The brothers sent in an update of their progress leaving Seattle on Jun 25th and a few pictures of their four star accomodations and Aaron's Bicycle Shop: (I will also be posting a map of their last reported location on this blog shortly)

 

"Well this is the first internet access we have run
into since Seattle. We're at the Bay City public
library. Nice computers!

We left Seattle Thursday morning. Just wanted to say
hello. We’ve crossed over from Washington and are
heading down the Oregon Coast, taking a rest day today
in Bay City Oregon. This is my first use of the
Internet at a public library and in we’re in a quite
small one.

In Seattle we saw the sites, including a very
expensive dinner atop the Space Needle. Lost some
maps overboard as we crossed Puget Sound on a
ferry but luckily we had back-ups. Encountered an
extremely rainy day and lots of hills. Yesterday was
a little discouraging (hills). Fortunately we went
around "Foley Peak (1200-1300 ft)" through Foley
Creek. The rest day and a few beers seem to have
helped our weakened bodies. We’re hoping to camp on
the beach tomorrow night."

The bikes were shipped on May 27 to AARON'S BICYCLE REPAIR in Seattle. For all you skeptics who think that we're pulling off a big scam, here is the shipping record and one of the delivery receipts.



It took us three bike boxes. Mostly my fault I'm afraid. We used the biggest box for my bike and still could not get the frame in there with the rear wheel on. So all four wheels went into a single box. We added some camping stuff to the box just to get it out there. I think we started about 10AM. This was my first bike packing and I thought we started off pretty well. The fist thing to do was to ride the bikes about 3/4 mile to check out new pedals and such. I discovered that one of the bolts for the fender was rubbing the brand new tire (must have been pretty close to the old tire). So we spent some time working on that and one other attachment point. Skippy liked the change to the second one so much that we had to do his too. After that, we took the bikes into the basement and began disassembling them. With wheels, handle bars, and rear derailers off, we put carboard tubes and other protective coverings on various surfaces. By 4PM, Skippy is whining about maybe UPS closing by 5 so we had to pick up the pace. We put two bike boxes in the rear seat and one in the trunk. Got to UPS just before 5 (they were open until 7PM BTW). We gave the smallest box to the UPS agent first because we were concerned that the size wouldn't make it (Skippy's advice). Sure enough the first box was the only one measured. Once the bikes were shipped, we went back to Skippy's house and had the required congradulatory beers and peanuts.



All in all in interesting experience/day. Next time I'll be more prepared.