Pa to Panama on two wheels: more fun times, more fun places with more fun people.

So we left earl and ediths, its drizzling, I run into the back of nate, I’m hot, my raingear is riding up on me, and its not really raining. Dumb. So after a few hours we had it. The group wasn’t working and we had a major group split. Laban and Dwayne were being completely unreasonable and wanted to go south for some reason, and chad and nate and I wanted to keep going west. A few punches where thrown and a few bloody knuckles…... Nah really laban went down to see his dad Lester in the apple capital of the world. And the others kept going. We made camped in two different locations. Nate Chad and I camped along a creek back in the woods in a slight sprankle of rain. We put up a tarp and cooked had some good talks and slept well. In the morning after packing up I asked how much they would pay me to turn around in a little area that we camped in without putting my feet down. Nate said $5 so I tried only to have my trusty steed hurl me to the ground with a less then graceful thud. Bringing my total drops at the time to 3.

a picture is worth a thousand words i guess

Chad and nate took the easy peasy route of putting their feet down and doing like a 3 point turn. Nate shortly thereafter tipped while turning around a bit down the trail while videoing! Ok so we headed over the cascades and saw a sign saying 75 miles to the next fuel stop, my fuel light was already blinking (about 50 miles left) at me but I had a bit of fuel in my bottle for my camp stove so might as well giver her a go. Well apparently the cascades are tall because we just went up and up and up, and our fuel gauges went down and down. We coasted for a few miles down the other side. I even passed a minivan while coasting with my bike shut off. It was probably the slowest I’ve ever passed someone. And they gave me some funny looks as I was all tucked in behind my windshield. We found out my bike coasts faster then the wee stroms. But later down the mountain we found out it runs out of fuel first. Probably largely due to the nature of my riding style. Anyways my bike shut down and I coasted for a while, Nate and chad kept going. I dumped my extra fuel in and fired up and kept going, just a mile or so later I passed chad sitting along the road also out of fuel. I kept easing her down the mountain for about 10 miles only to have her spit and sputter once more and there I sat. so I took the riding gear off grabbed my fuel bottle and a water bottle and took about 3 steps and what do you know there was nate ripping up the road with a fuel can strapped on the back. So he made it the remaining 2 miles and got fuel and brought chad and I some gas. At this point we continued on into Abbotsford, British Columbia. There we met chads friends Kathleen, Jil and Kayla. We grabbed a bite to eat at a greek restraint, then Jil and Kayla went and got groceries for us. Then we all met back at Kathleens place for ice cream and some yummy brownies that Jil made. Laban and Dwayne rode in like 5 hours of rain and got in at 1am (I was sounds asleep and I don’t think they got brownies). After a restful nights sleep we helped our hosts out with their deck. Gary and Carleigh Davey were kind enough to let us stay in their basement (where Kathleen is a permanent resident, think me in mike and lavonnes basement) so we did some minor work on their deck.

They really like watching nate work

our host

Saturday Kathleen and Jil gave us the grand tour around Vancouver and we got some Indian food for dinner then headed “home”. The word home is now basically used to describe where we are going to sleep that particular night, most times in reference to the house we are staying in.

everyone with their eyes closed in china town i think

Jil on her own little mini adventure in the bamboo

this is jil with my camera

nate just chilling in Vancouver

Kathleen and chad talking about where to eat

ok so Sunday while in church with Kathleen and Jil we could hear the absolute down pouring of rain outside. All I could do was look at the other guys and laugh. We said our goodbyes and we got a slight break in the rain so get to our bikes and get our gear on. Then made like bandits towards the border.