About to leave on the plane...

(This page is formatted in html. If you are reading this by email instead of by www, please ignore the "< >" tags.)

If you get this by email, thatmeans you are on my List. Send email to srl@sj-coop.net to be taken off of the List.

Send email to srl@sj-coop.net, I will be polling that one most often for the duration of the trip. (the other addresses should get service, however)

I am typing this from Alaska Airlines flight 333 (San Jose to Seattle), just over Mt Shasta, via an AirOne inflight phone. I am even going to try netsurfing at 30,000 feet (or whatever)!!

After several days of assembling and packing, we are finally on our way. I have built an extensive 12volt power system, featuring a 12volt 4watt solar cell mounted in a homeade industrial-strength case.

To recap, the six of us (my whole family) are flying to Seattle, and then we will be doing some sightseeing for a couple of days. Then we will begin biking along the coast basically, and arrive back home (San Jose)Ęby the end of the month.

Seattle is nice- Espresso cafes on every corner, just as expected. Went to a science museum... didn't go to te space needle (long line, expensive). Tomorrow we take a ferry to Vancouver Island.

August 1 - 12:06 pm. Pier 48 (Victoria lines shuttle to Victoria), Seattle, WA

Posted web page, email updates last night. Now waiting in line for shuttle ferry to take us to the island of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada.

Anyways, we will spend a couple of days in Victoria. The solar/battery system fits on the bike nicely. Ben (my brother) and I successfully used the CB system while biking, some distance apart.

August 1 - 6:30 pm - Robin Hood hotel - Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Arrived in Canada after a several-hour ferry ride.. Noticed one use of the interjection "eh" (just like I use "like", except "eh" is postpositional, whereas "like" is prepositional and sometimes penultimal.)

But anyways.. Victoria is a quite picturesque place.

We will be staying here 2 days. I attempted to make a 120v charger out of a 12VAC wall wart and a full-wave bridge rectifier, so far unsuccessful.

Noticed that the stores stock a lot of Clearly Canadian and Canada Dry ginger ale-- what would you expect? :)

A lot of stuff here is bilingual-- English and French. Although I saw a few English/Chinese signs which were a surprise-- and supposedly Victoria has one of the largest Chinatowns on this coast.

I put my bike computer on here-- so it's odometer is now at 0. I don't know how many miles we biked before this point-- but I'll get that number so that I can do accurate calculations of total miles biked.

Wednesday August 2 5:07 pm - Victoria, BC, Canada

Saw some more of Victoria, Beacon Hill, neighborhoods, etc.

Biked from Victoria to Sidney, stopped temporarily at Buchart gardens (which looked nice), but didn't go in because of time. I am now on a ferry which is bound for Friday Harbor (on San Juan Island, which is (surprise) one of the San Juan Islands, USA)

The Pedal Inn is a primitive campground for bicyclers. It's a nice enough place, but about five hilly miles from town (Friday Harbor).

And yes, richk, they do have showers!!

I will now start to give odometer readings. It's now at 31.1 miles.

(The computer was put on at the Robin Hood Inn, Victoria, BC, Canada, as mentioned before)

The water here has a high sulphur content, but boiling got rid of the bad taste/smell.

8/5/95 2:30 PM
Parking lot near ferry dock (San Juan <-> Anacortes),
Anacortes, (Fidalgo Island)
Washington, USA

odo= 50.3

The guy who runs Pedal Inn thought I should make & sell solar electrical systems like the one on my bike... I will upload diagrams for it later maybe, if there's interest.

Took a ferry from San Juan to Anacortes.

My apologies for the bad HTML... I will rewrite it sometime later

Same Day, 3:30 pm
Safeway parking lot, Anacortes, Washington
odo= 54.0

Being in Anacortes means we are finally on our route map, that is we are on our way home!! Yahoo!

6:30 pm 8/5/95
Deception Pass State Park
Whidbey Island (near Anacortes)
Washington, USA
odo= 66.8

This park is quite nice-- but the bike camping spots were filled. Some guy said "my family and I are only going to stay in this truck/camper here, you can have the rest of the lot and the picnic tables". That works!

Saw some really nice scenery-- just used up my first roll of film. Decided to try developing all this film onto PhotoCD, should be pretty cool.

Rained heavily last night and all day. Traveled 8 miles through horrid weather to a hotel. That's enough biking for today.

Still raining. (i.e. zero milage delta). Wrote polynomial visualization program for Newton. Staying in the same hotel overnight, going to try to move on tomorrow. Updated web pages, mail.

The weather finally did clear up... We have now biked more than 100 miles (my odometer is ~9 miles back)

Weather still clear, supposed to rain tomorrow.

Yow we rode 42 miles today... it's still clear but we are in a hotel anyways just in case.

Went past a "peace" demonstration (against the A-bomb, wrt Hiroshima/Nagasaki) at a military site today. Peace is in quotes because they obviously don't have their history straight, i.e. Pearl Harbor etc. But anyways... I continue to see tons of beautiful costlines, forest, etc..

Mom and Ben (youngest brother) went back home. They will return via our van and follow our route ("sag wagon").

The small odometer increase is due to biking out to eat-- it's still raining.

People near Mason Lake like signs a lot- many interesting/elaborate signs to point out their houses, with cute names (i.e. "Heidel's Holiday").

My brother broke some more spokes....

Well we have now gone over 200 miles total... we are making very good time. The hostel here is very nice - this is the first one i have been in. I have a cold or something.

Update (8/16/95) -- now in Portland. will fill in more details later