Seattle!

So I got me some (almost)new mavic a319 rims on Francine(the name i've given my bike) and we spent a day off in Spokane. So that was 2 of 4 days off for Billy and 3 off for Manda. Kind of a lot, but hey we're on vacation. So we were going to go to the North Cascades, but it was a cold ride to Wilbur, Wa so we decided to rethink things. That day, Barb rode with us for about 17 miles to get us on our way which was quite nice of her. We got to miss out on the attrocity that is bicycling in Spokane(at least as far as I experienced it). We peddled onward and stopped at a diner and got veggie burgers, what a good find and continued on towards Wilbur. We didn't make it in till about dark and I had gone to check out the camping situation, and while I was doing that Manda had missed me and gone further into town. So I walked around for a while and then biked and found her at a gas station not too far away. So we threw up our tent in this guy's yard that said it would be ok, but Manda thought it was freezing cold so we got a motel. Then we decided to try and figure out how to get to Seattle as quickly as possible.

We thought we would take the train, so we found a close-by trainstation(~60mi) and biked there. It was in Ephrata, Wa and luckily we got to take an amazingly beautiful road. hwy 17 i believe from coulee city to soap lake. Its up there with my other two favorite rides of the trip, hwy 2 from east to west glacier and hwy 200 along the pond o'reille. The road just went down into a coulee(apparently this is a canyon with steep walls) and then through it for like 20 miles. We got a motel and found out when the train would leave and went to eat. We got up at 3:45am and went to the train station only to find out we couldn't take our bikes...great. So Manda decided we would rent a truck, U-haul to be precise and drive to Seattle. So we did. An interesting experience to say the least. I think we were justified considering the cold and rain in the cascades, we may have had some miserable days biking and frigid nights in a tent, so now we're in Seattle for the weekend and looking to enjoy the town.

We went to the university district already and explored a few thrift stores and then went to Starbucks for a drink, and heard Death Cab for Cutie playing while it rained outside...in Seattle. So we're at a hostel and hoping to stay with some warm showers people while we stay. We're hoping to visit the first Starbucks, go up the space needle and check out sub-pop records. Hopefully we'll have some good fun and then move on to Portland.
-billy

also we're working on the picture thing with a flickr account, only a few photos are up right now, so just give us some time to work it out