Stanley, Idaho

After heading down to the grocery store to get some milk (forgot to actually turn ON my fridge the night before) and having some breakfast I went and talked to the Stanley Info guy. Because I didn't bring a fishing rod or a boat, I had limited options. However, mountain biking sounded pretty fun.

So I hired a bike and headed up the hills of Stanley for about 4 hours. Holy shit I'm not as fit as I was when I was riding 4 days a week. Mountain biking is a whole other thing as well (I did road cycling), if you get up on your pedals too much you just spin the back wheel. I guess this is all pretty obvious to the montain bikers out there. But the downhill bits were pretty good, and the views were pretty spectacular.

Mountain biking, ain't nothing but a thing.

OMG! More mountains!

Did you know there are fences in America?

The town itself was pretty dead, apparently I missed some sort of festival a week earlier. That night the bar was really dead, it was only me, the bar owner and the bartender. Oh well, here's hoping that Ketchum will have a bit more going on!

Oh and I finally managed to get a shot of this little fucker

Americans (for the make good of the glorious nation of 'stralya):
Because this post is a little short I thought I'd talk a bit about my experiences with the locals here as an outside Australian. As the US is large and diverse, this all may change later on. The one thing I know for sure about all Americans is:

1. Each one has an uncle/cousin/step-sister/workmate that is currently residing in Australia.
2. All of them seem to want and come see Australia some time. I usually then talk about our poisonous animals right after they mention that.
3. They all think we drink Fosters. It's really funny to hear them pronounce it, it kind of comes out a bit British.
4. If you say "g'day" to them randomly, they sort of smile politely - they have no idea what you're saying.
5. Tell them you're on a motorcycle and they'll barrage you with directions and routes for awesome rides - if only they would tell me when I had a capacity to write that shit down.
6. They are some of the most fucking nicest people I've ever met.

One thing that surprised me a bit is that there seems to be confusion on how closely tied we are to the UK. On about 3 different occasions I was asked if we use the Euro, where I say "no, we have our own economy over there, Australian dollar and all", which seems to surprise them a little.

They also really love their beer over here. Way more than in Australia. The microbrews over here are prolific, and they are actually independently owned rather than being owned by the big breweries like back home. The fact that Americans drink shit beer is completely incorrect, sure there are the bud lights, coors, PBRs (yay hipster beer) and the millers; but almost every bar I've been to has had one or two local beers on tap. Usually they'll even let you taste it before you buy it.

Oh another random thing, we can pay on credit cards at the pump in Australia right? I never did when back there, but I remember it being an option. Well since that's how you do it over here (swipe card then fill up), I never realized the advantage - you don't have to take off your helmet at all. Not like anyone uses a fucking helmet in Idaho ("scared of brain damage at low speed crashes, what are you gay?"). It is a little awkward in Oregon where all pumps are full service by law. For motorbikes they just swipe your card for you and hand you the pump.

More wildly obvious, probably inaccurate and maybe slightly offensive observations to come!

 

Boise to Stanley

On my final day in Boise, Kim offered to take me out to lunch to the famous "Big Juds", as seen on Man vs Food. So after packing up my stuff on the bike (getting better at it now), we headed down to try their massive burgers.

So at Big Juds, they make a 1 pound burger, a 2 pound burger and the "Man vs Food" challenge meal:

2 x 1 lb patties, bacon, mushrooms, Swiss cheese and blue cheese on each layer, plus mayo lettuce and tomato, and a basket of Big Jud's fries

Regrettably at that time I had a 3.5 hour ride ahead of me to Stanley, so I just got one of their normal burgers. Having 2 pounds of beef stuck in your gut while you're trying to corner fast on a bike is never a good idea. So I was boring and got the "Hickory" burger, but at least it was "American". But it was a really awesome burger, one thing to note here is they always do crunchy bacon. As far as I'm concerned, it's one place where the Americans got it right.

Kim and her burger from Big Juds

After saying my goodbyes (extra thanks to Kim who was kind enough to show me around the place for a day and a half), and dicking around with my Go Pro, I set off for Stanley.

Apart from the half-naked, slow-as-molasis-on-a-cold-day Harley riders, the ride was really good. It had something I haven't seen yet in America: Corners. Now I wouldn't call them "twisties" like I would know in Camberra or on the Clyde, but at least I could actually lean my bike over a bit. What is a bit tricky to me is what speeds are acceptable over here. In Australia I'd be getting passed by dickheads on R1s constantly, but everyone over here (or at least in Idaho) is very conservative. So I remained relatively conservative as well. The road surface was was decent, a bit of gravel in places but noting terrible. It was the first real test of the Concours as a sports-tourer, and I think it did pretty well. It's a little weird being so upright into the corners, but you sort of get used to it.

After a pretty interesting (but long) ride, I reached Stanley, population 73. As soon as I arrived, I only had two thoughts: Man does my ass hurt and what the fuck am I going to do all day tomorrow.

The scenery at least in Stanley is spectacular. There are huge mountains in the background, the place would be really pretty in the winter I'd imagine. And at least the lodge was pretty clean.

Looks like a fucking postcard

I headed out that that night to see what the food and the night life was like. I found a really good pizza place, and pretty much the only bar in town. I guess it could be described as dive bar. However, the people were really friendly.

I ended up chatting to a guy named Craig, a 50-ish year old, who had seen 49 of the 50 states (no one gets to Hawaii) as a truck driver. He currently owned his RV, and moved around from state to state doing odd jobs. Currently he was based out of Boise living with his 26 year old girlfriend. It was an awesome example of how you should never pre-judge someone based on appearance, he was an extremly intellegent guy with lots to say about the state of the economy, where USA is heading, gun control and politics. He was also very interested in Australia. Maybe it's due to me being in the West, but I am certainly meeting far more left-wing people over here than the expected gun-toting right-wings (still have met a few of those though). I guess we'll wait and see until I hit the lower states.

Mountains and shit

Rear view from my room

Buy the way, the walk home at about 1:30AM was fucking cold. I guess I should have relised that this was now the mountains.

Boise, Idaho 2

This photo nothing to do with Boise

So let me talk a bit about Boise as I didn't know the town at all before I came through. Boise (pronounced boy-see or boy-zee if you're not a local) is a small city with a population of around 210,000 people. It contains a fairly large university, which seems to make the population fairly young. It also means there is quite a good amount of night life, bars and pubs around. For some reason that no one could exactly tell me, Boise has a very high population of females compared to males. To me Boise seemed to have a very relaxed pace, was fairly open, had low amounts of crime and poverty and the natives I was lucky enough to meet were really friendly people.

On the streets in Boise

On Sunday the 29th, I needed to do some laundry first thing. After not being able to get a seat in Capri, then having the worst maccas breakfast I've ever had (the hoecakes were dry and pretty sure they were not heated up), I punched "laundry" into my iPhone GPS and set off. On the way I noticed the weird way Americans sometimes reseal a road, which sucks for motorcyclists. It seems like they spread loose gravel onto the setting tar, and then use the weight of the traffic to "bed it in". Presumably they later come back and brush the remaining gravel away. Anyway, it made it slow going on the motorbike.

After this a very friendly Boise resident - who I met as a friend of a work colleague of someone I met in the hotel bar - offered to take me around to see some of the sights of Boise. Kim is a lovely young lady who although she looks in her younger 20s is actually a year older than me! She is an ex-Minnesotian, which she tells me makes her sound like she has a Canadian accent. Kim currently works as a professor of psychology in the Boise State University (BSU), where apparently she often gets confused one of the students.

Our destination: Table Rock

Apparently hiking is the thing to do in Boise, so we walked up a trail to Table Rock; a popular Boise attraction. This goes past the old penitentiary up to a square looking rock formation (plus a very large controversial religious cross on top, this being America). It was quite a hike for me, being as out-of-shape as I am, and some parts were very steep. But the view from the top was pretty spectacular, where you could get a glimpse of the entire city and the surrounding mountain ranges. And although I stupidly did not put my water bottle lid properly back on and wet my wallet in my backpack ("why is my back so wet, I don't usually sweat this much"), I had a fantastic time!

Kim and I on the top of Table Rock

Afterwards, we headed down to BSU to see the famous collage NFL stadium which is the only one in America to have blue AstroTurf - which the locals call "smurf turf". We also saw the Boise river that passes through the university. A common pastime in Boise is to float down the river on small inflatable boats and tubes, and that day there were many people doing just that. The heat probably helped, it was 99 degrees Fahrenheit that day (37c). It looked like a lot of fun, but unfourtunately we had no boats!

After that we went and had dinner at a really nice, er, beer house I guess? There's not much like it in Australia, well Canberra I guess. But due to the heaviness of the food I'd been eating lately, I opted for the salad. According to Josh I'll get teased if I order a salad in places like Oklahoma City, so I was a bit wary!

Mountain sprout playing at the saloon

Afterwards we went to a saloon downtown, which just happened to have really good live music. The band was called Mountain Sprout, who play bluegrass music with awesomely vulgar lyrics. It was the first time I've seen a band anything like it, they played with a banjo, guitar, fiddle and double bass. I'm not sure how common bands like these are in America. But I had a pretty tough time wiping the smile off my face the for the whole set. The music is so energetic and the lyrics are hilarious, but most of all it was so American! So far the best thing I've seen in the states yet!

Boise, Idaho

I'm typing this blog post on my iPhone, as my fucking Netbook has died! Some of the keys just stopped working, so I just had to send it back to Asus for repairs. I think I should have bought a Lenovo or maybe even a MacBook air. Oh well, hopefully I'll get it back in a few weeks.

Downtown Boise

The ride from La Grande to Boise was pretty good, albeit uneventful. I had the go pro taking shots every 10 seconds, but I'm not sure what happened because when I got to the hotel the memory card was empty! Probably not the most interesting scenery anyway, the next few days should get amazing footage.

The hotel I'm staying at in Boise is really nice, probably the nicest one so far. Because I'm only paying about $80 a night, I always expect the rooms to be crap, but the accommodation over here is thankfully really cheap.

The first night I was pretty beat, so I just headed to the hotel bar. The bar has a really cool bartender, his name is Jason but for some reason we all called him Frank! So I ended up meeting two Americans at the bar: Micheal and Jake. Micheal is from california and runs his own construction company (I think) and Jake is from Denver and is a dishwasher repair man. Both were in Boise to do some camping, up until Jake smashed the bottom o his feet by jumping over a wall at the hotel pool. I guess that must have been a wild night.

Downtown Boise and my bike

Anyway, spent most of the night drink heavily, especially on this rum called "the kraken", which was fantastic but gave me a killer hangover the next day. Most of the day I spent watching a deadliest catch marathon in my air conditioned hotel room.

It is hot in Boise by the way, temperatures are between 36 and 38 Celsius. You don't seem to get burnt easily, because hey have an ozone layer here, but it is still pretty intense.

The next night I met up with Micheal and Jake again, along with a few of their friends from the Boise area. We drank and played pinball and pool. I had this blue cheese beef burger, which brings me to a point: Americans seem to love blue cheese. It's not on everything, but it defiantly has been a lot of menus I've seen, especially on burgers and salads. It's just something I was not expecting about the USA!

Food at the Basque festival

Anyway, there was a festival for the Basque people, who are small community of northern Spanish people who migrated to Boise. We head to a bar which had good music, and I was thinking to myself "man the guys over here dress kind of gay over here", but there were heaps of girls in some crazy (re: super slutty) outfits. So yeah turns out it was a gay bar. Certainly explained a lot!

The bartender earlier that night had told me about a great place for breakfast called Capri, so the next day I walked down there and had some wheat pancakes. I suppose at some point I should try the biscuits ad gravy over here, but damn I did not feel like something that heavy that morning. But the great thing about these sort of diners is that you can sit at the bar and talk to all the other solo people there!

After posting my netbook back to Asus using the super cheap US post service, I rode down to the mall to buy some shit. I also went to the biggest wall-mart yet, but unfortunately it wasn't full of the "people from wall-mart" type people (must be a south thing).

That night I went to dinner with some other people I met at the hotel bar (Jake and Micheal had headed back home). We went to this really awesome pub/restaurant that served a wide range of microbrew beers and really good food. I got a Hawaiian burger, as I felt like something a bit Australian. Pity they don't put the beetroot on their burgers over here! We then hit a few bars in downtown Boise, however we had some issues getting in to few as one of the guys was 20 years old, just short of the legal drinking age. Bartenders and bouncers over here seem to always check IDs. One of the bars we went to was what they call a "dive bar" over here, basically a kind of dodgy bar. They had really cheap beer though - I think about $2 for a PBR (yeah the hipster beer)!

Kennewick to La Grande

After having breakfast in my Hotel in Kennewick, I caught a taxi down to the motorcycle dealer to pick up my bike. The taxi driver was very nice, but I think she was almost certainly drunk or on something. Maybe she was just high on life? Anyway, she had a lot to say about the Toyota Prius and how she really wanted one. Apparently that's where all the big money is!

After picking up the bike I rode around Kennewick trying to pick up a few things that I needed. I went to the nearest REI store (like a big Kathmandu), and had a look at their "Bivys". What I really want is a bed roll, or something I can strap on to the back of the bike. If I can achieve this, then I'll be able to remove my sleeping bag from the panniers, as this takes up a fair bit of room. It also means that I could start doing a bit of camping to cut down the costs (and for the experience too!). However the concept of a "swag" is kind of lost on Americans, they have things called 'Bivys" which are similar but not quite. Most of them just look like one man tents. I'll keep looking.

I picked up a multitool, shifter and a cable to secure my Ventura rack on the bike. The cable can pretty easily be defeated by a strong pair of scissors (as the Ventura pack is made out of cloth), but I just wanted something to stop randoms being able to remove my pack with no effort. I don't plan on leaving the bike with the Ventura bag attached overnight or anything, but when I need to ride from place to place I need to stop at places temporarily with it still attached.

Then after buying a pair of lighter motorcycle gloves (fuck it was hot today), and then much dicking around with my Go Pro, I set off to La Grande in Oregon. The landscape was quite spectacular in some places, very open with a large horizon. But it a lot of places there were no trees to be seen!

When I arrived I hastily put together the stills I captured on the ride and turned it into the Youtube video above. I think I have a bit to learn with the editing of these, but it's a start.

I arrived safely at La Grande Inn, which was conveniently right next to a Denny's, so dinner was easy. A little worried considering the warnings I got from Josh, I tried the Brooklyn spaghetti meatballs, they were pretty good. No problems (yet).

Redmond to Kennewick

After saying my goodbyes, I left Josh and Wendy's place at about 10AM. Having Josh and Wendy here and also a place to stay for 2 weeks has been really helpful. I am very thankful that they allowed me to cramp their space for 2 weeks! It would have been so much more difficult doing all the organizing from a hotel, and it was great to catch up with them both and do some stuff together. They also provided me with some valuable insight into American customs and culture.

I loaded all the stuff on my bike, in the hope that none of it was too heavy and wasn't going to fall off! Each bit of luggage has a weight limit, but I had no scales to weigh them with so I just had to pack evenly and hope for the best. Thank god for the Ventura pack, there is no way all my stuff would fit into the panniers alone!

In Redmond, just about to head off to Kennewick

The plan was to go back to the bike dealer and get my 500 mile service out of the way. It. Was easy to ride to kennewick, because at the end of the trip my odometer would have exactly 520 miles on it.

After a long ride, I wearily dropped my bike at the service department and caught a taxi to my hotel. Thankfully the hotel was really nice! Somehow I got a double room, and had lots of space! I spent the rest of the night just chilling and getting my blog up-to-date. It was fantastic to get some time to relax, one of my goals of this trip was to keep it pretty easy going, I didn't want to rush through really fast like I did in Europe.

Seeing as I had no transportation, there was no restaurant in the hotel and my bike needed to kept overnight at the dealer, I just ordered Dominos for dinner. It was actually better than I was expecting!

Tomorrow I'm off to La Grande!

Final Day in Redmond

The Kawasaki OEM top box was not going to work for me for these reasons:

1. Had a paltry weight limit of 4 pounds
2. Speed limited to 80 MPH

Now these might be restrictions made by some over zealous safety person at Kawasaki, but I didn't really want to take the risk. So with a 25% restocking fee and $30 shipping, I sent the top box back to the distributor. What I really needed was a Ventura rack, I knew these could be used at speed and the way they attached to a bike would mean they could take more than 4 pounds. 

Ventura pack racks are hard to fit because you need to get special L-brackets made specifically for your bike model. Most of the time you'd go to a motorcycle apparel store and they'd have to order in the brackets, because it was stupid to keep all the different L-brackets in stock. This was time I didn't have, I wanted to get moving pretty soon.

This is where I got really lucky, it turns out the only Ventura distributor in the United States happened to be in Lynwood, about a 15 minute ride from Redmond. I rang up, they confirmed they had the correct fittings and then I rode over there. The extremely helpful staff there lent me his toolkit, and gave me a hand fitting the rack to my bike. In about 15 minutes we were done!

I even got a free emergency tire repair kit! I now have so much redundancy in that space, I bought one of the bog standard "spike handle with rubber logs" kits from the dealer in Kennewick, then Josh suggested I buy this "Slime" stuff, where you just spray it into your tire and it plugs the hole while inflating the tire, then I got this free kit from Ventura! This kit is way different to what I've seen before, it has these plastic keys that you turn into the puncture hole then snap off.

I managed to get all of my stuff to fit in the Ventura bag and the panniers. Just. As expected the SLR takes up a lot of room. I can save space by removing the lens from the body, but I'd like to be able to have quick access to it if I need it. Also the sleeping bag takes a fair bit of space, even though it's one of those super small goose down ones. I figure if I do end up buying a "Bivy" for camping, I'll just roll it up in that and it can go on the back of my bike. 

It's a pretty tough balancing act, on the one hand I need to pack light and small, on the other this is a solo trip for 5 months so I need to be prepared for anything. I've got a small polar fleece jumper that takes a fair bit of space, but I don't want to ship that back to Australia because what happens if it gets cold? There are lots of considerations like that. I'm guessing that as I progress through this trip, I'll find things that I just don't use and start to trim down the fat of my luggage.

Applebees

Today Josh and I spent a lot of time going around Redmond and picking up a few final things for my trip. This included things like a duffel bag (as I had decided that the Kawasaki Top Box was not going to work), tire repair kit etc.

As it was getting close to the end of my stay with Josh and Wendy, we all decided to have a final dinner at Applebees. Applebees is a restaurant chain that I hear a lot about on TV and movies, but don't really know what it is all about. Essentially it is a chain of family-friendly bars that serve food. We all ate at the bar tonight, and the food was pretty good! Especially the much hyped "Spin-dip", or "Spinach Dip".

I also had to 20oz glasses of some Irish beer (described as "if Guinness had a child with a brown ale"), which for some reason got me way drunker than I was expecting. I'm not even sure if the alcohol content was high, maybe I was just tired or something!

Picking Up Bike in Kennewick

Today I drove down to Kennewick to pickup my motorcycle. As I explained in an earlier post, I decided it was worth me taking the 220 mile drive from Redmond to Kennewick to save about $3000 on the cost of the motorbike. The Bike is a 2011 Kawasaki Coucours 14 (AKA 1400GTR in Australia), and because it isn't a 2012 I save a bit of money. There is no real difference between the '11 and '12 models, where there is big differences between the '09 and the '10:

For 2010, Kawasaki added the KTRC traction control and K-ACT ABS and brake assist, as well as linked brakes[4] which are optional in some markets and standard in others. The 2010 model also features revised bodywork to improve engine cooling, mirrors raised by 40 mm (1.6 in), a larger wind screen and with memory function, a handlebar-mounted switch to control the dash computer, variable heated grips,[4] and an eco-mode switch that tells the ECU to use a leaner, more economical air-fuel ratio at engine speeds less than 6,000 rpm and road speed less than 80 mph (130 km/h).[5] The tank-mounted storage area was removed and replaced with an auto-locking glove box in the left fairing, the exhaust silencer cap was changed, the instrument cluster illumination was changed from red to white, included key sets were changed from two active fobs/keys to one active fob/key and one passive mini fob/key, the front fork fluid levels were increased by 25ml, and the oil pan was modified so that the drain plug faces forward instead of downward. The ECU was programmed to limit top speed to 154 mph. The rear pannier covers were fully painted (instead of leaving a black area at the bottom).

The end result being that Kennewick had a brand new 2011 model in the colour I most wanted (black of course), which was 3K less than the new one in Lynnwood and was better equipped than the FJR and the older '09 Concours from the private seller. The only problem was getting that first 500-500 Mile service and driving to Kennewick.

Luckily enough for me, my rental car booking could be modified so that I could drop off in Kennewick. So after waiting on my money transfers to process from Citibank to Wendy's US bank account, I set off down to Kennewick with a cashiers cheque in hand.

The ride to Kennewick is both beautiful and ugly. Closer to Seattle is full of striking wooded mountain ranges and lakes. As you move further towards the middle of the route, the scenery changes to patchy farmland, then to eventually one can only describe as "badlands". Unfortunately I had no way of getting photos of the landscape.

I arrived in Ridenow Powersports in Kennewick, where I processed the transaction with the very friendly staff, then drove my rental car back to Budget. The Budget staff member was nice enough to give me a lift back to the bike dealer so I could pickup my bike!

I had to fit my iPhone mount to the bike so I could navigate back to Josh and Wendy's place in Redmond (I have the Navigon GPS App, which allows me to get GPS directions and listen to music on the bike at the same time). The staff at Ridenow (a man by the name of Ukiah to be precise) was very happy to give me a hand installing it. Once done, I was off down the highway back to Redmond.

As with my Hayabusa that I bought new, the bike has to be broken in. This meant that for the whole ride to Redmond I had to keep changing through gears to keep the RPMs different (apparently keeping a bike at one RPM level for a long time during break in is bad). Additionally I had to keep the bike under 5K RPM, meaning no super speed yet.

But, the GPS worked really well (even fades down my music to give me a direction), and I got to Josh and Wendy's without incident!

Guns and Cheesecake

The OEM Kawasaki Concours Top Box

Most of this day was spent trying to find a Black OEM Kawasaki Topbox to fit the Concours. I figured that I was going to need more space than what the factory panniers offered (just an assumption, I hadn't gotten the bike yet so I had no idea how everything was going to fit), so I thought a lockable top box was the best option. I later discovered this was not the case, I'll explain in a later post. It took me about 3 and a half hours ringing up various distributors to find a black top box with a top cover. Apparently the box itself is really common, but the black trim panel cannot be found anywhere.

Anyway I finally found a place in West Virginia that had some in stock. The lady I was speaking to was very enamored with my accent ("I could speak to you for hours"), but very helpful. $360, I hope it does the job (spoiler: it doesn't).

Me shooting at zombie bin laden.

With that underway, Josh and I decided to perform a sacred American ritual of shooting the crap out of Zombie Osama Bin Laden targets with a range of firearms. I shot guns in Thailand before, but this was something else. Basically we could shoot almost anything we wanted, and there were a lot of guns available. For $50 plus ammo, we could shoot almost any non-automatic rifle on the wall (out of about 15). To shoot an automatic you need to book ahead.

More shooting, stance is probably
all wrong, but not much guidance
was to be had!

I guess the craziest thing was that all you had to do was sign a form, then they give you a gun and ammo. They spend about 10 seconds explaining how to use the gun, where the safety is and how to cock it. All of this is pretty much forgotten once on the range, so you have to try and guess how it all works (kind of half the fun I thought, like a puzzle). It isn't rocket surgery, but you need to know where the safety is, how to load the magazine, then how to cock it, then the position to hold it in. Most of this I just remembered from all the action movies I've seen over the years.


First up Josh and I shot an AR-15. Now these guns have all been modified to use 9mm rounds and to be semi-automatic. So you're not really getting what it'd be like in "real life". Don't get me wrong, these guns would kill and are the real deal, but you're not shooting larger rifle rounds or using full auto mode. The magazines are kind of hard to load, I think you spend most of your time just putting the rounds in them. After a while you can sort of reach a rhythm when loading, making it a bit faster. 


Shooting the rifle isn't really an issue, I'm pretty sure I was holding it correct, so there wasn't much kick to it. The rifle did have one of those electronic "red dot" sights that they have in Call of Duty, which was pretty cool.

This is my Thompson.
There are many like it but this one is mine.

Next up we shot a Barretta 9mm pistol, then some other futuristic rifle that I forget the name of. I wanted to shoot a PS90 (a civilian-ised P90), but unfortunately they were out of ammo because of the Zombie Apocalypse "Preppers". Yeah apparently here that's a real thing, there are people in the US who are legitimately preparing for a zombie apocalypse, and the PS90 is a very popular weapon among them. The shooting range staff member was equally weirded out by this as I was. 


The final gun we shot was a World War II era Thompson SMG (AKA Tommy Gun), used by the American forces as their standard submachine gun. It is pretty iconic to me because it has been in a lot of movies and computer games I played (including Enemy Territory, which I played a lot of). The gun is a little different from the other rifles because it took a .45 round (way larger than the 9mm we were using the the other guns), was "open bolt" and essentially way simpler than the others we tried. By far this was my favorite gun, it had a bit of kick and was surprisingly accurate with the iron sights.

Hit in the FAAAAACE

It was however probably not Josh's favorite rifle. Unfortunately for him, a stray shell casing came and landed under his glasses below his left eye, casing him to lose a bit a skin and be in a fair bit of pain afterwards. It could have happened to anyone, and thankfully it didn't actually end up in his eye.


So after that, we decided to head to the Cheesecake Factory (yeah, where Penny works in the Big Bang Theory) for dinner. As I understand it the Cheesecake Factory is a national chain of high(ish) class restaurants. As far as I know, we don't really do restaurant chains like this in Australia. The closest thing I can think of is Hogs Breath, but the food is not really comparable to the quality of the Cheesecake Factory. I kind of like the idea, it's similar to how you know that the food is always going to be good at Belluci's in Canberra.


The Cheesecake Factory food is really good, as is the service (which you would expect in the US) and the restaurant itself has really nice decor. One notable thing is that the menu is massive, there is so much to choose from it can be overwhelming. In the end I got the buffalo wings (really awesome, but apparently these might have skewed my expectations for buffalo wings in the future - they were the best Josh had ever had too), Pizza and of course cheesecake.


The cheesecake was amazing, I got one that mixed traditional and chocolate cheesecake into layers. I wish I got a photo of it. I was determined to finish it, but wow was it difficult - it was so rich!

Seattle Touristy Stuff 2

On Thursday, I met up with Hai Pei who is in the US for 9 weeks by flying around many of the capital cities. We decided to meet at the space needle, which is the iconic tower you see in almost all photos of Seattle (not to mention the silhouette of buildings in Fraiser). The thing isn't really that big, only about 184 meters tall, almost half the size of seattle's tallest building the Columbia Center, at 286 meters tall. I've always liked to see the cities I visit from an ariel point of view.

On the way up in the elevator we were told this was the slower of the two, which I thought was a little strange because the trip to the top was really quick. Hai Pei told me that a VIP ticket of some kind allowed you to get the fast elevator, but when the slow one took like 2 minutes, what's the point? People must be really impatient, have too much money or that VIP ticket had something else going on.

On the way, we got a complimentary photo of us on the space needle. Or rather us in front of a blue screen where we could later change our background to various selection of photos. Seemed a little strange to have a photo souvenir of your time at the Seattle Space Needle, but for it to be ultimately photoshopped.

Me at the top of the Seattle Space Needle

Anyway, the view was pretty spectacular, the weather was fine but a little hazy, so we couldn't see the famous Mount Rainer (which is really cool by the way, sticks out very clearly on the horizon as it is the most topographically prominent mountain in the US). But I did manage to get a fair few photos and try out my recently purchased SLR (and its zoom range).

Outside shot of the EMP Museum

We then went to the EMP Museum, which has a weird mix of music and science fiction exhibits. The building itself is odd looking, lots of sheet metal went in to it. If you ever look at the "archetecture" wallpaper pack in windows 7, one of those shots is of this building (thanks to Josh who told me that).

Inside the museum we looked at exhibits about Nirvana, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix - unfortunately all artists that Hai Pei and I weren't big fans of. But the exhibitions were well put together! The coolest stuff in the music sections was the place where the were multiple recording booths for a number of instruments (guitar, keyboard, drums, vocals) where you could play and learn a few basic skills. There was also a turntable thing that I thought was pretty cool.

Part of the giant guitar
sculpture at the EMP museum

Another pretty awesome thing was the sculpture mad out of guitars. This was from memory some sort of tribute to Jimi Hendrix. The guitars were meant to play themselves, but they seemed to be ineffectually flagellating themselves, I'm guessing the music had been disabled because it was too loud?

The sci fi exhibits seemed much smaller, but they had a whole exhibit to avatar, one on horror movies and one called "science fiction icons". The science fiction icons had some pretty cool stuff (if you're into that sort of thing), including the captain's chair from Star Trek (original series, unfortunately you couldn't sit in it!), Neo's coat from matrix revolutions, a Darlek from Dr. Who (really dodgy up close, made out of wood and looked like a school kid made it, however that makes sense from the kind of budget Dr. Who had) and a robotic skull from Terminator 2.

Apparently the robots for T2 were
modeled on my gigantic head

By far the best thing in the museum was this cool "art" piece that looked like it was altering your shadows. You stand in front of it and your shadows would distort and weird appendages (nothing suss, this is a family oriented place!) would appear on them. For example, if you made a circle with your fingers, an eyeball would appear in it. It had a big light behind it to give the illusion that it was a shadow, but really there was a camera in the front recording your movements and a projector displaying the "shadows" on the wall. Very cool though!

We the headed to the famous "Pike's Place" markets. Here they have a store where they throw fish (and hundreds of tourists with cameras out trying to get a shot of it), lots of market stores, chowder and a wall full of used chewing gum.

After a brief walk through the markets (neither of us are market people) and seeing a fish being thrown we went and looked the gum wall. With no background info available, I'm guessing this just started out as a wall a lot of people disposed their gum onto and then grew into a tourist attraction. I think you are encouraged to "make a donation" - I would have - but I didn't really want to touch the wall! Hai Pei was pretty disgusted generally, you could defiantly smell the gum as well!

Afterwards, we thought it'd be appropriate try the famous Pike's Place chowder. This would be interesting for a person who couldn't ever recall ever having chowder.

Now there were 8 types of chowder available, in 3 different sizes. Or you could get a selection of 4 small chowders for about 10 bucks. As we wanted to make sure we had the most fulfilling Seattle experience possible, we arranged it so we both got the 4 pack samplers and ended up being able to taste all of the chowders. The busker out the front thought this was very amusing.

Pike's place chowders - all of them

Anyway, they were all very good but most of them were extremely rich and creamy. I couldn't imagine having a large bowl of many of them, it'd be like drinking a bowl of pouring cream!

I think the best one was the 2nd top from the left in the picture on the right. I think it was called the "manhattan clam chowder" or something?

Next we went to the original Starbucks for frappacinos. I should've got a coffee to determine whether the original Starbucks has the same mediocre coffee as the rest of them, but it was too hot! The frappacino was good though, I'll just have to not get addicted to them like I did in Europe!

The original Starbucks

Seattle Touristy Stuff 1

Over the last couple of days I've manged to finally get some touristy stuff done in Seattle. On Monday I picked up a hire car in Belleview, a 2011 Holden/Chevrolet Cruz. This car has been extremely useful for getting around here, as public transport seems to be pretty ordinary. I guess is a very car focused city. Anyway, on Tuesday I got all my bike insurance organised through a broker then rang around the USA for 3 and half hours trying to source a Kawasaki Concours Luggage box (sits behind the pillion seat). I finally found one down south (the lady on the phone was very fond of my accent) and it arrived today.

So this meant I had Wednesday and Thursday free to do some stuff in Seattle. I thought I would consult Jessica and Jason's very awesome notebooks and try tick off some of the things they suggested.

First off I drove to the Fremont district to see the troll under the bridge. I didn't know what to expect, but I defiantly did not think it was going to be that big. It is 18 foot tall.

The [Fremont Troll] was the winner of a competition sponsored by the Fremont Arts Council in 1990, in part with the goal of rehabilitating the area under the bridge which was becoming a dumping ground and haven for drug dealers. It was built later that same year. The idea of a troll living under a bridge is derived from the Scandinavian folk tale "Three Billy Goats Gruff." -Wikipedia 

Next I decided to drive to Bruce Lee's grave. It was a pretty large cemetery, so I initially didn't know where to start looking. However after a quick web search (thank god for Google and smart phones), I found some grave locator site (kinda creepy) which gave me the exact GPS coordinates that I could punch into my phone and walk right to it. Brandon Lee's grave was right next to Bruce's. There were quite a few continuous visitors to the grave, many left coin donations.There were also a fair few flowers and even a child's drawing, I suppose his popularity is still very strong.

Fremont Troll

Motorcycle Shopping

On Saturday Josh and I went around multiple dealerships and looked at candidates for my bike in the next few months. It was really down to the Kawasaki Concours 14, and the Yamaha FJR 1300. Unfortunately there were not as many bikes around the Seattle area in the Sports-Touring category, but there was enough that I could get something.

The first dealer had a FJR 1300, and although he seemed like a really nice guy and all, he wouldn't let me test ride it due to my international licence without putting the whole amount of money down first. And if after riding I said I didn't like it, they'd cancel the transaction. This may have been the dealer's policy, and I'm sure they weren't doing the dodgy, but it seemed like they would have been in too much of a position of power if in the end I didn't want the bike.

A Kawasaki Concours 14

So we moved on to the next dealer in Lynnwood, who had a brand new Concours 14. Luckily they actually did let me ride the bike. I only took it around the block, but it felt pretty good. It had strong power delivery and actually handled pretty lightly for a bike of that size. It has a lot of technology on it: Adjustable windsheids, ABS brakes, traction control, 'eco drive' thing etc. I'd didn't have the grunt of my Hayabusa, but I wasn't really expecting or needing that!

Then we looked at a second hand 2008 Concours 14. Which looked good but was a private seller who wouldn't allow test rides unless he had all the money (which is apparently common here in the US). Also there is a big difference between the 2008 and and the 2010+ models, in 2010 Kawasaki put a whole lot of fixes and features in (including traction control).

Finally Josh and I went the Ducatti dealership in the middle of Seattle, as they had a second hand Concours 14 and FJR. It was too late in the day by then to test ride, but both bikes at least looked pretty good. They Ducatti guys obviously suggested I buy a Multistrada, which was very nice, but probably way out of my price range. The Concours 14 was at least a newer version, a 2010 model.

The Harley Road King I test rode

On Monday Josh and I went to the local Harley Davidson dealership. Before coming over I was moving away from the idea of a Harley, mainly due to the back problems you get on cruisers, the lower top-end power on them and the cost of one. However, I thought it was a good idea to give one a ride. In my price range I only really had the choice of a Road King or a very old Electra Glide. The Harley dealership allowed me to take a black Road King out for a test ride, and it was a beautiful bike. Quite hard to ride I found, although it would be something I could get used to, the way the handlebars are positioned and how my feet sat forward took some getting used to. And I guess like all cruisers, this thing shakes when stopped at lights. Also the indicators are all weird, a button on each handle bar is pressed to turn on or off the respective indicators. Also the luggage capacity was pretty small, but in the end the bike looked really cool!

After much deliberation, I decided to put a deposit on a bike, a 2011 Kawasaki Concours 14. I wish I had more time to think about it and ride some more bikes, but I'm running out of time. The 2011 is basically the same as the 2012, but $3K cheaper. Only problem is that I have to go pick it up from a town 180 miles away called Kennewick. The other issue is that I'm going to have to get the first 600 mile service on it, as there is no Ks on this bike at all. But hopefully it was the right decision in the end, the bike should be pretty sweet and hopefully I get a good sale price on on it back in LA.

Red Mill

Josh, Wendy and I went to Redmill on Friday night, on the recommendation of Man vs Food. The burgers were fantastic! Josh and I got the double beef burger, pretty massive. The burgers contained "peppered bacon", which is exactly how it sounds.

After dinner, we headed up to a park which overlooks the city.