Ephemerica

Hey everybody, we’re in Portland now. Getting out of Seattle was a bit frantic, but we made it. We’ve been doing a little relaxing, but mostly trying to finish buying all the stuff we are going to take with us. Thank you SO much to all the people who gave us REI gift cards either for Christmas or Cindy’s graduation. We had NO trouble spending all of them

So what you see here is all of our packed bags, getting ready to be taken out to the car for our first “dry” run (although technically, it was raining) at biking with fully loaded bikes. My folks live in a pretty hilly area, so we opted to drive to a flat area near the house I grew up in (Google Earth file), so that we could get some easy miles under the belt before tackling the hills. That was a very smart move—these things are pretty scary to ride with all the bags on. The handlebars shimmy all over the place, and the bike feels like it’s going to snap in two. I’m not so worried about Cindy’s frame, but mine feels suspect. Maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to it. The wiggle in the front end also gets better at higher speeds. Which brings me to another discovery—we are going to be biking really slowly…

Posted by Matthew on January 7th, 2007 | Filed under: Pre-trip Planning