Well, after finishing work last Friday at OMC in Port Angeles, and staying at Dick and Vicki Vancalcar's amazing house for the week, we packed up the third and last load of stuff into the Yota and peeled out for Bellingham. We stuffed all our stuff in Tom Andersen's extra bedroom in his shop and spent a couple of nights at Dana's house (well, actually we slept in the garage). We hit up our favorite haunts- Boundary Bay Brewery for a yummy dinner and their legendary IPA. We had sushi at the Public Market, got fresh produce as well and made up a couple of yummy stir-fries and soup. Crash and LA made us dinner one night which was awesome. We rode at the North Fork- Deadfall was sooo muddy I felt bad riding it the one lap that I did, but Skullduggery was riding suuuuuper as they say in France. I took two laps and hit all the jumps both laps. Todd Z. has done an amazing job of building some steep loamy trails with jumps to keep you honest. Lily rode 2 laps on Dirt Renyolds and one on Moto. We had a couple of photo shoots along the way. Lily rode the steep exit move on DR.
We also rode Galbraith (Ridge to SST to mud bog to lower SST). Can't wait to have the new bikes on Galby!! The dirt jumps at Puget St were beckoning me so I hit them up a few different days. I even worked on linking up the BIG line one day and was able to rip off a bunch of consecutive laps for the camera!! In sad news, this was the last place my helmet camera was seen. I freaked out when we were all packed up and I couldn't locate my helmet cam. We ended up spending an extra 2 hours looking through stuff with no luck. WHAT A BUMMER!!! I'm hoping that it snuck its way into one of my bags that I didn't double check!! Speaking of being packed up.....I bought a 2001 Toyota Sienna mini-van!! It had 83k miles and was the base model. I paid 5700$ Drove sweet. New tires and brakes. We got a hitch mounted, shoved the bike rack in the back, and decided to take the Iron Horse Sunday. Got out of town late (2PM) and caught Everett/Seattle traffic on our way to Lily's grandma's house. We had dinner, chatted for a few, and got back on the road. Here's where issue #1 arose: the van started shimmying when braking over 60 MPH. I was about to turn around and drive it right back to Bellingham, but it started raining, stopped doing the shimmy, and has been doing fine ever since (did I imaging the shimmy?!!). Issue #2 Check engine light pops on about 10:30 at night!! WTF!!! Am I jinxed with toyota vans? Then the tire pressure gauge pops on. My van is self imploding?!!! I check the fluids and tires. Nothing. Oh well.....keep driving. Lily drove for a couple hours and I crawled in the back and passed out!! She drove until 1 AM, then pulled into a rest area where we crashed.
Woke up at 7:30....stumbled into the rest area. On the road again w/ some crappy coffee down the gullet. Check engine light is still on. Tire lights are on and off throughout the morning. So here we are.....driving 65 MPH, passing exit 729 in California. Headed to Downieville, CA to pick up our new Specialized Enduros from Greg Long. There's also the 420 ride(s) Sun-Mon that we're going to get get punished on!! Speaking of 420, we just left Weed, CA.....a "sleepy" little town right at the base of Mt. Shasta. Just absolutely jaw dropping views of the remnants of a ancient volcano. The van seems to have moods. Sometimes the brakes feel great at any speed and then occasionally it will shudder while trying to brake.......hmmmmmmmmmm........BEHAVE VAN!!!
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