Jun 15/16 - continued

The rest of the day really went without a hitch.  We landed in Seattle on time, my luggage was out straight away, an hour later I boarded the bus/shuttle to Mt. Vernon, from where I had to take a taxi to the hotel, the bike survived the trip and soon (an hour and a half later) it looked like a bike again and I did a circuit of the parking lot just to check.

After that, since I hadn't spotted anyone else around, I walked over to the Safeway and picked up a bottle of wine and some dinner (I never go to a restaurant on my own), fell asleep without finishing my plastic glass of wine, repeated that scenario a few times, greeted Hamid when he arrived at the room at 3am.  Believe it not, even though that was 6am my-body-time, I went back to sleep and around 5am got up and made coffee for the two of us.  Hamid hadn't gotten much sleep but he wasn't sleepy either.

He had assembled his bike in the lobby -- hadn't taken him as much time because he uses two bike cases and doesn't have to disassemble as much. 

I talked to TiCycles and ordered a hard case that's being sent here.  I'm not satisfied with the semi-hard Co-Motion case that gets a bit distorted from the baggage handlers.  I may be able to do what Hamid does, i.e. pack the cycling gear/clothes in with the bike ... but not likely.  I still have that hard rear bag that doesn't collapse that way, but I'll give it a go.  I may or may not be able to get the roller bag inside one of these bike cases so that I only have two checked bags for the return trip, we'll see.  That could be fun.

Hamid and I just got back from a five mile checkout ride.  Everything seems to be working ok.  I still haven't decided whether I'll use the front bag or not, likely a last minute decision.

I did decide to put the fenders on ... it looks like we'll probably get rain at some point.  We just got a weather update and one of the passes is likely getting snow as I write this ... ugghh !  Well, I've got lots of clothing.  They're expecting that system to move out before we get there but we are riding into the mountains, anything could happen. 

At the other end of the spectrum, we're expecting temps in the 95F range east of the mountains.  What all this means is that I've got to be prepared to wear and ton of gear and have a place to stash it all when it gets hot, and it will get hot.

Fun, Fun, Fun ... onward !