T-Minus 3 Days: Just have to make it through the week

July 8, 2019 (3 days out)

It’s Monday and I find myself wondering if I can manually spin the clock hands and speed time up.  Let’s go, let’s go, LET’S GO!  Since that didn’t work I guess I’m stuck waiting it out until Thursday.

Yesterday I started some of the packing process.  I added duct tape to my tool kit (how did I not think about that in the first place?) and also got my tank bag all set short of my water bottles.  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to throw in a bungee net thing as well as a ratchet strap since I had recently found myself needing both of those.  They aren’t heavy, don’t take up a lot of room, and could be handy so they got added.

I wanted something new to listen to music with too…and I really wanted to go the bluetooth route.  I ordered a pair of individual ear buds but they were not ideal – too big to fit under a helmet and didn’t even fit all that well without the helmet, especially in my left ear…guess I’m a freak.  I also don’t particularly care for helmet speakers since after a while of pushing on your ears they begin to get quite uncomfortable; and also I can’t find a decent set of BT helmet speakers that DON’T HAVE A F*CKING MIC ATTACHED!  I hate having that thing hang out in front of your mouth all day.  I don’t want to intercom with anyone.  I don’t want to answer calls.  I just want my tunes or whatever from my phone.  Luckily for me, Bob found a low profile pair of $20 Skullcandy headphones that work great!  They’re small, fit under my helmet without being uncomfortable, and have a roughly 6 hour (yet to be confirmed) battery life.  I connect them to my Garmin Zumo, and then that to my phone, and then control everything right from the GPS which is a nice bonus from that device.  Hell, even the GPS voice comes through the ear buds loud and clear.

Next up, I recently changed up a few of our hotel reservations due to finding some last minute deals so I did all the re-routing in the Garmin BaseCamp app and loaded them into the GPS.  And while I was fiddling around with the computer I started looking up ferry schedules and pricing.  From Port Angeles to Victoria it’s only $37.50 for motorcycle and rider, 90 minute travel time, all in all not bad.  There is a small problem though…what time we’re going to try to catch the ferry.  As it stands, riding from Eugene to Port Angeles the route I want to take will make for a decently long day.  So the decision that will have to be made is do we wake up early and ride decently hard to try to catch the 5:20pm ferry OR do we just dilly dally, take our time, and catch the 9:30pm boat.  I am constantly arguing both scenarios back and forth in my head, so hopefully Bob has an opinion and we can just do that.

The next ferry we will take from Nanaimo (Departure Bay) to West Vancouver (Horseshoe Bay) is a lot less of a concern since we’re not going to be rushed at all.  It’s a little more costly at $45.95, but when you’re the only game in town you can charge what you want.  Just the idea of riding onto a ferry, and having a ship transport you across a big body of water, and then riding off again is such a cool concept to me.  I was chatting earlier to a friend how it would be cool to maybe ride east, cross the Atlantic Ocean, and ride Europe for a bit.  Dream big I suppose!

So today I also picked up some snacks to have with me for the ride.  Thank goodness for Sam’s Club mega packs and discounts…but even then I still spent nearly $45 in road treats!  Keeping me fueled along the ride, I will have some individually packaged Jack Link’s Beef Jerky sticks, some Planters NUT-rition nut packs, and some Clif bars.  Decently healthy and also packed with all the goodies to keep me going.