS website has this to say about receiving mail via “General Delivery”:

General Delivery is a great choice for you if carrier service or a PO Box is not an option. Your mail will be held at your Main Post Office for up to 30 days and can be conveniently picked up at any retail window. This is also a great option if you don’t have a permanent address. To find your Main Post Office, please contact your local Postmaster.

Informative in a completely useless sort of way. No instructions on how to do it from an institution that is such a stickler for rules and regulations. After more searching we found different ways to format the address area and decided to give it a try.

Laura’s mom sent us some mail and winter clothing. It was a bit like witnessing teleportation. Neither of us really believed that our mail would find us and materialize on this island in the San Juans. Amazingly, it did and it felt like a mini-Christmas

To save you, our Dear Readers and fellow future vagabonds, potential problems with general delivery, here are some tips.

-Format your mail like this:
GENERAL DELIVERY
Your name(s)
City, State and ZIP CODE (very important)

-designate a responsible family member or friend to be your postmaster.

-Double check the zip code and location of the post office since that is the most important bit of information. We had mail sent to Orcas thinking it only had one post office when in fact it had a few of them. We ended up having to ride across the island to pick up our mail.

-You will need an ID to pick up your mail.

-Small towns are good places to send general delivery since they will have fewer branches. Large metropolitan areas will have several branches and you risk having to run around town trying to find the right office.

So this is the answer to how you can get mail while you travel. Hope it was helpful!

Rest Day

It’s a down day today. After a ferry-a-thon from Victoria, we are back on Orcas with our generous hosts Carl and Beth. We are using the time to do some housekeeping like laundry, backing up files, editing photos, etc., After two damp days on Victoria the sun on Orcas is very welcome. We’re on this beautiful plot of land that Laura describes as like a homestead with the edge of a forest a few hundred yards away. It’s a great place for a rest day.

Giving our Sea-to-Summit “kitchen sink” a work out : )

Some Gear Thoughts after a month on the road….

We’ve been on the road for over a month and are starting to get really familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of our gear. Here’s a post of some of the things that are working out really well.

Big Agnes Insulated Air Core
Not even a week into our trip, Laura and I swapped out our sleeping pads from 3/4 inch pads to something thicker and warmer. If you’re going to sleep on something for an indefinite amount of time, it’s a worthy investment. We had considered the much-hyped Thermarest NeoAir, but after an in-store side by side test preferred the Big Agnes, primarily because the NeoAir seemed to use too thin of a material! Anecdotally, Laura and I met a couple two days ago at a Greek restaurant and we were talking equipment failures. Apparently, they bought NeoAir pads and about four days into their tour they sprung a leak!

GSI Kettle
Bringing a kettle seems like a bit of extravagance while roughing it, but for us, it has been immensely useful. The GSI kettle is smallish and lightweight. It nests with our pans and I can slip in a Trangia stove and our fire starting materials inside of it. We use it ONLY to boil water. In the past we would use a cooking pot to boil water and if it wasn’t cleaned well enough our morning coffee would also have a hint of corned beef – ewww. Now our coffee tastes like coffee and our tea tastes like tea. We also use it to warm up water for cleaning our cooking gear and for quick hand towel baths. Highly recommend it!

REI Quarter Dome T3 Tent
This tent continues to amaze us. We recently camped on a treeless bluff on San Juan County Park and it weathered the wind and rain beautifully. We have the older version of the tent which uses tent sleeves rather than hooks for the poles. The newer version appears to be a little roomier (which we lust over on occasion). Although it is just the two of us, we got the 3 person version of the tent so there would be plenty of room for our gear. If you’re going to live in a tent for an indefinite amount of time it’s worth the extra weight for the extra room.

Marmot DriClime Wind Shirt
We bought some DriClime gear after talking with Kent Peterson about the gear he brings on his tours. The whole trick to bike touring clothing is layers and the DriClime shirt is meant to provide a lightweight, windproof and warm layer. It isn’t waterproof, but the nature of the material allows it to dry very quickly. When combined with wool base layers you can achieve a warm “comfortable dampness” as Kent put it. So far, it has performed well. I usually throw it on after we stop riding to keep the warmth or on the top of a downhill. We haven’t used it in real heavy rains yet so we’ll see how that works.

Ibex Arm Warms and Leg Warmers
I’ll be frank and say that I love these things. For the most part when I’m riding, my core stays plenty warm and I get chilled from my arms and legs. When I throw these on, it insulates me from the wind and keeps me pretty warm. The wool is a blend with some stretchy material so it stays pretty snug and has a nice compression affect on the muscles. The leg warmers are a good way to turn regular cycling shorts into almost wool cycling shorts (though I still lust for the wool ones on occasion…like now). I usually keep these tucked in a front pannier so I can put them on or take them off without getting off the bike. Remember it’s all about layers!

That’s it for now. If you have any specific gear questions send them in! As a side note and in the spirit of full disclosure, Laura and I started an AvantLink affiliate account so if you purchase any gear from the links on the site (like the ones above) we’ll get a small (very small) percentage – but you’ll be supporting the site and our trip. We can promise you though that we’ll talk about the gear candidly and won’t recommend things that we don’t really believe in.

Truly vagabonding now… and we get some real weather

When we conceived of this trip, we wanted it to be spontaneous, open to change, and very much unplanned. But, the first couple weeks, we wanted to see friends and family, go to a wedding, check out some particular areas. We’ve been taking our time getting to all these places and people, but the trip hasn’t been quite as open-ended because we’ve been focused on hitting all these particular destinations. Well, the last sort of destination on our list was the San Juan Islands (particularly Orcas Island)… and now that we’ve been there and are meandering around some of the other islands, we’ve noticed that we’re feeling much more free to do whatever, as if we’ve finally hit that true vagabonding part. We still have people we want to connect with around the country and places we want to go, but there’s not the same pull to do it now… and we are very much enjoying this!

The first moment this hit us was two days ago, when we first pulled into San Juan Island. We had gotten an email from some lovely readers who were also heading out to San Juan and wanted to know if we would still be there when they got in. We had thought we’d be here for just a night… but then we realized… we don’t have any time constraints… we can do whatever we want… let’s stay and meet them and hang out! And we did and it’s been wonderful. And this is really one of the biggest reasons for an open-ended trip… being able to choose on a day-to-day basis how long we want to be in one place… and opening up opportunities for serendipity.

San Juan Island has been a beautiful place to spend a few days, anyway. We camped at San Juan County Park the first night we were on the island. It’s a beautiful park, right along the coastline. And the hiker/biker spots are in an open area, practically right on the bluff. We had a prime orca-watching spot, although we never saw more than a few seals. And we shared a campfire and stories with some fellow bike tourists who were camped next to us. We also rode around pretty much the whole island, exploring the little village of Roche Harbor and stopping to picnic on a very small public dock on a very small lake on a very under-traveled road. Lovely.

We also had our first real weather of the trip. Camping at San Juan County Park, we were awakened in the wee hours of the morning by some sprinkling. Russ climbed out of the tent to cover up the Brooks saddles with plastic bags to protect them. We went back to sleep, only to be awakened an hour or so later by a large crash of thunder. We unzipped the tent and looked out to the water and watched the storm move slowly past us… large flashes of lightening followed by really loud thunder crashes… and big dark clouds illuminated by the nearly full moon. A few hours later, the sky broke open and buckets of water came tumbling down upon us. And, again, I was amazed and impressed by our little REI tent. No leakage, no problems. We fell back asleep to the sound of the driving rain and woke up in the morning to a really strong wind at the tail end of the storm. It shook the tent and rattled all the zippers, but we were safe inside. A small storm, in comparison to what we will no doubt run across in other parts of the country, but a good introduction… and some peace of mind that our gear might just hold up!

Some Snaps – Lopez and San Juan

Just some photos and captions from the last few days. We are heading to Vancouver Island (Canada) today so iPhone posts won’t be as frequent to avoid roaming charges.

We successfully receive mail from ourselves on Orcas.