Arrived in Alaska

Quick post from Alaska. We arrived at 3:00am Saturday morning and made it to the cheap hotel. $79 for a hole-in-the-wall, but it was a good bed.

Went back to the airport on Saturday morning and picked up the bikes. Hit the road and stopped in Talkeetna for the night. Cool town, sat around drinking beer at midnight (still daylight) watching the local kids play football.

Getting Better

Now I can work on the computer for almost 35 minutes before I need to go lay down because my head throbs and my eyes are blurry. A definite improvement. I go to the doctor tomorrow to get the "bandage contacts" taken out and they will tell me how I am doing. Only had to use the numbing drops once today!

I am going to attempt to go out to Tolt (where I used to teach) for the annual all school BBQ and Yearbook Distribution Party tomorrow after my Dr. appointment. I haven't seen most of the people I used to work with since last June and this is about the ONLY time they will all be somewhat free to talk. It will be weird going back as a visitor.

I talked to my friend Della who says that my friends Jeremy and Tiana came and picked up their snakes on Saturday (didn't know I was a snake broker did ya?). Della also said that Magnus, one of their pit bulls, was so excited to see Tiana that he peed on her foot! Wish I could have seen that one Tiana!

Eyes hurt - must go now.

Not Seeing Sucks

Well, I ended up having PRK rather than LASIK because my corneas are too thin. For the past few days I have been almost vampirish in my fear of bright light. I can work on the computer at highest resolution for about 10 minutes before I have to go lay down with my eyes closed. Not good when you work with computers all day! My vision is fluctuating between perfect and blurry as hell and just in the last 30 minutes I have started seeing double - that's fun! They told me all of this would happen so I am not worried at all - just frustrated because I have so much to do.

Bruised and Happy

We had a fabulous time at Advanture Camp learning how to ride our motorcycles in the dirt, gravel, and sand. I am still a bit black & blue and my knees and ankles are protesting a bit, but it was so much fun!!

We have tons of pictures and a few videos, I am hoping to have time to process them on the train tomorrow. Oh - I am taking the train to Vancouver tomorrow for my pre-op exam and than having LASIK on Friday. John's brother Matt is flying in from Colorado tomorrow night so they will either drive up or take the train and meet me in Vancouver.

More later - have to go BBQ some steak :)

Memorial Ride (Part 3)

OK - this is now way over due so to sum it up...the ride was awesome - here are the pictures:

John - Zooom

The Open Road

Part 2 of Memorial Weekend Ride

Well readers, after the way the last entry went I am sure you were wondering if the trip was fun at all. Oh yes - yes it was.

Perhaps it would help to see a map of were we went. The bluish line is tracing our route - the yellow line is the US - Canada border.


After leaving the peaceful valley where we took pictures of the cows we headed into the mountains. Here is a map of the route from a different angle - again our tracks are the bluish ones going east and north from Hope.


The ominous clouds brought more rain, but it didn't matter because we were going through some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. Lush Northwest rain forests, steep mountainsides, and even (when we got to the top of one of the passes) snow.

We were over the largest pass and headed down the other side of the mountain range when we spotted a group of people gathered on the side of the road. We stopped to investigate. The road at this point followed a river and on the hillside bank on the other side of the river was a bear. A BIG black bear. He was beautiful! He was happily munching the tender new grass on the hillside an occasionally looking over at the humans on the other side of the river. We didn't seem to bother him at all. He was much healthier than the bears I had seen in Colorado. We took pictures, but the camera was on the wrong setting so they all turned out completely white - figures.

We continued on to the eastern slopes and the weather finally cleared up. The sun actually made an appearance! My wrists were still wet because the electric jacket cuffs are elasticised cloth, so I remained cold, but happy. We spotted a strange sign that I wish we had taken a picture of - it was a LARGE sheep standing next to an overturned car. I believe there was a warning written under it about running into mountian goats, but I was so focused on the strange image I didn't read the text. We were in mountain goat (ram) country. We didn't see any, but we did see a deer.

The further east we went the dryer the climate became. It started to look more like Colorado with scrub brush, dry pines, and fertile river valleys. We were originally going to Kelowna, but decided to stop in Penticton instead.

Panticton is a strange town. it is a tourist destination from the 60's complete with Family Resorts, cheap motels and fake beaches along the lake. It had a really weird feel to it. We stayed at the Super 8 motel because they had a hot tub and boy did we enjoy it after the long ride.

Monday we got up early and headed out - eastward again and then south back into the US and along the Columbia River for quite a ways. This was wine and fruit growing country.






More later...need sleep now