Day 1 - Vancouver to Canada/US border

Alan and Alan's buddy Dan joined us for the ride to the Canada-US border. It took a lot longer than we expected due to the almost constant 2-8% grade. While Perry is zooming-out-of-control-fast on the downhills, it's very hard to get Perry uphill. Part of it is due to untimely shifting on ostrich's side, part of it is that it's hard to coordinate power strokes with 2 people. Another part of it is that fat ostrich doesn't pedal! hehehe, just kidding. We had to walk up some of the hills. Anyhow, we finally made it to the border (although Dan and Alan had to wait ... a lot... Sorry!!!)


(Burnaby Lake station, before meeting Dan)


(Alan and Dan, waiting ... ... ... )


(Surrey)


(Canada-US border)

We took a break at the duty free shop, celebrated Alan's birthday with some gelato, and dan bought some discount alky.


(Happy Birthday Alan!)


Despite the very inviting sign, the US Border control were not so inviting. Apparently, due to the contruction at the office, they were supposedly not accepting bicyclists and pedestrians. Several officers asked us... didn't you read the signs!? Sorry! we didn't see any signs! (but even if we did, what are we supposed to do?_?)


Ultimately they let us through, and we got through much faster than the cars =)

miles today:
miles so far:
max speed: 32mph (51.5 km)
ave speed: -- to be updated later when I find the notebook! --

Team-S meeting!

We met in Richmond for Szechuan food with ... 12 people! Team RALLC and Team S took up two tables in the restaurant!! Great food and fun times!


(Teemo, Stinky, Sivir, Soraka, Singed)
(aka eves, shoya, FrostRonin, Treerex, Struthius)

Thank you FrostRonin! come down to LA to visit us sometime =)

Overpacking Woes

As Wingee already knows, Celine is really very good at fitting a large number of things into small spaces (i.e. packing 200 lbs suitcases with only clothes). Unfortunately, this skill is a very bad skill to utilize when you are packing for bike tours or hiking tours as this usually means that you have to carry that 200 lbs suitcase all day long.

Luckily, Courier Tiger to the rescue!!! We will drop our "extras" with courier tiger and meet the extras in Seattle or Los Angeles, which ever ends up more convenient. We are so grateful for all the help we've had from everyone! Thank you!

Practice Run

Dr. Alan had work today, so he sent us on a training ride to the Dutch Pankoek house, just a short ride away. We loaded the bike to 75% of the weight we will carry on the journey down to Seattle, and off we went!


no journey is complete without getting lost first


Great views.

Vancouver (and Burnaby) is very friendly to cyclists. To get to breakfast, we took the "Burnaby Mountain Urban Trail" -- a collection of mini paved trails and dirt paths that go all around the city.



We've never taken Perry on dirt paths or gravel before, so it was definitely a harrowing experience!

Perry's damages + Dr. Alan

We got off the plane and retrieved Perry from the oversized luggage section. Taking a break for a sandwich, we next got to work putting the bike back together! That's Perry in the background!



Unfortunately, Perry suffered a huge gouge from being thrown around the luggage compartment. It went through the paint, but it was not very very deep. We've covered it up with Alan's architecture model paint temporarily for now, when we're back in LA we'll try to find a touch up paint to fix up the hole =(

The next thing was to put the bike back together...


(hmm... what to do with these...)

It was... more difficult than we expected. We spent at least 6 hours getting Perry ready. We expected to need to put on the racks, seats, handlebars, wheels. We ended up doing those "easy" things, and also:
1. Adjusting the brakes (because they no longer stopped the bike when depressed)
2. Adjusting the rear derailleur (because the chain was not catching on the teeth)
3. Pumping the front tire, then...
4. Breaking the shreader valve, thus...
5. Needing to replace the tube

Did I mention we are bike noobs? So in 6 hours, we learned how to change flat tires, adjust brakes and adjust derailleurs. Luckily Vancouver Airport has free wifi, so we had a lot of help =) Better now, than when there is no internet!

Unfortunately, after all that... the hole for the front rack broke, so we still couldn't ride Perry.

Luckily, next stop was Dr. Alan! However, to get there, we needed to take the train. While the train out of the airport was nice and wide and easy to get Perry on, the city trains were much more narrow. If anyone else is planning to take a tandem bike on Vancouver (non-airport) trains... hmm... try to avoid it =P


(this is the wide train from the airport)

Despite our best efforts at the airport, Perry still needed expert attention. Enter Dr. Alan! We met up with Dr. Alan, ate super good deal sushi, went back to Dr. Alan's place to fix up Perry!



Thank you Dr. Alan!!

Airport

We managed to check in Perry, even though the ticket clerk was a little bit confused as to if she's allowed to do it. I convinced her though! Perry's plane ticket cost $75 (oversize charge). Considering we "saved" $50 by not checking in any additional bags, I feel like we got a pretty OK deal. Hope Perry comes out fine on the other side of the border!

Most of our tools and things got through security without much problem -- except for the pedals! Although once they opened up the bag and found out that the pedals aren't explosive, they let us through.



Now we're eating french fries and hooger J's (Whopper Jr.) and drinking a big coke! Yay coke!

Did we forget anything?

This morning started at 6am when I frantically woke up after oversleeping. I jumped into my chair and started clacking out my final exam that was due at noon. Submitted at 11:59!

We spent the next 4 hours fitting ostrich on Perry, wrapping perry's handlebars, disassembling perry and stuffing perry into a box. Also running around looking for stuff in our half-packed up apartment, and packing everything else. So, did we forget anything? So far, we've thought of 2 things: my fleece sweater and our flip flops. We also couldn't find our rear blinky light (did I pack it into one of the moving boxes??) So far not too bad, I could always add another sweater to my growing collection (Despite living in LA, I seem to have 3-4 dozen sweaters, as I found out while packing last week). We'll see in the next week what other important things we forgot to bring =P

We took the fly away bus to the airport, thanks to juju-wuju who arrived at precisely the right time as were about to start carrying 2 duffle bags, a backpack and a boxed up Perry to the bus stop. Somehow we were able to put down the seats and we were able to stuff Perry into the juju-mobile. Thank you Juju! Give Rico a kiss for me <3