British Columbia

Getting on the internet is proving a little more difficult than we thought. After Victoria, we caught the ferry at Nanaimo on Vancouver Island to Horseshoe Bay just outside Vancouver. We rode along the Sea to Sky Highway passingh though Whistler and stopping for the night in Pemberton, BC. This part of British Columbia is stunning. While the road to Whistler weas under construction pretty much all the way (the Winter Olympics 2010 will be in the region), the scenery was absolutely superb. Jenny had the best view as Ric concentrated on keeping the bike on the road. We stopped for the night in Pemberton, partly because we thought it would be less expensive than Whistler. I think we were wrong as accommodation choices in Pemberton were limited. In fact, we have found accommodation in Canada to be pretty expensive everywhere - not helped by the big taxes they add on to every bill!

We rode from Pemberton to Kamloops on Saturday 8th. Again, the ride was really scenic and there was not too much traffic. We stopped for a drink at a little town called Lytton and tried chatting with three elderly native American (Canadian?) indians who were sitting on a park bench. One stayed asleep, one was speaking something that was probably english but we could not understand a word and Roy, the talkative one, was almost as incomprehensible. Having thus done our bit to improve NZ/Canadian relations we rode on to Kamloops. Kamloops is a place that did not seem to have much going for it, though it is a sizable city so we headed off early the next morning.

Washington State

We arrived in Seattle after a two and a half hour flight. The most stressful part of the journey was wondering if the bus to take us to LAX would turn up! As luck would have it, not only did we arrive in the middle of the biggest heatwave in years but it was also Labor Day and the Disney Marathon was run on Monday morning. And of course, we were caught up in that as most of the major roads were closed meaning traffic could not get through. However, we arrived in Washington without incident and stayed at a hotel close to the airport on the first night. It felt like murder central but we survived.. The next morning, Rod and Linda arrived to pick us up and take us to their place where we stayed for a couple of days. Rod and Linda live in Montesano, about and hour and a half from Seattle and it is where Chris leaves his Goldwing. Rod and Linda are the nicest and most generous people you could hope to meet. I think a kiwi must have been nice to them once because for some reason they think all New Zealanders are just great. Anyway, they not only put us up at their home, they also took us on local rides in the beautiful Washington State area (we oonly saw a fraction of it of course) and made sure we were well set. When the time came for us to go, Rod and Linda rode with us to Port Angeles - a three hour ride! Jenny and said our goodbyes there to this great couple and we boarded the ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island. We caught up with a number of other riders on the ferry and swapped stories of varying degrees of truthfulness. Jenny and I visited Butchart Gardens - a Vancouver Island icon yesterday and as we write this, we are about to check out of the hotel and catch another ferry to Vancouver where we will then start our ride to Edmonton via Whistler and Jasper National Park. We are having problems uploading photos but will have more pictures when we can.

The Adventure Begins!

Our flight from Wellington to Auckland was delayed for about 30 minutes which meant we made the international connection with 10 minutes to spare. As it happened, the flight to LA was also delayed. We had heard all sorts of horror stories about arriving in LAX, but actually it was pretty good. It was reasonably quick and the officials were very pleasant. We went from the airport to our hotel opposite Disneyland, had a quick shower and change and headed off to the magic kingdom. We arrived a Disneyland at about 4.30pm and stayed until 10.00 - watching the amazing fireworks show. The second day (today) we were back at Disneyland and California Adventure. You can see some photos. It is Labor Day weeekend here so there were lots of people, and the temperature is hot! About 35 - 40 degrees. We have already received text messages from friends and family wishing us all the best. Thanks to all.

More on Insurance

Following from our earlier post on insurance, readers will be pleased to know that we now have our insurance sorted. Ok, we know you don't really care, but if any of you are contemplating anything like the trip we have planned, read on. We mentioned that the "free" travel insurance offered if you pay for your travel by credit card has a few catches and that you really need to read the policy carefully. AIG, the company that provides the insurance for Westpac Bank would not alter their policy to accommodate us nor did an agent ever respond to us with an offer when we asked if we could buy a separate policy. After we used a broker to talk to them, AIG did finally agree to provide travel insurance but reduced the medical coverage because we are riding a motorcycle. Needless to say, we are not dealing with them. Many other companies we approached would not insure anyone who is riding a motorcycle with an engine size of more than 200cc - so be aware of this. Air New Zealand, via their insurers would cover us but at a cost of more than NZ$900 for less than 60 days. AA Insurance was the easiest to deal with but even then, the insurance cost us more than NZ$700.

Getting liability insurance in the US was even harder! Until we happened upon one company in Florida, we were despairing! No New Zealand insurer would provide cover in the US and a number of US insurers stated that they do not provide cover unless the rider holds a US issued drivers licence - which makes it pretty hard for tourists like us who are not hiring a machine from a commercial rental company.

Someone pointed us to Fernet Insurance Brokers USA - http://www.fernet.com - and these guys were great. Their website makes it pretty clear that one of the products they offer is exactly what tourists like us are looking for. We printed off the application form and faxed it to them and they came back within a couple of days with the cover approved. The lady we have been in contact with at Fernet - Phyllis - deserves a special mention. We'd love to meet her. Phyllis' email tone is wonderful and friendly. We had mentioned to her that we had this blog so she had a look and discovered we planned to venture into Canada. She immediately sent an email saying that a special certificate is needed for Canada and attached one to the email. Now that is service! In our opinion, if you want temporary insurance while in North America, contact Phyllis at Fernet. Thanks again Phyllis.

A Trial Pack Was Called For

Ric and Jenny on the Gold Wing

564 Flavours of Donut

One of the Vodafone advertisements claims there are 564 different flavours of donut. Now I know the last thing I need to add to my diet, however temporarily, is donuts but hey! a challenge is a challenge. Jenny and I reckon that if you can get all 564 flavours of donut anywhere, you can get them in North America and we figure that we'll need to eat, on average, 11.28 donuts per day of our trip if we are to sample them all. What we haven't figured out is how many hours at the gym we'll need to spend to work off each donut nor how much our new bike gear will be able to expand before the seams split, nor how much extra cash we'll need to pay for the extra fuel we'll burn carting around our donut bloated bodies.