Jill had two more tour­ing cyclists drop by for a “Warm Show­er” the last two nights (click here for info on WarmShow­ers). These fel­lows were from Aus­tralia. Pic­tured above is Hank as he was get­ting set to leave this morning.

The oth­er bloke was already gone, off to Star­bucks then on to the skate­board park down by the wharf. He’s car­ried a skate­board with him for their entire adven­ture. They flew into Van­cou­ver and bought their bikes there. Their route was through east­ern Wash­ing­ton to the Colum­bia, along the Colum­bia, through the Gorge into Port­land, on to see the Colum­bia ter­mi­nate into the Pacif­ic, then down the coast all the way to San­ta Bar­bara. When they arrive in Los Ange­les they’ll leave their bikes and fly to New York for eight days, return­ing to Los Ange­les to ride to the Mex­i­can bor­der, then fly home to Syd­ney. What an adventure.

Things to note on Han­ks set­up above (click­ing on the image presents a larg­er ver­sion of same):
   ♦ The stacked up stuff on the rear rack. Typ­i­cal long haul; load it up, bungee it all down.
   ♦ The cre­ative place­ment of the “han­dle­bar bag”, very cool.
   ♦ The disk brakes and an advan­tage I had nev­er considered.
         Hank had bro­ken 19 spokes by the time he rode into an Arca­ta bike store with four
         of them unre­paired. Yet he could still ride with the wheel WAY out of true because
         the bike has disk brakes. With brakes stop­ping on the rim and his size he probably
         would not have been able to ride with two spokes bro­ken, amaz­ing to me who has
         bro­ken many a spoke while tour­ing. Disc wheels may be in my future!