I finally arrived in Palo Alto after pouring my life savings into the gas tank of the van. It was great to see Ritu and spend some time with her family. We worked on wedding stuff, ate some burritos and spent some quality time just hanging out. “Quality time” usually means watching a movie with Ritu passed out next to me, but it’s something I enjoy. I did go on one long ride and found out just how out of shape I was. Well, I guess I’ll get whipped into shape pretty fast really soon.
Wednesday came too soon and I was on the road again to Portland to pick up Nate. It’s a damn long drive to Portland. And expensive when you’re only getting 12 mpg. The beginning of the drive started out great when I found out just how far into E the gas gauge goes. Doh. After a long skateboard up to a gas station (Downtown Martinez may be nice, but don’t run out of gas there!) I was back on the road and cruisin’. Until the roof box popped open. At 85 mph no less, just outside of Davis. All I heard was a big “whoosh” and “thud” and I saw my ground pad sailing out the back. What I didn’t see and never found was my skateboard taking flight. I had just been thinking how great it was that I had the skateboard along and how much fun it was going to be to bomb some hills on it. Damn.
Portland was great, but was another less-than-24-hour stop. We had some pizza, packed up, got a couple hours of sleep and then hit road. Jennifer was nice enough to wake up super early and make us some tasty fried eggs so we could begin the journey on full stomachs. After a tearful good bye where I had to smack Nate upside the head to get him to stop crying, we were off to Whistler and our first official stop on the Road Trip.