I spent the rest of Friday engaged in tourism. I drove down to Olympia to see the state capitol, which was closed for a massive rehabilitation project. Then I drove back to Seattle and visited the Experience Music Project and the Space Needle.

On Saturday, I drove to Greggs Greenlake Cycles and picked up the two touring bikes. I was early so I decided to stop by Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle for a cup of coffee and to read the paper. I was walking past a nightclub (still going strong at 8:30am) when I was accosted by a drunk.

Drunk: "Hey man, you know you look just like Jean-Claude VanDam?  He's a mean mutha."
Me: <silence>
Drunk: "Let me ask you. Who do you think is badder: VanDam, Bruce Lee, or Wesley Snipes?"
Me: <long pause> "VanDam"
Drunk: "What!?  You don't think Bruce Lee is tougher than VanDam."
Me: <warming to the subject> "Bruce Lee's dead, man."
Drunk: "I know Bruce Lee's dead, but..."

Just then, my new friend was hailed by some guy he knew and I took the opportunity to duck into a convenient Starbucks. I had a Grande Low-Fat Cafe Mocha and skimmed the New York Times. How civilized. (By the way, in this part of Seattle it is difficult to find a vantage point from which you cannot see at least one Starbucks. There were at least two others within a two block radius of this one.)

Eventually, I continued on to Gregg's and was there when they opened the doors at 10am. They did a pretty good job of reassembling the bikes except that they had no idea what to do with the handlebar bag mounts. Mine was pointing straight up in the air and JT's wouldn't have held the weight of an empty bag. These problems were soon put to rights and I was able to jam both bikes into the Suburban without too much difficulty.

Next, I was supposed to pick up JT and Linda at the airport. I thought that their flight arrived at one-something. (I thought I had a copy of their itinerary with me but I didn't. This was the second thing that I had forgotten. The first was the charger for my cell phone, which had died the day before in the middle of a conversation with Linda.) Anyway, I drove around to West Seattle to get a look back at the city and drink more coffee. This time I tried a White Chocolate Mocha. After a lunch of Halibut on a bed of Caesar salad, I sat down on a bench with my coffee and worked on the Times crossword. This is the life!


After about ten minutes I gave up on the crossword and headed for the airport.

I soon discovered that their flight actually arrived at 2:50pm and was currently running 10 minutes late, so I had to wait a couple of hours. D'oh!

Finally their flight arrived and we jammed all the gear into the Suburban and headed north. As we approached Vancouver it started raining. Also, it looked like it would be a close call whether we could make the 7pm ferry to Nanaimo. There are no highways in Vancouver so it was a long, frustrating drive through the city streets until we got across and onto the highway to Horseshoe Bay. We reached the ferry 8 minutes late. I blame Southwest Airlines.

The next boat wasn't until 9pm, so we ate dinner at a local restaurant until we had to be back at the car at 8:30. Then it was a 90-minute boat ride in the dark and a short drive to our hotel in downtown Nanaimo.