Thursday, August 20, 2009
Days 64+: Portland, OR to Home
Day 64
We started our day by taking some photos out on the deck overlooking town. Note that these are the first new clothes since the Frederick Photos back in days 4-5.
Also be sure to have a look at my hands. Those, coupled with my awesome zebra tan on my feet, made me stand out pretty well in any crowd.
Next step was to get in touch with a bike shop. Way back before we'd left we'd asked Larry at Mt Airy Bikes for some advice. He'd suggested we talk to the Bike Gallery. Jillian's mother had talked with them before, so we had a good idea of where to go, but we called again to verify a few things.
Before we could go there we first stopped at a Pack and Mail. It took some work, but they found us a box big enough for our trailer, which we packed with just about as much as we could. That cost about $70 to ship - UPS isn't cheap. BOBs are also hard to measure, apparently, as it took a few tries for the Pack and Mail people to make us a box the right size.
Then we went over to their Division location where we met with Peter Lunoak. He first had to find us a box. Standard procedure for shipping a bicycle is to pack it into an old bike box. Our bike proved to be a little too big. In fact, the only box they had that would fit us was a huge electric scooter box. We took some measurements and called UPS. The box was too big for UPS to take. That meant shipping via Amtrak Express. Since we'd be boarding a plane soon, Peter agreed to take care of delivering the bike to the train station and working out a price with them. We agreed on a price that we both thought was fair (having not shipped Amtrak Express before, Peter wasn't sure how much it was going to be).
Bike dropped off, it was time to head out to dinner and to see a baseball game. We stopped at the Duck Store in Portland before getting dinner with Jillian's relatives. Then we were off to a baseball game. On the way, we saw things that made us love Oregon even more, including:
Afterward it was time to head home. We made sure to stop at Powell's, which fills an entire city block full of books. We only had an hour before they closed, which made us both very sad. We all could have spent a day in there. Both Jillian and I grabbed a few books as reading material for the plan ride.
Day 65
The next day we got up late and spent quite a bit of time blogging, napping, and doing laundry. For lunch we went out to a Pasta Bar/Buffet place, which was an excellent way to get lots of food. It was interesting - our metabolisms had already started to slow way down, and I wasn't able to eat nearly as much food as I'd expected. But I was still thirsty, all the time.
We also stopped at REI on the way home. The employees there weren't nearly as excited about our trip as we felt they should have been.
That night we had a fantastic dinner with Jillian's relatives before turning in for some sleep.
Day 66
Our flight left pretty early in the morning, and featured a stop in Salt Lake City. Jillian spent a lot of the flight not feeling very well, and I mostly read or napped. One thing that helped was the free drink tickets Jillian's parents shared with us (they'd gotten them for free on the flight out).
We landed and drove back to Lancaster. The flight took most of the day. It was good to be back in Pennsylvania though. But then, maybe it was just good to know where I was sleeping at night, and to know what I was having for dinner.
Day 67
We had quite the welcome back party at Jillian's parents house. Saw a lot of friendly faces and even gave some advice to a future bike tourist. After the party we loaded my car up with as much stuff as we could. I drove home that night - Jillian decided to wait a day in order to play Ultimate Frisbee in Gettysburg. I thought she was crazy, but whatever.
It felt good to be home.
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| posted at: 04:11 |
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