Our Anniversary: 29July2005

So here we are in Whistler, it's an annual thing -- the yearly owners meeting of our condo in Whistler that I have to chair, a bit of a summer break for the two of us, and it generally coincides with our anniversary of July 31 as well. If you've never been, Whistler is about 200 miles north of Seattle in the Coast Mountains of BC. The drive up from Vancouver BC is on the Sea to Sky Highway, a wonderful scenic road up the fjords and into the mountains to Whistler.

We decided a day or so before to take the new motorcycles up! Neither of us had ever been on a long road trip on the bikes before, and we didn't know what to expect, but suffice to say it was a wonderful exhilarating, almost 9 hour experience and one we won't soon forget, and one we can't wait to repeat. Alas, it's only for the summer -- they don't make ski racks for Harley Davidson's.

We took our time, and the back roads, not touch a freeway unless we absolutely had to. We left Seattle at 6a to avoid heavy traffic, and it was cool and wonderful on the bikes -- taking I-90 over the lake to the eastside (with just a few cars at that hour going that way) in order to pick up Washington Highway 9, a windy back road that also parallels I-5 up to the Canadian border -- only on the other side of a "ridge" of hills a tad to the east of the freeway. I think we maybe passed two dozen cars in three hours on this windy two lane road! There is nothing to compare to the feeling of the wind in your face, (it's why dogs hang out the car window!) the cool clean air, the smell of the pine trees, and the sun on your arms while sitting on top of a 1200cc Harley! We could get addicted to this -- and indeed probably have. I bought a big touring bag that mounts to the sissy bar on my bike, which I could actually lean against while driving -- sort of like sitting in a great big powerful high-backed easy chair -- and we strapped a small duffle to Tony's passenger seat on his bike.

We unfortunately had to take a bit of freeway from the border into Vancouver after crossing the border to the beginning of BC 99 the Sea to Sky Highway up to Whistler, and I'll tell you that 60mph on the freeway on a motorcycle in traffic is not a place I'll get used to any time soon...so we'll stick to the back roads.

Tony took this picture by putting the camera on the duffle bag bungee corded to his passenger seat and setting the timer…

From Whistler, and soon to be points North…