About to depart

We arrived in Vancouver without too many adventures ...

The first was at Boston's airport. The nice ladies at the check-in desk weren't quite sure what to do with a 5ft6" box, despite Air Canada's website claims that they were "tandem friendly". In fact, they weren't even sure that it would fit through the baggage door of the plane. Their only suggestion was to go to the gate and watch out the window to see if the baggage handlers could squeeze it through the door. Thankfully it went in with a few inches to spare!

We changed flights in Toronto and dragged our stuff through customs and immigration. It was a great joy to cheer up a rather dour-looking customs official who didn't even make eye contact until we answered her question about our cycling destination, to which she replied "Holy crap!" and suddenly sprang to life.

The next dose of excitement was at Vancouver airport when neither the bags nor the tandem arrived. Luckily the very friendly Air Canada baggage claims man promised he'd deliver anything up to the size of an elephant to our hostel.

We're happy to report the bike was waiting for us this morning and is now re-assembled and ready to go. The panniers are fully loaded and we've just squeezed the last of our Pop Tarts into every last inch of space we have. It certainly seems like we have a whole load of stuff!

We've already had a number of people inquire about our adventure, including the hostel owner, who has made one of the first entries in our guestbook. We're off now to the coast for the ritualistic dipping of the rear wheel in the Pacific. Then we'll head east for a while.