Tacoma - Centralia: Heaven on 507

And we're off!!

 

Today we began our adventure. Although its 60 mi from Tacoma to Centralia, the trip is remarkably flat, so it was an altogether pretty leisurely ride for us.
For every location, we go through a process to find a place to crash. We have a priority list:
1. Friends/family
2. Couchsurfing.org
3. Camping
4. Motel
5. Overpass
6. Hospital
7. Jail
If you have never heard of couchsurfing.org, CHECK IT OUT! Its an international network of travelers who are able to host other travelers and provide them with a roof over their head. All sorts of people do it, from aging hippies to computer programmers, to stoned cyclists. It's really fun to explore the personalities on the site, and as you browse through options at particular towns, you can filter results by age, gender, etc. It's really great.
Anyways, our first night here in Centralia has been a blast, as we've met with our first official couch surfing hosts. Dave is a typographer who loves to talk about his town, opera, and really everything else. His wife Ardeth cooked us a delicious meal and plans to have breakfast for us in the morning. This is an ideal cs experience, and we surely don't expect to be taken as well care of in the future.
Howdy y'all, Pat here. Ideally I would have my own blogger profile or something and I'd be able to post on our blog using that, but either the blogosphere isn't that advanced yet, or I'm not advanced enough to figure it out. The latter is probably more likely.
For once, the weather held today. Man what a difference that makes. We've been training in some pretty wet days, so this was a great way to start the trip. Hope it holds like this. Knock on wood.
We spent bit of the ride today on the WA-507, which had a decent shoulder but still made us nervous at times. Hence the title of today's post. Most of the rest of the ride was spent on the Yelm-Tarino Trail, which was beautiful.
We also biked by this ENORMOUS resort in the middle of nowhere (well at least it was enormous for being in the middle of nowhere) called the Great Wolf Lodge.
We later learned from Dave that it was some sort of water resort on a native reservation. We'd definitely never seen it before.
Oh I should probably mention the awesome last supper that Sam's former housemate Rachel Fairchild cooked for us. Thanks Rachel. Last supper picture featuring Tristan. Thanks Tristan.

Kinda makes me wish there was a trail for us to take on the coast for the rest of the way, but what can ya do.
And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for:
Special Sam (SS) moment of the day.
This morning, we rolled outa bed around 8:30 to get ready to go. Our buddy Frank came over to say goodbye (thanks Frank), and mentioned that it was raining outside to Sam and I.  I said something about that being unfortunate, as we'd been expecting good weather (which it turned out to be pretty quickly). As Sam and I were upstairs eating breakfast, also cooked by Rachel, she mentioned that it was raining, and she and I discussed the unfortunate nature of this occurrence for a minute. A few minutes later, Sam looked out the window and said, "Dude, it's raining!"
You're welcome.