And now, the turning point

Lucky us! We spent a restful week in Seattle and its vicinity, meeting new friends, reconnecting with old ones and enjoying so much that the Emerald City has to offer.



With Donald's comfy, centrally-located and verdant home as our home base, we spent our days in Seattle encountering the city, and reconnecting with some of the joys of domesticity that itinerant motorcyclists lack: a stovetop, a refrigerator and actual cookware! There were fine meals, an embarrassment of movies (offering the added bonus of air con), fine swill and performances raucous and ribald. And that's not to even mention the karaoke with Jim!

The bike also paid another visit to the shop to prepare for the next leg of the journey -- in this case, Jim's Southend Motorcycle Service, where the bike named R2 was taken in by a guy named Frog, and serviced by a mechanic named Eric. A new front tire (after putting upwards of 8k on the previous one), new plugs, a brake fluid flush and a bow-to-stern systems check later, we picked R2 up, and rode two-up to Vashon Island, for a memorable stay with friends in a yurt.

Tom (Julie's classmate from OSU) and his sister Emily and brother-in-law Shane live in a green paradise, with daily opportunities to apply their maker inclinations to life's little challenges. We ate beautifully from their incredibly productive garden, admired the ingenuity of the pedal-powered washing machine, listened to these three music majors turn a bewildering assortment of instruments into music and slept peacefully under the roof of the yurt they built themselves, chickens clucking away in a nearby coop.

Returning to the city, and after having a tasty send-off meal with Donald, and solving some logistical questions related to health insurance in Canada, Julie and I reluctantly prepared to leave Seattle.



We crossed Puget Sound from Anacortes, through the San Juan Islands, our destination: Victoria on Vancouver Island. Somewhere out on the water, we crossed our first international border of the trip.

As you may have seen, our brief stay in the charming town of Victoria was memorable, but did not afford much rest. The following morning, we packed up early and decided to head for Vancouver, featuring another ferry crossing (likely our last with the motorbikes).

Our stay in Vancouver has been rich and varied, and entirely different from whatever preconceptions I held of this place. Our budget hotel located along one of the most bustling, chaotic urban corridors I've ever seen, with rampant homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution. We have been reflecting on the social cues that serve to convey that one has one's shit together, or conversely, to indicate whether the person approaching on the sidewalk is strung out, or likely to ask for a cigarette or offer a joint or perhaps extend a cup or a hungry hand. I am rarely at peace in such situations -- my thoughts run to the scale of the interventions needed to change them. Yet, the neighborhood is quite peaceful. The dozens of people we encounter walking along East Hastings Street, despite being in the midst of desperate circumstances, mostly just ignore us. But I don't mean to say that there is simply neglect, either. (There are programs in place at various locations along this skid row.) What's most striking to me, I guess, is that I've been in few places where this dire poverty and addiction and the survival-living that go with it have been so concentrated, apparently tolerated and then allowed to persist, co-existing with the rest of the city's identities and aspirations. Julie wondered how Vancouver's preparations for the 2010 Olympics might impact its residents living on the margins.

Our hotel is also two blocks from Vancouver's Chinatown, one of the largest in North America, and our visit happens to coincide with the tenth annual Chinatown festival, bringing even more activity to the streets (including, oddly, some amazingly talented white boys on BMX bikes).



We've spent our time taking long strolls through Vancouver's very distinct neighborhoods, seeing the city at sunset aboard a water taxi, taking in some high school students' outdoor performance of MacBeth, visiting the geodesic dome and OMNI theater at the Telus World of Science, and enjoying a romantic dinner following a screening of the much anticipated (and well made) Julie & Julia. Tonight, a dim sum dinner and a rarely-performed opera (in the original Hungarian!) are in store for us, followed by a Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art Class held in the pub on the ground floor of our hotel.

And so, we come to it. Leg 1 of our motorcycle adventure was getting to San Diego. Leg 2 was our winding ascent of the Pacific Coast. And tomorrow, we begin Leg 3: inland, on the long road to Alaska! We anticipate that internet access will be available less frequently, and that our rhythms of exploring urban centers will shift to a beat measured in miles. We estimate 2,800 miles to go! Wish us luck!


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