Post Ride Day 9 - September 6, 2013

Ahh, the day we've been waiting for - Raise the Roof day!  For those of you who aren't familiar with Raise the Roof, it is the annual fundraiser for Brandi Carlile's Looking Out Foundation.  The foundation we were raising money for on our trip!  Our awesome pals at Again Today coordinate the event each year in Seattle, and it brings in a ton of money for the foundation, not to mention the fact that it's a really fun evening of entertainment and education.

We picked up Erica's parents from the airport in the early afternoon, grabbed lunch at Mel's favorite place (you surely know what that is by now!), and headed to The Triple Door...we hadn't had time yet to prepare any visual aids to go with our short talk about the trip, so we needed at least something for people to look at instead of just us standing awkwardly on stage!

We threw together a short slide show with some photos from the trip (huge thanks to Susan for letting us use her laptop and flash drive!), then in no time, people were filing in and the event was about to begin.  It was so good to see so many friends in one place at one time!  It was also satisfying to bring Looking Out Across America full-circle - we had first introduced the trip publicly at the 2012 Raise the Roof, and a year later, we had finally completed the adventure of a lifetime, and got to announce to everyone that we raised over $6,000 for the Looking Out Foundation!  Through the generosity of tons of amazing people, we also raised over $2,000 to cover our personal expenses during the journey through t-shirt sales, and had tons of gear purchased for us through Amazon.  Thank you all for donating, buying shirts, and helping out with gear and encouragement!!!

We survived our on-stage time (mostly because I (Erica) made Mel do most of the talking) - then enjoyed the musical entertainment of The Flumps, Jen Hopper and Khaled Tabbara, and Pretty Enemy.  There was also time for a Q&A with Brandi Carlile and band, raffle drawings, and then a 90 minute set by Brandi, Tim, Phil and Josh.  We had a great night with our families, got to see so many friends that are typically spread across the country, and had a great night celebrating the end of Looking Out Across America!  I know there is video of Raise the Roof floating around, and if I can get my hands on a video of our portion I'll post it here.

We'll stop our daily updates here...we stayed in Seattle until September 15th, spent more time with family and great friends, and fell more in love with the Seattle area.  We didn't have much down time - there was sightseeing to be done, tattoos to get (ooh, maybe I'll blog about our LOAA tour memento tattoos...), dinners, breakfasts, and lunches to attend, people to drop off at the airport, and a wedding to attend.  We had a blast, and such a great time unwinding from 3 months on bikes!  Thanks to everyone who made our stay in Seattle so fantastic!

Here are a few photos from the remainder of our stay:

Post Ride Day 8 - September 5, 2013

We decided to make today a touristy day, since Mel's parents haven't ever been to Seattle.  I ran to the grocery store early before everyone was ready, so we had some staples for breakfast.

We took off for downtown Seattle, and did the most touristy thing we could think of right off the bat - a Duck tour!  In case you don't know what these are, they take these amphibious vehicles from WW2, and created land and water tours around that concept.  They are cheesy, of course, but it's a great way to get a good overview of the city without having to drive or walk yourself, and you get a little boat ride on Lake Union.

After that, we grabbed a bite to eat at MOD Pizza at the City Center, then headed up to the top of the Space Needle.  We had a great time taking in the sweeping views of the city!

After stopping by Target for a few essentials, we enjoyed a lazy evening back at the condo.  We had such a good day showing John and Jane one of our favorite cities, and are so glad they could come out and spend time with us here!

Post Ride Day 7 - September 4, 2013

We were pretty lazy again today!  We packed our stuff up - Mel's parents are flying in to Seattle tonight, so we are (reluctantly) moving out of Susan and Cathy's guest room and into a rental condo for the next week.

I took one photo today, of this frog I spotted on the deck:

We enjoyed an delicious dinner at a Chinese place with Susan and Cathy, then they were awesome enough to give us a ride to the airport to pick up our rental car and Mel's parents.  We will see them a ton of other times while we are out here, but we were still sad to go!

We selected only the most awesome of minivans (leather seats and a DVD player, though we don't have any DVDs with us - a formality), then awaited Mel's parents arrival in the cell phone lot.  We picked them up, and headed about 15 min north of Seattle to the condo.  It's tough to find a rental place to sleep 6 people!

Everyone was tired, so we hit the hay.

Post Ride Day 6 - September 3, 2013

This will be a short one - we didn't leave the company of the couch and tv all day, except to pick up lunch.  Susan made some delicious tacos for dinner, and we spoiled this guy a little more:

Poor guy had to have his toenail removed  all the way to the knuckle.  So naturally, he milked it for all it was worth!  We were so in need of a rest day, and this one was perfect!

Post Ride Day 5 - September 2, 2013

Another lovely morning complete with sleeping in and enjoying coffee!  We could get used to this!

Since its Labor Day, Susan and Cathy both had the day off.  We ran more errands with them, and then had conveyor belt sushi for dinner!  We love conveyor belt sushi, and have only found it in Chicago so far.  Wish Indy had one!

Other than that, all we did was hang out with these guys:

It's so nice to be around dogs again - we are missing our boys so much!!!  Susan and Cathy's French Bulldog had a toenail injury, so we babied him to the extreme, and he loved it!  

Post Ride Day 4 - September 1, 2013

After an awesome sleep in a comfy bed, we woke up and had coffee here:

Beautiful view huh?  After a very laid back morning and early afternoon, we headed out with Susan and Cathy to run some errands.  We had dinner out, and that was pretty much the extent of our day.  It was nice to do some normal things again!

Ahh, life off of our bikes :)  This may be the most uninteresting blog post ever!

Post Ride Day 3 - August 31, 2013 - Portland, OR to Seattle, WA

We still hadn't found some of the important articles of clothing we needed - specifically shoes - so we spent our day browsing through Nordstrom Rack, Ross, and Target.  I'm a sucker for cheap stuff!  We wanted to pick up everything we needed in Oregon to avoid paying sales tax in Washington.  My score of the day - $14.90 shoes!

We hit up Chipotle for lunch, which you all know by now is Mel's favorite restaurant in all of creation.  There is a running theme on our trip - we get to wherever we are going just in time to miss a huge crowd of people getting in line behind us.  This is usually the opposite case in our real lives, as we usually get to the checkout at the grocery store just as everyone else has already jumped in front of us!  Just as we were ordering our food at Chipotle, an entire high school girl's soccer team got in line behind us!  Madness...

The biggest excitement of our day was that we were going to take Amtrak for the first time ever!  I know this doesn't sound fun to a lot of you, but we were stoked :)  We ended up having to walk forever (probably 2 miles, so not really forever) with our bikes, a duffel bag, and rolling carry-on luggage (not an easy task!) from our hotel to the train station.  On the way, we passed what we think was a deceased homeless guy sprawled out in the gravel courtyard of an apartment complex.  The police were on their way over to go check out the situation...yikes.

Getting on the train was an experience...we had to get tags for our bikes, but keep them with us.  Then, everyone jumps in one long line and gets a seat assignment randomly on the way to board.  You just walk right out onto the tracks to get on the train - no security screening or anything!  So different from hopping on an airplane!  We had to walk our bikes back to the baggage car at the end of the train, lift them up to the attendant on the train, and then they hang them for you in the car.  We found our seats, and settled in for a 3.5 hour ride to Seattle.  There were actually several other touring cyclists boarding the train with us.  A couple of them asked where we had come from, and were impressed when we told them Virginia.

The scenery on the way up was beautiful - lakes, mountains, and forests the whole way.  We dined in the bistro car on the best of expensive microwaveable fare (cheeseburger and cheese pizza).  Mel watched Friends on her iPad while I watched Paranormal Activity 3 via Netflix on my phone (she doesn't enjoy scary movies, so I decided to work that one in while I was watching alone!).  After several short stops - they barely come to a complete stop in some of the smaller towns along the way - we were unloading in Seattle!

We have been blessed with some great friends in Seattle, and two of them, Susan and Cathy, were waiting at the station to pick us up!  We loaded our bikes and bags into their cars, and headed to a late dinner at Denny's, since it was about the only thing still open at 11pm!  Susan and Cathy also graciously let us stay in their guest room for a few days - we couldn't be more thankful!

We had finally arrived in the city where we would spend our last couple of weeks of this journey.  The Seattle area really feels like home to us, so it was comforting to be there after living as nomads for 3 months!