Summer 1997 - Yukon to California
Journals - 26 July 1997
Day 16
26 July 1997 (very sunny and bright; mileage = 4.5; Vancouver, B.C.) -- X
- We woke up pretty early. I called my dad. I started to play with the
Ortlieb set up. While doing this, a couple behind us came over and said
hi. He was 1/2-Swiss, 1/2-English; she was American. He was interested in our
trip and had a tandem and B.O.B. in Switzerland where they lived. He then
offered to give us some stuff since they were going back home: paper
plates, paper towels, Ziplocs; an apple and a slim Jim. The only thing we
didn't take was a bike H2O bottle which we don't use. They left and then
the North Face Germans left and we resumed the reorganization effort. I had
the Ortlieb on the bike and took it for a test spin. In this campground was
another (different, bigger model) T.N.F. tent, and a one-man tent with a
bike by it loaded with Ortlieb just like mine. Since I was having trouble
with the front mounting, I wanted to talk to him. He eventually came back
to his site and I went over to say hi. His name is Andreas and, of course,
he's from Germany. We talked for quite a while. He had a near exact German
clone of the Blackburn low rider racks. He had a Dutch bike with a great
light set built in. He had ridden all over B.C. for the last 8 weeks. He
has a good word for rad-Mt. Dew types -- parrots! His English is great. He
said that he needed to get to a bank to get some cash and then he was going
to M.E.C. I told him I'd give him cash to go and buy us another Swiss army
knife. This seemed like a sensible plan and off he went with his stuff
protected (and collateral) by us. Then we resumed the reorganization effort
in earnest. April had already laid out the tarp and put the contents of
her panniers on it. I emptied mine and we started rethinking things. We
reorganized the tools, the kitchen, cold gear, lots of stuff. We also made
a pile of gear to go back. I then set to work on officially mounting the
Ortlieb, which meant ditching the low rider racks which was a big chore.
Andreas convinced me that the low riders cause problems with curbs and he
wasn't impressed with his -- only he didn't have a top rack. By that time,
we were hungry and I went to the grocery store (with an Ortlieb!) and
bought a nice meal of fried potatoes, mushrooms, pepperoni -- to try out
our new, Swiss-style frying pan which is a huge improvement. After eating
we went back to reorganizing, but the very hot sun went down and too soon,
it was too dark to make progress, so we scooped up all of our junk and put
it away and went to bed.
![[Bike]](./only2500b.gif)
