A photo catch-up...

It's been a while since I put any photos on my blog, so I thought I'd put on a not-so-small collection of pics from the last days in NZ through my time in BC and on to the ride from San Francisco up the coast to today (and today is really great!). Back in New Zealand, I was caught fooling around on Layla's tricycle in the Glen:The last night for me in NZ, with Lisa: The only photo I took during my flights back to Canada was of Mt. Saint Helens in Washington, which is apparently still smoking: Over to Victoria for a sailing trip with Britt and Kipp (but no wind, so we didn't actually sail): Kip the local tree monkey: The Alpha Triad: Britt and Kip pretending to be deer so we could creep up closer to the real deer: Kip, the tree monkey doing more tree tricks: Back in Vancouver with Sarah; both of us wearing our Doers shirts (the Doers are a local band made up of friends of ours): Out for lunch with my entire family from my mom's side, I had the opportunity to draw on the table cloth, so I entertained my Uncle Bert with this attempt at recreating his normal backyard scenario: A long flight (described earlier in my blog) to San Francisco and a tour around town on our bikes led Brian and I to a burrito place, where Brian still tried to tell me that SF is the birth place of the burrito (he even tried to bet the ugly blanket on this when we were still in New Zealand, but we found out that he was only partially correct - it's the home of a certain kind of burrito, but not the original burrito -- does that mean that I get to burn half the blanket?): Look at the size of this thing!!!! The left overs were another entire meal! The Golden Gate Bridge: Marmalade, the cat, who lives at the house we stayed at in San Fran, and who apparently likes to rest on the dinner table: The KISS socks Sarah got for Brian as a gift (so awesome): Just as we are about to depart on our trip north on the bikes: The end of Cycling Day 1, we stayed in a town called Tomales. HOT TOMALES. Someone bought the old bank and now lives there and so changed the gold letters to say "NOT A BANK". We stayed overnight at the local elementary school, but were offered a place to stay by the neighbour, Dan, who said that we probably wouldn't get caught, but if we did, we could move into his backyard. He also had some good recommendations for local eats and treats as he sipped his Coors Light with a styrofoam outer cup to keep it Cool. The following morning, we went to the local bakery for coffee and a cinnamon bun, and met up with Dan and all the other locals chatting it up and drinking coffee out of their own mugs on a lovely Saturday morning: It was a fantastic ride down the road that morning, and became even more so when we saw a sign that said, "Salmon BBQ, Saturday, Sept 15, 11 AM to 6 PM, 2 miles ahead". It was 10:55 AM when we saw this sign, and it was probably 10:59 when we pulled up to the community BBQ with smiles abroad! That was the best salmon lunch I've ever had: The next night was spent in our tent at a regional campground for "hikers & bikers". It costs three dollars each to stay the night. Can't really beat that, eh? We were pretty happy to hear that there are campgrounds like this all the way up the coast. Sweeeeet. After dinner, Brian and I took a walk to the coast and got a few cool night shots with our red head lamp: The next day was a rest-ish day, so we only rode 20 miles instead of 45, and camped out in luxury style (for $19) with a deluxe picnic table including a cupboard at the end, a bathe-able river right below us, and a flat, not too hard place to pitch our tent. Oh, and BIG trees to shelter us from the wind. The afternoon was spent napping and letting Brian discover his adoration for "Easy Crossword Puzzles". This next one is the only photo I have of the road we have been riding the past four days. It's not a great photo, but when we see something really stellar, it's usually accompanied by extremely narrow road shoulders, a big American truck trying to pass us, and wind making the 'straight and narrow' impossible to achieve. So, this is our lunch spot where we sat on a remote UPS plastic pickup box on the side of the road eating pesto jack cheese and ryevita crackers: Once we arrived in Mendocino, we were supposed to stay with another Warm Showers website person, but they weren't home, however, in the mean time while I was waiting outside the grocery store, a lovely lady, Norma, invited us to stay with her for the next few days. She lives right on the ocean in a beautiful little beach cottage. It is her custom to invite people in to couch surf (she's even got a photo album full of evidence of folks sleeping on the couch/bed shown below): Upon arrival at Norma's place, -- wait, I must tell you that we'd ridden the longest day yet, which was 57 miles -- she planted us on comfy deck chairs overlooking the ocean and brought us two cold beers and some salty tortilla chips. This woman is a Goddess. Just as the sun was setting, we all walked out to the cliffs to enjoy the sunset as we munched on cheese and crackers and drank red wine. She made us a delicious chicken dinner and shared stories of her family and her own adventures (this woman has done some dandy things!). I caught a photo of Norma in her kitchen making us dinner. Isn't she cute? She insisted we stay another full day to rest and relax before heading on our way, and to clinch the deal, she promised to make us apple pie for dessert tonight. Twist, twist of the ol' Montie arm...