Wine and Sunshine

Day 46  Tuesday 17^th May 2011

We took advantage of the bright start to the day by taking a ride down the road to the BMW dealer, South Sound, in Fife (that’s Washington State not Scotland) where we met Neil and Alex in the Service department. Alex is a German who came over to work for Touratech some 13 years ago.  We confirmed our booking for 19^th and made sure that our requests had been understood especially the change of tyres. We are buying two sets each. A replacement set of Metzler Tourances to go on the bike for Russia and then a set of TKC 80 nobblies for us to strap to the bike ready for changing in Mongolia for the off road section of the trip. The quick jaunt back to hotel revealed that yesterday (Monday) we must have walked around 4 miles or so between intersections of the Interstate just seeing what was around in the area – I have to report not much I’m afraid. The clearing of the clouds in the sky from the previous days also revealed the magnificent 14,000 ft active volcano, Mount Rainier 26 miles away towering over us in the lowlands - we didn’t even know it was there !

Mount Rainier in the distance

Then came the moment we had been really looking forward to - a ride to Walmart to do our weekly shop.  At nearly five miles the store was much further away than we had first thought and we were mighty glad that we didn’t attempt to walk there yesterday as we had originally contemplated. We loaded up our cart with goodies, fresh fruit, microwaveable meat, shrimp, fruit juices and a bottle of white wine to round it all off – so much stuff in fact that we wondered if it would all fit on the bikes but amazingly it did.

Back at the ranch we filled the fridge and stocked our makeshift larder and then sat outside on our panniers (now removed from the bikes) eating fruit and cheese plus our first taste of jerky which was not at all that bad. We felt compelled to open the wine which, by now, was chilled in the fridge and was kept in that condition by filling a plastic waste bin with ice from the machine. The wine went down so well, so well in fact that we had to walk over to the nearby garage and buy another bottle. We quickly finished that and convinced ourselves that we should have another bottle but this time from the garage on the opposite side of the road so as not to give the first garage owner a hint that we may be alcoholics.

The Weekly Shop

The Pannier Lid Makes Such A Good Fruit Bowl

 

Hazy, Lazy Days of Sunshine

We were a good way into this third bottle when Mike and Tom, our neighbours, turned up after their days work. We got talking and drinking and they both had a ride around the motel a couple of times on my bike and then they insisted on buying us yet another bottle of wine which we thought would be rude not to finish. By the time we got to bed we were totally ratted and slept deeply through the night.

Mike & Tom with the bikes