Ready to go!!

 It's the evening before I get on the big silver bird and head for Seattle. I was planning on getting one more day of riding today, but stuff got in the way. 

I'm on the board of my townhouse and the water heaters and HVAC units are on the roof.  The units are getting older and the board needs to know the age of the units so the we can plan on replacing them. Each unit has serial numbers that can be used to determine their ages. So Steve (board president) and myself spent several hours, climbing ladders and reading placards and recording model numbers and serial numbers.

I also needed to attend a virtual meeting to discuss my review of requirements for the next mission to Mars to return samples to earth. All of NASA is hoping that the 2026 budget isn't as bad as it looks currently. We have a rover (Perseverance) on Mars that's collecting scientifically important rock samples into small metal test tubes. My project (Mars Sample Return) will fetch the samples and bring them back to earth for further analysis.

Oh yea, I had to finish packing for the tour as well. For each tour, I make up a packing list of things I gotta bring and a couple of days out, I start to gather the items on the list placing them into a laundry basket. A short time ago I opened up my wheeled duffel bag and filled it up. It took less than an hour.

For this tour, I performed most of the cycle routing and I'm more than a bit nervous.  We had a team of people setting up the tour. Folks to make the hotel arrangements. Another team to make the dinner arrangements, and because our location in Seattle and the San Juan Islands, another team member to make the 10 ferry arrangements. All I had to do was to find cycling routes from the hotels, to the ferries, then from the ferries to the destination hotels. I'm a bit nervous because I've never been to the area and I hope that everything works out.

The image below is our tour map. Each of the colored lines represents riding days. Thirteen days of riding and 10 ferry crossing. A lot can go wrong with a bunch of amateurs planning a tour. The group is experienced having done many tours previously. I just hope that I didn't screw up my part of trip planning. 

I have a 11AM flight from Los Angeles to Seattle tomorrow, then on to the hotel where my bike is waiting for me (I shipped it vis UPS to the hotel four days ago) then reassemble it and take it on a test ride. The entire group is staying at the same hotel and we'll tag up tomorrow evening for a meeting before starting the tour first thing Sunday morning.

Feel free to leave any comments in the blog.

That's all for now

Brian Cox