The journey of 4000 miles had a pretty soft start. Linda drove us to Newport, we carried our bikes to the water and dipped the rear wheels in the Pacific. A quick photo op and we were off. We only went .1 mile when we saw a bakery so we stopped for a pastry and cup of coffee. Then we got down to business and rode the 60 miles to Corvallis. It was Danny's first time on a bike in several months, so we took it pretty easy. He felt strong by the end of the ride and his bike and my old Brooks saddle worked well. We overnighted in Corvallis, doing last minute packing and shopping. It was also a last chance for Linda's home cooking and to sleep in our own beds for a while. Today will be the first day loaded, and we'll have a flat 40 miles to Coburg. Tomorrow will be uphill river grade to McKenzie Bridge. The following day will be our first pass fully loaded, crossing the Cascades at McKenzie Pass. Beyond the pass we have a route, but no schedule. The time pressure will be supplied by trying to make it over the Rockies at Jackson Hole before the snow flies.

A brief update about what I've been up to for the past couple of years. I'd been working way too much, and too hard, in 2010 and that prompted some thoughts about alternatives. On the drive to the start of the SIR Crater Lake 1000K in September 2010, my son Benny, the tall ship sailor, talked about helping him with buying a 40' wooden boat from his major professor that he could live aboard. During the 67:48 ride from Bremerton to Crater Lake, I gave it lots of thought and decided I'd rather do it myself and let Benny visit than vice versa. I started doing research about the cruising lifestyle, and by the start of '11 settled on an objective with Linda of retiring, selling the house, buying a boat and sailing away within three years. I broke it into a project, with stop-continue checkpoints and started executing on the plan. My sailing experience was long ago and limited, so the major activity was coming up the learning curve. I joined a sailing club, took several sets of lessons, and by September of '11 chartered a thirty eight foot Island Packet in the San Juans for a week with Linda, Benny and my friend Mark. We survived the week and have continued up the curve with another week this June on a 37' Pacific Seacraft in the Apostle Islands. It turns out that sailing is not good practice for randonneuring or bicycle racing, so I had to cut back to just casual cycling and commuting. Two things happened in June that have changed my plans. HP offered an early retirement package, which pulled up my retirement date to 8/31/2012. Linda, however, still needs to work through June '13 to qualify for her retirement benefits. The other significant thing was that my son Danny got laid off from his job, and the severance is allowing to take the summer and fall off. He's hiking the Pacific Crest Trail now, and asked me to ride across the country with him, starting in September. I'm back in the saddle again, working to get back the cycling fitness I used to have, anticipating an early September departure for a 10 week loaded transcontinental ride. The boat plan will restart in January, after I'm back home. I may be able to keep executing on the boat plan and also randonneuring next spring. The current target is to have the house sold and be living on a boat in the Puget Sound by July 2013. That's the news from here. I'll be updating my blog from on the road, and my son will also be updating his http://itinerantsabbatical.blogspot.com/. We'll also be using a SPOT Tracker to update facebook.