The mountains around Whistler, British Columbia, were beautiful and quite a few snow covered. It is easy to see why Whistler, the site for the 2010 Winter Olympics, is such a “hot” winter vacation and ski destination. We left the hotel in Whistler about 7:45 a.m. PST and headed toward Vancouver, British Columbia.
It was in Vancouver where we first became separated. Carey had stopped to take pictures of Ed, Mark, and Tom as they came off the bridge across the Burrard Inlet and didn’t meet up with them until hours later at the BMW dealership in Seattle. Crossing the Canada-United States border was anything but fun for all, as both crossing sites had long lines. While Mark and Tom waited at the BMW dealership for tires to be installed on Tom’s motorcycle, Ed and Carey went to a Harley-Davidson store in downtown Seattle, which turned out to be a clothes-only store, and to the Harley-Davidson shop in Bellevue, a city east of Seattle on the other side of Lake Washington. Ed shopped for another helmet, but had no luck finding one to his liking.
Trying to get all four of us back together and traveling down Interstate 5 to our overnight destination once we were together turned out to be one big Charlie Foxtrot. Mistakes and false assumptions were made. We acted stupidly. Before anyone could, however, make a premature statement or pontificate an unfounded or biased opinion, we decided to use this opportunity as a “teachable moment.” We would form a task force, study the events of the day, and open a dialogue. Or maybe we would open a quadralogue, since there are four of us.
Though it was not scheduled to be, our stopping place for the night turned out to be Kelso, Washington. We ate in the bar of the hotel, and afterwards, Mark and Carey found a car wash to clean up their bikes.
We traveled about 350 miles during the day. From the time we entered the United States, most of our miles were on Interstate 5, so as you might imagine, the scenery wasn’t that great.