Steve and Graham's Pacific Coast

Our motel for tonight looks pretty unpromising from the outside! it's actually quite charming - someone has clearly refurbished the rooms but not got around to tarting up the exterior paintwork yet.  It's all listed on AirBnB.  Steve likes to have cappuccino when we have our daily (sometimes twice daily) stop at an espresso shack.  The first one we called at asked whether he wanted it wet or dry – to which we replied ‘err what?’.  Steve hedged and went for medium. Apparently a wet cappuccino has more steamed milk and less milk foam whereas a dry one is all foam on top of the espresso. Taken to the extreme, a very wet cappuccino is just a latte. Every day is a school day - I just stick to black americano, you can't go wrong with that! A delightfully uneventful day today. The 4 lane road (no central reservation) outside our motel last night seemed busy day and night, but when we pulled up to the stop line the traffic parted ...

Getting ready  I think that post has had one too many tandems leant against it! The Port Townsend ferry  Deer in the boatyard  View from our balcony  We were up early this morning to get the 07:15 boat to Port Townsend. The 7km ride down to the ferry dock was cool but it was nice when the sun came up. Steve got a discount for being 65 – i had to pay full whack cos I’m only 64 – not that anyone checked. It was as cheap as chips anyway! Riding out of Port Townsend, while we were still on the edge of town, I noticed some deer looking a bit lost over on the far side of the highway. All the traffic pulled up, including us, to let them cross – a doe and two very lovely fawns.  A very short way further on we saw three more in a boatyard. Our daily gravel came in the form of the Olympic Discovery Trail – apparently this runs for 135 miles – thankfully we only did a few miles of it and i won't ...

Dock near Bellingham  I had a double take when I first noticed the snowy mountain! Here it is again  Pleasant metalled bike path We crossed a bridge over a pretty inlet  Not sure what this is but they are very noisy, even on the glide path for landing  This is what passes for a shower in a $110 motel room these days - seriously??!! We have now diverged from our route north and are onto new roads.  We headed to Pizza Hut for our meal last night, thinking of the help yourself salad bars we discovered on the Trans Am ride.  (Back then, we had biceps like Popeye after pigging out on the spinach, but we did draw the line at smoking a pipe). Anyhow, things have changed somewhat – Pizza Hut all down the west coast has become take-out only, although there are still some of the original restaurant seats for folk to sit at if they wish.  You can still get a decent pasta bake wi...

These rafts of lumber carried on along the river, sometimes one side, sometimes both, for at least 7km - probably further but we turned off! Tell me this isn't the coolest drive through espresso shack in all of America! The official Adventure Cycling route back south has definitely been better than the one we chose north, although not completely without awkward bits. A few turns way to tight for my tandem piloting skills and one steep gravelly bit that was hard even pushing the bike. We also had to renegotiate the fairly narrow path alongside the suspension bridge across the Frazer River (this is a steel shelf with retaining fence bolted to the side of the bridge structure – clearly an after thought) A couple of people came the other way while we were on it – thankfully they cowered against the side to let us pass. The route through the suburbs was quite reasonable – not the nicest road but it had a shoulder for bikes and we were able to keep up a decent...

The Canadian border  Looking off the bridge over the Fraser River  Looking north from the start of the Pacific Coast route (which heads south) The bike gets to rest its tyres in the deep pile carpet of the kiddies playroom  Quite an exhausting day – so many fiddly cycleways, narrow sections,  tight turns, bollards, stop signs, road crossings and people on foot not looking where they are going (one in particular with an enormous shopping trolley). It started beautifully – once out of Bellingham, which is neither large nor busy, we were into lovely countryside with cattle grazing, crops (including a field of spuds) and patches of woodland. This lasted almost to the border crossing into Canada. There was no bike lane at the border so we walked the bike through bit by bit in a line of cars – it took quite a while.  There were only two kiosks open out of about 10 or 12, so I’m not sure how busy it needs to get before ...

Cool truck at the supermarket I went to for our breakfast stuff - cue the ZZ Top. The Centennial Trail  Road closure - not sure what was going on but there was a huge chasm where the road should be!  Luckily there was a way around involving heaving the tandem up here. 'Standing' in line for the drive-through espresso shack.  These seem to have sprung up all over the place. Our motel last night was on a fairly major cross road junction. To get to the direction we wanted, we had to cross three lanes to get to the left turn lane.  You might have thought that at 07:00 in the morning it would be quiet but the traffic seemed to run all night! Anyhow, much to my relief, after a couple of traffic light cycles there was a gap long enough for us to cross the straight-on and right turn lanes and sit behind a truck going our way.  Soon we were back on quiet residential roads. The next challenge came in the form...

Three pictures above taken while waiting for the Freemont lifting bridge to let a yacht out! I like to be able to keep an eye on the bike from my pit - it also gives me somewhere to hang my knickers to dry! The bike went together without problem this morning. Just two teething problems: rubbing in the front wheel turned out to be a loose brake block and gears playing up turned out to be because I had inadvertently squidged the gear cable when I put Steve’s pannier on – both easily solved. It always takes a day or two to adjust to riding in a new place and today was no exception. Still, we are getting there – we successfully negotiated the busy Seattle dockside area and then worked our way right through downtown Seattle.  There have been a lot of dedicated traffic free cycleways, often the width of a Dorset lane. Although, many of them give the impression of riding through the backwoods, the sound of traffic has not often been far ...

At Heathrow  In our motel room in Seatac (very close to Seattle Tacoma airport)  Luckily they have given us a room on the ground floor.  As a testament to our form filling ability (there have been many forms) they have let us into the US.  We will tackle putting the take-apart  tandem together in the morning.  It has been a long day – it’s 2:35 in the morning UK time.  We are just debating whether we can be bothered to go out and get something to eat.

      This is the blog for Steve Bateman's and Graham Dore's tandem bike ride down the Pacific Coast of the United States of America. Hopefully this will be a case of ‘Third Time Lucky’ as the trip has already been postponed twice owing to Covid.   Our original plan was to ride a route called the Sierra Cascades down the mountain ranges a couple of hundred miles east of Pacific seaboard but worries over forest fires and another fire season well under way have led us to jump ship to this coastal route instead.   As a non-resident I find it difficult to find my way around the US fire date but statements such as ‘ Year-to-date acres burned for the US is approximately 160% above the 10-year average’ are a bit off-putting.   A very nice lady at Adventure Cycling (the organisation who administer the cycling routes) said that if this fire season is anything like recent years, we would be better doing the coastal route – so, that is what we are doing. The Pac...