Tomorrow we start driving towards Vancouver.  That makes today the final prep day.

The route was already locked down.  We loaded all 39 days (plus 2 days with alternates) into Anne’s Garmin.  I’ve also prepared printed cue sheets, which can be easier to see what’s coming, and doubles as a backup.  It comes to almost 100 third-sheet pages.  I expect we’ll ditch each days’ as we complete them.

Our pack list has also been pretty well locked down, but we needed to do final assembly, and get Ruth to tell us exactly what clothes she wanted to bring.  When you spread it out, it looks pretty big.  Really it’s pretty bare bones.  Two sets of bike clothes, rain/cold gear for everybody, one set of street clothes for the grown ups and two or three for the kids (since they don’t wear lycra on the bike).  Then a pile of food, first aid, and tools and spares to deal with whatever issues may come our way.

We also had to pack two other sets of bags: one for the drive up to Vancouver, and another for after the ride.

Finally, we weighed everything.  It sure does add up.

As we thought, Max’s trailer ends up a little lighter than Ruth’s, but not by much. Most of the weight difference (excluding the rider) comes from the panniers.

My coworker, Mohamed, very kindly offered to watch our cats for us while we’re away. We dropped them off last weekend. I’ve heard reports that they’re still hiding during the day, but exploring at night. They’re also making friends with Mohamed’s dog. Maybe.

Tomorrow we can stop preparing and start implementing. There are still two days of driving ahead of us before we can start biking, though.

Ruth has been asking to do a ride where she gets her own bike, like we did in Davis. We decided that would make a nice capstone for our tour prep.

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