On the Road Again/Blame Canada

In order to get our bikes out to the West Coast we had to break them down and box them. Tim had to box his trailer too. It was a bitch moving around with all that baggage, but we made it to Seattle on the train, ate lunch and boarded the bus to Vancouver.
Once in Vancouver we decided the best plan would be to rebuild our bikes and bike to our hotel: the (surprisingly expensive) YWCA.
With our bikes assembled, and spirits high we were ready to get back on the road.
My mom would never let me leave the house with clothes this wrinkly. :) Good thing she's a couple thousand miles away (and being missed dearly by her son).
Vancouver is an awesome futuristic looking city. It looks like a Mon Calamari cruiser landed smack dab in the middle of the city. (yes that's a Star Wars reference, but I did have to look up the name of the ship)
All the buildings are very cool looking, with rounded edges. It almost reminds me of a more densely populated Tel Aviv.
The mountains in the background make it all that more pristine.
Although quite beautiful, Vancouver, and Canada for that matter, left me something to be desired. The people were quite rude (more likely a result of the big city mannerisms), everything was brutally expensive (I'd say that's big city stuff again, but the campsite charged $0.50 per five minutes of the shower), and they don't sell beer or wine in grocery stores! And I thought Tennessee was bad. Seriously this is my interaction in the grocery store:
Me: Excuse me sir, but where do you keep the beer?
Grocery dude: You must be from America.
Me: yeah (in my head: the land of the free)
Grocery dude: we don't sell beer in grocery stores in Canada, we sell them in bars with liquor stores attached to them.
Me: (speechless)
It was still worth a visit, but I don't think I'll be back.


The route officially starts in front of yet another giant phallic symbol, this one is Native American though, so naturally its bigger.
Much bigger.
Tim was full of PMA, how long before that turns to PMS remains to be seen ($13 Coors light for a sixer certainly sped that change up a bit)

Vancouver was a far cry from rural Virginia where last we left our tour. It was about 30 miles before we were in the countryside.

Traffic was crazy, and the map was insanely confusing. We went down one of the most terrifying stretches of road I've ever been on. Going down a highway shoulder into traffic scared the crap out of me.
At least we had nice bike lanes on the bridges across the river. The bridge shook with traffic though, which was slightly disconcerting and a bit nauseating (mime vomit not real).