Friday Harbor, Washington

On Tuesday, after Ryan ordered his replacement gear, we left the awful city of Nanaimo. It was amazing how many stories of theft we heard about in Nanaimo: For instance, while Ryan was in the library using the internet and I was waiting outside with the bikes, this guy came up to me and told me that I needed to be careful with our bikes; apparently he had had his rear wheel stolen while his bike was parked outside the library!

Anyway, we finally got out of there. Unfortunately, we were stuck on the shoulder of a busy 4-lane highway for the first 10 miles or so, but once we got off of it, the ride was quite nice. We took a ferry to Salt Spring Island, which was great because there weren't too many cars, and then we took a ferry down to Sidney. Like many other towns on our route, Sidney was pretty dead after 6pm, but we found a hotel and then went out for Greek food.

The next day, we caught the ferry from Sidney to San Juan Island, back in the US. Ryan was able to get through customs with his driver license and a copy of his passport, which was good. We spent the whole day cycling around the island, where we saw alpacas (Ryan tried to confuse them by making chicken sounds at them) and bald eagles! Apparently the San Juans are one of the best places to see bald eagles in the US.

We got a room at the Wayfarer's Rest hostel in Friday Harbor, then went out looking for food. Ryan asked a random girl at a real estate office where we should eat---apparently the best pizza place on the island was in the bowling alley.

We went there, ordered our pizza, sat down, and started talking to the three old men at the next table. Apparently one of the guys has way too much money (apparently it's from a trust fund), so he decided to pay for our pizza!

After the men left, we learned that one of them was gay, so Ryan thinks that we got a free pizza because they thought we were a gay couple. My favored hypothesis is that it was just because the rich guy was drunk. Oh well, it doesn't really matter why; we got a free pizza!

Today, we're taking the ferry over to Anacortes, WA, and then we're going to bike down to Port Townsend, where we should be able to pick up the replacement gear.

Total distance so far: 337.5 miles