Seattle, Friday June 25, 2004
During the last few days, Lucija and I lived in planes, airports and cars.
Sunday night (June 20th), we flew back from a McKinsey corporate retreat on Crete. After
apartment hunting in Brussels on Monday and final ride preparations on Tuesday,
we left Belgium on Wednesday morning. At 5am we drove four hours to Charles de
Gaulle Airport near Paris to catch our flight to Philadelphia. There, we picked
up our pre-packed bike-bags and after 26 hours of driving, flying and some
repacking, we finally made it to bed. The next day, we got up at 7am
to fly yet again, first to Chicago and then finally to Seattle.
While we were flying westward, it was fun to see the landscape glide under
us. We realized it’s going to be a long ride. We calculated that one hour flying
equates to one week biking: six hours to fly to the west coast and six weeks to
bike back east. Reducing a vast continent to the scale of up close human
experience takes time.
When we got to Seattle, we met our hosts for the next few days, Alicia and
Ryan. They completed last year’s ride and hence we bombarded them with
questions. What about the food? What about the other riders? How hard is the
biking? We learned: The first day is the hardest.
This morning Lucija and have taken it easy, but this afternoon we’re going for a little ride to see the Bullard Water Locks, to look at salmon leaping upstream from the Puget Sounds into Lake Washington.
Photos
The view of Seattle from the ferry to Bainbridge Island, where we rented sea kayaks and paddled around for a few hours.
We biked to Puget Sound to dip our bikes into the Pacific Ocean