Baker City, Oregon

On Tuesday I had gone out and loaded up on supplies - non-perishables, a cooler (chillibin), air tight containers for food, etc - and managed to give myself a huge scare when the car wouldn't start!  I had been just about to get gas because it was running low but it had enough not to have run out, so I checked all the things I could think of with the engine (oil and coolant could use a top up) but there was nothing really obvious I could think of so here I am sitting in this carpark with no phone (and no phone numbers on my person) wondering how the hellI'm going to get out of this!

When all of a sudden I remembered something... the car has a chip you can remove to demobilise it and I'd taken it out - d'oh!  What an idiot!  Plugged it in and we were up and running again - phew!  A scare I could have done without, but at least it prompted me to stock up on oil and coolant.  And it's nice to know that little security feature works.  It's one of those things I'm going to laugh about for a long time but boy, at the time I was struggling to stay calm :o)

The drive was looooong!  But relatively easy for the distance.  Mostly long, straight roads and with cruise control I just had to adjust the steering wheel every now and then.  I listened to about 6 hours of country music, 4 hours of classic rock and 2 hours of iPod.  The car was mint - I am super impressed.  It's nice and quiet, holds the road well enough for a minivan, drives in a straight line, temp guage never got above half way and it's getting just over 20 miles to the gallon.  Gas is pricey - it's a global problem.  Ididn't even take any wrong turns!

When I got here I called Jane, my host.  She lives just out of town in a beautiful house up on a hill looking out over the town and lots of green fields, and snow capped mountains.  Much of the drive was through barren desert so it's nice to see some features again - it's really beautiful here.

For dinner Jane cooked some wild Elk she had shot herself.  It was so good I had seconds, and we polished of a bottle of red between us with lots of talking about families and her trip to NZ a few years ago.  She has an old dog called Rudy and an old kitty, Amos.  They are both very friendly and placid (much more chilled out than the cool but crazy pooches back in California).  My accommodation is great - a fully self-contained, roomy apartment with everything I could need and more (and wifi - perfect).

This morning I went for a quick final spin before the tour.  The roads are similar to lesser driven roads at home, not perfectly smooth but not all churned up either.  The landscape is pretty nice to ride through and the air is fresh smelling.  The altitude is around 1000m but I don't think that's going to be a problem.  I have some pics to post to the gallery but there is a 'technical hitch' at the moment so I'll get them up when I can.

For the rest of today I will be getting the bike ready (got a puncture a couple of minutes from home today) and will head in to town to find a bike shop (as you do) and just getting psyched for tomorrow.  Now that I'm here, I'm pretty excited about the tour - the worst that can happen is some lovely scenic riding - but I'm working on more than that!

It appears I can upload pics to here so here are a couple and I will get the rest up later: