Date: 12/06
City: Seattle, USA
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 46603
Street: City roads
Weather: Sunny/ warm
After breakfast we called the shipping company and asked about our bikes. It turned out they have been shipped via truck from LA and not via airplane. Phew! That explains the long delay. The estimated time of arrival was today around lunch, which worked well. Around noon, I saw that the bikes had arrived. We used the free shuttle bus to drop us off at the airport cargo area, got the paper work and made our way to Customs via taxi. The taxi driver had a hard time to find the address, which I thought was funny. Eventually we got there and got the paper work processed. The customs officer was great. We talked about our trip and he gave us some suggestion what to see around the Banff and Jasper area.
We rushed back to the cargo area and here we saw our noble steeds again, wrapped and intact! 🙂 Somebody must have a look at the luggage at the bottom, since that was no longer wrapped.
I connected the batteries again, got them off the pallet; put all the luggage back and off we went, back to the hotel.
We had our bikes back, yippe. It was the first time that we shipped the bikes so I was happy to have them back in one piece. When we got back to the hotel our luggage was still not there and it was too late to call the office. We will see what’s going on tomorrow.
Date: 13/06
City: Seattle, USA
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 46603
Street: City roads
Weather: Sunny, Cloudy/ warm, drizzling
Today we managed to get our luggage back and nothing was missing. So we repacked everything to fit it back into the panniers, packed the bikes and went off to Tad and Gaila’s house a bit outside of Seattle.
Tad and Gaila are a couple we met a year ago at the overland expo close to Flagstaff. They started their journey http://www.overlandnow.com around the same time as we did and rode all over Central America using back roads where possible. We kept in contact during our trip and when they returned a week ago, they invited us. Gaila likes cooking, we like eating, so it’s a good combination 😉.
To welcome us, Gaila prepared a nice rhubarb pie, hmm, yummy!
In the afternoon we picked up Tad’s bike from the workshop and organized and fitted a new rear tyre for my bike. For some reason after this short trip, Tad had a new-found appreciation of Sigrids endurance sitting on the back of my bike all the the way back from Ushuaia. As he put it, it was “an experience” 😉. I guess he doesn’t like the firm …. wood-like ….. seat 😉.
Oh, I nearly forgot, on our way back my bike stopped on the highway! As it turned out, we have to put petrol into the big tanks, otherwise the bike stops working … Learn somthing new every day 😀.
We have these 32L tanks and in the end I relied on Tad to give me some of his spare elexier to get home. What a day,we were happy to have all our stuff back and got an amzlingly warm welcome from Gaila and Tad!
