Time: 1:42 pm
Location: a rest stop south of Eugene but north of Medford
Listening to: TED talks
Number of naps taken: 2
Number of electronic gadgets that have crapped out on us so far: 1 (our gps died- WTF?)
Number of electronic gadgets we’ve spontaneously bought on the road: 1 (a radar detector that we’re returning as soon as we get home. Suckaz.)

One thing that I have gotten a lot better about since moving to Seattle is getting out and actually seeing some of the sights in the city.  When I think about all the stuff in California that I still haven’t seen, I get kind of sad.  But up here, I’ve at least made an effort to see SOME of the cool stuff Seattle has to offer.

I think that there are two main reasons that I’ve actually been seeing stuff around here.  First, I don’t entirely feel like Seattle is home, so I want to see as much as I can while we’re here.  Not that we have any plans to leave anytime soon, but when you ask me where I live, my first inclination is still to say “California.”  Eh, we’ll see how it turns out.

The second reason is my friend Barrie.  I have NEVER met anybody who does more stuff than Barrie.  Seriously, she is like a machine.  Not only is she a complete genius at knowing EVERYTHING that goes on within a 50-mile radius of Seattle, once she decides she wants to do something, she sets a date for it, puts it on her calendar and invites people to do said stuff with her.  For somebody as indecisive and lazy as myself, it’s all pretty damn impressive.

My knitting group has an ongoing list of stuff we want to do.  About a month ago, somebody mentioned that they wanted to ride the new Light Rail and visit the Japanese Gardens in Columbia City.  So Barrie worked her magic- she picked a date and we went.

As it turned out, not a lot of us went.  It ended up just being Barrie, myself and a new addition to our group named Elizabeth.  Still, it was a successful trip- successful in the sense that I actually found the light rail station, was only 10 minutes late getting there, and we managed to avoid buying a ticket- SCORE!

The gardens were a short 20 minute ride away and totally gorgeous.

We wandered around the garden a little longer than we intended, and realized it was starting to get a little dark by the time we headed back to the light rail.  Then we got a little bit lost trying to find the trail back to the rail (haha, that rhymed).  Now, the gardens are beautiful, but they aren’t in the best neighborhood in the city.  Pretty soon, it was 8:15, pretty damn dark outside, and we were all starting to get a little on edge.

Thankfully, just as my tension peaked, Barrie and I saw an awesome little Mexican tienda and got distracted by the colors.  We went inside and I took more pictures there than I did at the gardens.

They sold yarn!  Sure, it was super crappy acrylic shit yarn, but it was yarn none the less.

They also sold these extremely colorful cowboy boots.

Barrie pondered the refrigerated offerings and debated the differences between cotija and queso fresco.

I had to seriously talk myself out of buying this pig.  Now I kind of regret NOT getting it.  I really think that if I positioned this little darlin’ where it was the first thing I saw every morning, it would be at least as affective in combating Seasonal Affective Disorder as one of those expensive UV light therapy devices.

Once we had our fill of the tienda, we tore ourselves away and successfully made it back to the light rail unharmed.  It was an extremely entertaining way to spend a Thursday evening.

The start of many motorbike adventures to come officially begins – July 8th at 6AM. Me and my fellow journey men (An and Jaime) will be setting off on an adventure from Southern California to Seattle Washington in search of the best roads on left coast. The ride will take us through some of the most beautiful landmarks this side of California, Oregon and Washington including, the the depths of the Redwood forest, the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, the sand dunes of Pismo Beach and the scenic coast line of Oregon. It’s amazing how little we’ve seen of our own backyard.

We’ll be riding wonderful roads such as this.

I’ll be trying my best to document the trip for everyone to enjoy and will try to actively post live updates here and on our tumblr journal when I can. (Mostly to let Aubrey know we are alive and well). In the mean time you can see our tenative route and virtually make the drive using Google Maps.

Follow along with on our Tumblr journal
Live photo updates available on our Flickr channel

I’d also like to thank Jaime for making this ride a reality by lending a hand and solving my bike situation.  Though I won’t be joining the Ducati family of riders per my originl plan, a 2006 Yamaha FZ6 will make do. Not quite as sexy, but it’ll get the job done. Onwards we go!

Live, Love, Ride – Michael

Bad attempt at a pun, I know.  I apologize.

Anyways, this weekend we made an attempt to take advantage of the good weather while it lasts.  People are neurotic about the weather turning bad here.  Now that September has hit, you can hear feverish whispers and neurotic plan-making everywhere you go as Seattlites try and suck up every bit of sunshine they can get there hands on.  So on Sunday, we escaped the city, and went to Snoqualmie Falls:

The falls are only 30 minutes outside the city, but the drive still gave Mike a chance to drive a bit on “fun” (read: not congested and poorly laid out like the ones around us) roads for once.  He was happy.  However, he was even happier once we parked and went to grab some snacks, where he was ridiculously delighted to find out about the existence of this:

Seriously, he talked for ten minutes about how awesome it was that Nestle had finally solved the Crunch to ice cream ratio by embedding the ice cream with little Crunch balls.  I’ve never heard him so excited about dessert.  This was my soundtrack as we made our way down the path to the falls.

He then got excited again when he saw this sign:

Ugh.  Only bad people don’t like dogs.

The trail was gorgeous.  It was also only a mile round trip so Mike didn’t really complain about having to walk too much.  I powered on ahead and he carried the camera, so we have about 30 pictures that basically look like this:

Yes, I’m totally rocking the “jacket tied around my waist” look.  I thought it would be colder.

Right before you get to the falls, you pass an ominous concrete building that is totally fenced off and filledwith mysterious machines:

Mike thought it was where they kept the Velociraptors.  It is actually used to harvest energy from the falls, but his idea was far more entertaining.

Finally, we got to the official end of the trail, where we saw tubers!

Maybe THIS is where Indian River really is!

When the trail ends, you can’t actually see the waterfall.  So we did what everybody else was doing- climb OVER the observation deck and scale down to the rocky riverbank, trying desperately not to fall and break a bone (at least I felt like this, there were toddlers who were making the climb without a care in the world), and walk over rocks for another quarter of a mile.  Along the way, you see more of the river:

You can also climb out onto random rocks in the water, which Mike immediately did:

Finally, you get to see the actual falls.  They are really breathtaking:

We tried to get somebody to take a picture of us with the waterfall in the background (or rather, I tried to get somebody to take a picture of us and Mike tried to stop me), but they didn’t really get the point of this request:

At least they were nice enough to take a picture of us.  As usual, it’s a terrible picture of me.  I mostly chose to include it because I love that Mike wore black socks with shorts and tennis shoes.  Made.my.day.