Should we stay or should we go? Go, of course.

This proud sunflower came up all by itself this year. About a third of our sunflowers are, like this one, volunteers.

We're about to leave for six or seven weeks on a road trip to the east coast, including Canada's eastern provinces. After we pass Minnesota to visit family, it'll be mostly new territory, especially when we enter Canada after Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Then dip down into New Jersey to see PK's family. Excited!

On the other hand....August is pay-off time for garden work that began in early spring. This morning I harvested a dozen cantaloupes, pulled a row of onions to begin a quick "cure" in the full sun before storage, poked through the tomatoes to find the ripe ones, and snipped the glossiest eggplants and the most perfect zucchinis. The harvest box was so heavy I had to unload some on the garden's edge for a return trip. Definitely a first-world "problem."

Part of this morning's harvest included a dozen ripe melons and massive spaghetti squash.

I try not to take for granted the bounty and beauty and my good fortune. Thank you, universe. But having a wonderful home and garden isn't our only fortune, but also the ability to travel and leave behind the few green acres in which we are rooted and where we've grown and learned and raised our sons and made a home we're not ready to give up. I wonder when that day will come, as it must. As it will.

For now, we'll indulge our shared delight in travel and enjoy the best of both worlds, home in the garden and at home in the world. I think we'll do this as long as we're able and our strongest tethers aren't to the land or to wanderlust but to each other.

Later we feasted on smoked grilled veggies marinated in sesame dressing, and succulent sweet melon with fresh basil. The barbecue chicken was a bonus. 

The joy of gardening isn't just about the harvest, it's about the process and the beauty. It's about awakening with the birds and bees and butterflies. They drink the nectar, gather the pollen, and ravage (finches!) the chard and kale, and sunflower leaves. The morning light about kills me. Ditto the evening light.

It's about the intoxicating fragrance of roses and the sweet smell of crushed mint that's grown into what passes for a lawn. This morning,  a few days before our departure I ventured out to work, to harvest, to enjoy, and to assess my brain and heart about leaving at the peak of harvest.

Bottom line. I'm good with it. The garden's inevitable decline has started. The next five days are predicted to be 100-plus. I hate extreme  heat, and the garden hates it more. Leaves will curl, peppers and tomatoes without shading leaves will shrivel with sunburn, and the sunflowers will hasten to seed, much to the delight of numerous bird species.

We've hired a trusted person to harvest and give away the remaining melons and other stuff; and to harvest and freeze tomatoes from 11 plants, down from 17 plants last year! It'll all be good. It's been a process, but I know we'll drive away in a few days without looking back. If I get too lonesome, I'll just look at these pictures.

One of hundreds of bees gathering sunflower pollen. Later, when seeds form, birds will move in to harvest the seeds. We're going to miss that part of the annual garden wildlife show.

We have a great eggplant crop on four plants this year. We'll be giving most of them away, but I did manage to make some ratatouille and mix eggplant into the grilling/smoking routine.

Newly emerged sunflowers, backlit. 

Walla Walla and tropia onions curing in the sun. Tomorrow we'll need to pull the "keeper" onions to let them cure a day before we put them all on screens in the garage to dry. 

Serrano peppers ripening. Peppers of all types will remain on the plants to ripen until we return.The riper they get, the better they are, in my opinion. These will be deeply red and HOT. PK will make his famous serrano sauce.

PK checking the automatic watering system, ensuring that crops needing water will get it. 

Evening light shines through the canna lily leaves....best part of the day.

Headed for Victoria, VI? Bring bikes!

Our July 2016 trip to British Columbia's Vancouver Island exceeded expectations. My preconceived notions about Canadians (snooty) and the city of Victoria (congested, commercial and difficult to navigate) were wrong, wrong, wrong. I had also underestimated the beauty and allure of other places we visited on the Island. 

Photo taken from the Royal British Columbia Museum overlooking Victoria's Inner Harbor. Lined with historic buildings, shops, restaurants, vendors, and buskers on wide pedestrian-and-bike-friendly streets, the harbor is the heart of the city. The museum's First Nation exhibits alone are worth the price of admission, which is CA $24 for adults, $17, seniors and youth six and older. The exchange rate was favorable to US citizens, so those, and all other Canadian prices, translated  roughly into a 25 percent discount.

Victoria, British Columbia's capital, adorns the southern tip of Vancouver Island. It's a spirited city full of history and beauty, water and flowers, boats and .....bicycles! Known as the Cycling Capital of Canada, the city is a wonder of interconnecting bike paths, bike lanes, and, most astonishingly,  bicycle-friendly drivers!

The Galloping Goose is a 34-mile rails-to-trail, part of an
impressive network of cyling/walking trails that make the Victoria region
a boon to bicycle commuters and also a cycling destination.

Paul on an unpaved stretch of the Galloping Goose trail. The packed gravel surface
worked fine with our skinny-tire road bikes.

By "bicycle-friendly" I mean if you're standing with your bike on a traffic island awaiting a green light, drivers will STOP and let you go, even with a long line of traffic behind. They will give you lots of space in your bike lane and, in the rare event a bike lane doesn't exist, they'll hold back to allow you to slip into your rightful place in the traffic lane. We experienced and saw these behaviors numerous times.

Our first night on Vancouver Island we scored (advance reservation) a site at the Westbay Marine Village and RV Park. This park has 61 sites and is smack in the middle of the harbor area. Except for its location, it's nothing special. It cost $42.50 a night, not including wifi or showers. But the great location allows campers to walk, bike, or catch a water taxi to outstanding restaurants and tourist sites. We couldn't get reservations at Westbay for our return trip.

The view from the water's edge of the Westbay Marine Village. That big ship is a ferry. The harbor is abuzz all day with private boats, water taxis, seaplanes, tour boats and so on. Surprisingly, the park was quiet at night. 

I admit, I was leery about biking in Victoria. I am not at all keen about biking in cities, let alone large unfamiliar ones. PK, however, was game the afternoon we arrived. I prevailed, as it was late in the day, and even he agreed we'd be better off starting a bike adventure in the morning. Instead we took a harbor ferry/taxi across the bay into the historic downtown, had a great dinner and walked back on a waterfront trail skirting the harbor, discussing our cycling plans.

This is what we saw the next  morning. No cycling. Boo hiss!

 Even the campground's waterfront sites couldn't escape gloom. Fortunately,
this was the wettest of our 11 days on the island. 

The harbor ferry stops next to the Marine Village and takes passengers

across to the Fisherman's Wharf. From there, you can take a series of walkways,
including a paved walking path skirting the harbor, back to the RV Park.
Without dawdling, it can be navigated  in about an hour. But why hurry?

Classy houseboats (marine homes) are part of the Westbay Marine Village . A sign asks visitors to respect occupants' privacy. It also says residents live here year-round and explains, because they know you were wondering, that all houseboats are hooked into the city's sewer system. Note the floating flower garden.

Sailboat moorage is next to the colorful houseboats and part of the Marine Village.. 

Glimpse of Inner Harbor action from the water taxi—a sea plane roaring in behind a whale watching craft.

On our return trip we stayed two nights in the Fort Victoria RV Park. It has 742 sites and we got the last available space reserving two days in advance. (We couldn't get into the Marina  again.) We stayed two nights and had a TERRIBLE site under big power lines and towers the first night, but were able to move the next night. 

The worst (but most high-powered) campsite ever! But Fort Victoria RV Park in Victoria had benefits. Chief among them, its proximity to a bike path connecting with the 34-mile Galloping Goose Trail. It also had strong wifi, a rarity, and the cleanest most commodious bathroom/shower facility I've ever seen in an RV park. $40 a night. 

If it wasn't for reconnecting, via Facebook, with a dear friend from my distant past, we probably  wouldn't have visited Vancouver Island.

Lesson learned - The Island is way too good to spend just a few measly days, as we did. We're already sketching out a return trip that includes more time in and around Victoria, a lot more bicycling, Vancouver Island Music Festival, and a return visit to Tofino and Ucuelet. Not to mention places we didn't get to. I'd say 3 weeks might be enough. (Posts about the music festival and Tofino are in draft.) 

More photos, and a link to our Butchart Gardens visit.

Especially fetching hanging baskets enliven Victoria's Inner Harbor area.

Typical Victoria street scene. Food and drink, art and music, 

A Victorian-looking bank on a Victoria street.

One image from the Royal British Columbia Museum's First Nations exhibits. Outstanding. 

 Other posts from this trip:

Butchart Gardens 
Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula, The Hoh, the Hikes and the Bike Scum

Blackberry-chipotle jelly with less sugar and without commercial pectin

I'm taking a quick break from writing about our recent travels on Vancouver Island because I've been derailed by a yen for blackberry-chipotle jelly. Never actually tasted it before, but the combination intrigued me. Chipotle flavors everything from chips to barbecue sauce to donuts. ... will ice cream be next? Probably not, but blackberry jelly is a good candidate.

Being a low-carb believer, I haven't made jams or jellies for years. Way too much sugar is required, and I don't care for the taste of preserves made with fake sugar. This year, with yet another ton of blackberries ripening on the edible "fence" that forms a boundary on our rural property, I decided to give low-sugar jelly another try. Jam isn't an option for blackberries, at least not for me, because of all the big seeds. Gotta strain those babies out, and jelly is the result.

I was pleased that the final product is spreadable, tasty, richly colored, and not cloyingly sweet. With chipotle cubes added, it has a bit of a bite, but nothing hot hot hot. The Mary's crackers have nothing to do with me, but are super good low-carb fare, about one carb each. A cracker topped with a little cream cheese and a dab of  blackberry/chipotle jelly, yum!

Before I go on, I must give credit where it's due. I searched online for reduced sugar preserves and the first thing that popped up was the useful and well-written blog, Mother's Kitchen. I adapted the strawberry jam recipe on the Mother's Kitchen link to make blackberry jelly.  My adapted recipe follows.

The author, in turn, credits the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving with providing direction for making preserves without commercial pectin. It is awesome! I could not believe that the blackberry/chipotle jelly wouldn't taste like apples, but it doesn't.

Mother's Kitchen also included this bit about commercial pectin that motivated me to NOT use it, especially not the low-sugar type. She writes:

I got interested in making jams and jellies without using commercially prepared pectin for a number of reasons. First of all, I am thrifty and it can cost well over $2 per box. Secondly, I just wanted something a little more natural. A pectin factory receives apple residue or citrus peels from juice factories. It's mixed with acid to get all the pectin out of the sludge. The solids are separated and then alcohol is added to precipitate the pectin out of solution. Ammonia is added to some kinds to make it work without added sugar normally needed (those expensive brands of pectin that allow you to make jams and jellies without adding sugar), and then it's mixed with dextrose or sugar to stabilize it. The good news is you can make all the pectin you need with apples and lemons. Mother's Kitchen blog

Here's how to use up eight cups of fresh blackberries to make seven or eight half-pint jars of jelly. Be warned—this is more time consuming than mixing fruit with a ton of sugar and a box of pectin.

Blackberry/Chipotle Jelly

8 cups blackberries
5 cups sugar   (I reduced the font for sugar because it still seems like a lot. But it is far less than if  made with boxed pectin.) I used a half cup less than the amount recommended.
5 tart apples. I used Granny Smiths and they were supermarket-large
1 entire lemon
2 -3 chipotle cubes* optional - using them or not does not affect ingredient quantities

* In the unlikely event you have your own smoked jalapeño peppers, from which you have made chipotle cubes, you'll understand what I mean by chipotle cubes
If not, and you want a little chipotle flavor, buy a can of chipotles in adobo sauce, chop them finely, juice and all, and add to the blackberries to taste. Use an ice cube tray to freeze what remains.

Here's my 2009 post that explains chipotle cubes. It's entitled Chipotle, Southern Oregon Style, and is kinda fun, if I do say so myself. 


Directions
Dump the berries into a large shallow container, add the sugar, and mash and mix. Add chipotle if using. Set aside, and start working on the apples and lemon.

Pull off those annoying supermarket stickers, trim the blossom ends and the stems from the apples, cut into quarters--seeds, skin and all-- and roughly chop them in a food processor. No food processor?Use a large sharp knife and a cutting board.

Cut the lemon into quarters and roughly chop, including peel and seeds. Mix the apples and lemon in a soup pot, something large enough to contain the big fruit froth that's coming soon.

Just barely cover the apples and lemon with water, enough to prevent sticking but without drowning. I used too much water and boiled the mix a long time, more than the 20 minutes recommended by Mother's Kitchen. When the apples and lemon are softened, and not too watery, run them through a food mill. In the absence of a food mill, force through a fine sieve with the back of a spoon, enough to make two cups of puree. (I think I had a bit more than two cups, but it didn't matter.)A jelly bag may also be used.

I was skeptical about how this was going to work. I was pretty sure I'd end up with purple-colored apple jelly. It seemed like way too many apples. And a whole lemon? But I followed the directions.

While the apple/lemon mix is boiling, purge seeds from the blackberries with a food mill, a jelly bag, or the fine sieve/large spoon method. This is a pain in the keister, but you'll end up with a gloriously dark purple slurry. Mix it with the apple puree in a large pot. Mother's Kitchen recommends boiling for 20 minutes and then testing to determine whether the mix will be jelly or sauce.

I totally winged it, testing every few minutes (after the 20 had passed) and guessed how it should look and feel. Somehow, it turned out perfect. I dipped a spoon into the bubbling pot, let a bit pool in the spoon and swirled it around for a minute or so. When it appeared to form a sheet, I declared it done and proceeded with canning.

Later I discovered there is a scientific method; use a thermometer to take the mixture's temperature. (Not the kind you take your own temperature with, of course, but a candy or jelly thermometer. ) When the mixture is 8 degrees above the boiling point of water (212) at sea level, it has reached the gel point. 212 + 8 = 220.
We're at 1,000 ft. above sea level, so next time, I'll go with 218 degrees and take the guess work out of it. If you're at 2,000 feet elevation, boil to 216 degrees and so on.

Without a thermometer, you can do the spoon or sheet test as described by the University of Georgia's extension service

Spoon or Sheet Test: Dip a cool metal spoon in the boiling jelly mixture. Lift the spoon above the kettle out of the steam. Turn the spoon so syrup runs off the side. If the syrup forms two drops that ow together and fall off the spoon as one sheet, the jelly should be done.

Temperature Test: Take the temperature of the cooking jelly with a candy or jelly thermometer. When done, the temperature of the jelly at sea level should be 220°F, or 8°F above the boiling point of water. (Note – For each 1000 feet of altitude above sea level, subtract 2°F. For instance, at 1000 feet of altitude, the jelly is done at 218°F; at 2000 feet, 216°F, etc. For an accurate thermometer reading, place the thermometer in a vertical position and read at eye level. The bulb of the thermometer must be completely covered with jelly but must not touch the bottom of the saucepot. (Remember to rst test the accuracy of the thermometer by making sure it registers 212°F, or the boiling temperature for your altitude, when placed in boiling water.)

When the gel point has been reached, quickly pour jelly-to-be into hot clean jars, apply lids and screw bands, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. If you're unsure about canning, this link includes detailed directions.

Eight cups of berries with a frozen chipotle cube.
Later, I added a second cube. Next time, 3 cubes!

Five cups of sugar added to berries. Mix, mash and allow juices to
drain while preparing apples/lemon mix.

Berries, chopped lemon, and chopped apples. Time
to start boiling the apples/lemon and strain the berries.

Blackberries, apples and lemon boiling away. Time to take its temperature or do the spoon or sheet test for doneness.

In case I need to make more, blackberries  aplenty are bursting forth about 100 steps away.

Butchart Gardens photos and a tip

Do you have plans to see Butchart Gardens, or hope to someday? Vancouver Island's gem had been on my to-see list for decades. Finally, on a July 2016 Roadtrek trip that included time on the island, I got my wish. It was fantastic, and I'd love to go again to see the spring or fall extravaganzas. 

After strolling along lush flower-lined paths the view opens to this, a grand floral display, just one part of the gardens that were started more than 100 years ago in an abandoned quarry. A sparse late-day crowd makes enjoying the details easy.

This should be a video to show the ever-changing fountain patterns. 

It's not all about showy flowers but also the subtle colors, textures, and design of greenery. 

Meticulous attention to creating living art is evident throughout the gardens.

The route provided to the Gardens by our GPS surprised us. It wasn't a freeway or a wide two-lane road with turning lanes and a bike path to accommodate the Garden's nearly one million annual visitors.  Instead, it's a narrow twisty turney country road. PK kept repeating, "This can't be right!" as we wound through the countryside. Butchart Gardens is about 14 miles from the city of Victoria.

Then suddenly the welcome sign appears and we drive in and the road opens to a vast parking area. A young parking attendant appears on a bicycle to lead us to where Class B RVs (Class B means small) are parked. Since it's around 4:30 p.m., there's only one, another Roadtrek, remaining in the parking lot and we pull in beside it. Rain threatens, so we grab our umbrellas and head for the entry gate. (No need to bring your own umbrellas as there are baskets of loaners for visitors' use.)

Cost of adult admission to one of the most lavish gardens on earth? Around $32 CA dollars. At the exchange rate available then, about $24 US dollars. Ticket prices vary by season. Soon after entering, we learned that the admission included an outdoor concert starting at 8 p.m. Bonus!

Another surprise bonus was arriving late in the day. We didn't do so on purpose; we'd driven from Tofino (post coming soon) and didn't reach our reserved-in-advance RV park until mid-afternoon.
Tour busses were departing as we arrived, and although we didn't have the gardens to ourselves, at no time did we feel crowded or frustrated. A couple days later, on the ferry back to Port Angeles, WA. I talked with a woman who had been at the gardens a few days before we were.

Her experience was not that good.

"We got there at 9:30 a.m. and it was OK, but a half hour later we were overrun," she reports.
"We couldn't even take photos for all the people crowding around us."

For us, touring all the gardens, stopping for a gelato, and even a light cafeteria-style supper, required about 2.5 hours. I'm sure if we'd been battling crowds and waiting in lines we would have needed another hour or so.  As it was, we had an hour to kill before the concert. Lucky for us, we had our Roadtrek retreat. We rested there a bit and enjoyed a glass of wine before reentering the gardens to find the concert lawn. Again, no waiting, no hassle.

PK makes his way to the concert lawn. Many people brought chairs, but we were OK with sitting on wooden benches.

The Tip
If you visit, consider the late-in-the-day option, especially during summer and early fall while days are still long and concerts are offered. (Daily until September 3 this year, with fireworks Saturday nights) . You'll miss the crush of tourists and perhaps hear some wonderful music. We loved The Oyster Band, comprising Brits and Scotts, who provided 90 minutes of lively entertainment. 

The profusion look of a country garden in the Rose Garden area.

A young visitor primps for a selfie in the Italian Garden, where we enjoyed gelato along with the lushness.

Here's my idea of a selfie. 

More Roadtrek travel posts

The Hoh, the hikes, and the bike scum - Experiencing the Olympic National Park, Hoh Rainforest, July 2016

Us and Them, Then and Now - traveling in our respective vans with our son and his girlfriend made clear some generational differences. But it was all good. June 2016

Chasing the Death Valley Super Bloom, 2016 - This was our first trip with the Roadtrek, and I was just getting used to traveling in such a luxury unit after all our years of car and tent camping, and then a pop-up camper. I didn't take photos of the van because it seemed like showing off!  March  2016

Loving Death Valley Part 2 -  March 2016

The Hoh, the hikes, and the bike scum

A big leaf maple along the ethereal Hall of Mosses Trail in the Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park.

We spent a couple weeks on Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula earlier this month, traveling in our Roadtrek Agile, a compact home on wheels. Everyday was dense with subject matter. 

A close encounter with a bald eagle, and later, a humpback whale; a reunion, after 40+ years, with a woman who validated my memories of the thin slice of our shared past; a music festival that challenged what I thought I knew about music-and about festivals; Victoria, a city that made me rethink my bias against cities, and a hike so beautiful it made my chest ache.

And I can't neglect the random human factor, connections and moments shared with people we meet along the way. Those rank right up there with the natural beauty we find in parks and reserves everywhere. Usually brief, the connections may be intense, moving, hilarious, or, in the case of the young man self-described as "bike scum" on this trip, just plain interesting. All share one thing - under ordinary circumstances in our ordinary lives, we would not be talking with these strangers.

If you're open to it, travel presents opportunities to stick out your hand, and maybe your neck, and interact with people you'll not see again. The encounters provide food for thought. As if I needed more "thoughts."

As a writer/blogger, a problem with frequent travel is that my brain gets buzzed with so many ideas during and after a trip, that I have big troubles producing a post or two before we leave for the next getaway. The trouble comes with sorting, sifting, and shaping details and deciding, deciding, deciding. Should I use this word or that? This photo or another? Check email or Instagram? Make a cup of tea or a gin and tonic?  

I don't expect I'll require therapy to solve my writing difficulties, but maybe I should take a course in self discipline? Or develop a method to light up, in my beleaguered brain, the best stuff.

For now, this post's title narrows the choices.

On the Hall of Mosses Trail. Or maybe it was the Giant Spruce Trail, or the few miles we hiked on the 18-mile Hoh Trail, which leads to the 7,980 foot summit of Mount Olympus. Chest is aching here with the beauty of this mossy, moist and fragrant cathedral filled with soft sounds and filtered light. It is otherworldly.

The Hoh is a remote glacial-melt river in the Olympic National Park. It lends its name to the Hoh Rainforest where three trails out of the visitors'  center pass giant Sitka spruce, western hemlocks, big leaf maples, Douglas firs, western red cedars and more, all festooned with colorful mosses and lichens. Two trails are loops around a mile long. Easy.

This moss is fluffy, soft, spongy and several inches thick.

We live a couple hours from coastal redwood forests, which are magnificent, but the Hoh Rainforest rivals the beauty, if not the size, of the redwoods. The rainforest earns its name by getting as much as 300 inches of rain a year annually. We were blessed with two sunny days. 

The Hoh Rainforest is not exactly on the way to any place else, so I guess we shouldn't have been shocked when we arrived at the Hoh Visitor Center's campground around 5 p.m. on a Saturday in mid July, the pinnacle of tourist season, and scored a campsite. Wahoo! We were fully prepared to turn back to one of the pull-offs that looked decent for boondocking - legal free camping. 

With our senior pass, camping cost just $10. Like most national park campgrounds, camp sites don't have hook-ups, but do have water and restrooms with flush toilets. (In Canada, those are called washrooms. Inquiries about "restrooms" draw blank stares and perhaps pity for weary travelers looking for a place to take a nap.)

Our home on the road, a Roadtrek SS Agile, compact comfort at its best.

Looks like a science fiction movie set.

Even with our late arrival, we had plenty of daylight to set up camp and hike the Hall of Mosses Trail, an .8 mile wonder departing from the park's visitor center, a quick walk from our campsite. 

A nurse log engendered these trees, and their tangled roots, before becoming part of the forest floor.

After hiking we returned to our camp for dinner, which was hamburgers cooked on a serving-platter-sized charcoal grill. I managed to squeeze four burgers on the thing, thinking we'd have two leftover for the next night. We had all the condiments, of course including a sweet onion from our home garden. Life is good!

Random moment arrives.....every travel day should have at least one!

It was dusk when PK noticed a man pushing a bicycle charging along a trail behind our campsite.

PK called out,  then jumped up to catch him.

"Do you mind if I invite him to dinner?" he asked, hollering over his shoulder.

Of course not!! 

A minute later a lanky young man was standing in our campsite warming up to the idea that he suddenly had a hot meal and a place to hang his hammock.

I think PK and were remembering, at that moment, the frigid December night in Death Valley when we invited a bicycling stranger we met in a convenience store to share our campsite and supper. We rescued him from a stealth camp he'd set up in the bushes along the road. He was still drying out from a violent storm the previous night.

He was gracious and grateful for a hot meal and warm conversation. We were inspired by his courage and grit as he rode solo the park's rough unpaved roads, slogging through sand and over steep grades. Plus he told a helluva story about how he'd escaped from flash flooding after water filled his tent during the storm.

We shared more stories and breakfast the next morning, then met up with him again about 15 miles down the road as we did our own cycling. He invited us to stay with him if ever we were in Denver. We never were.

Things weren't quite as cozy with the random person at the Hoh Rainforest, but just as engaging.

Setting up his hammock in the dusk. (flash photo).

Phillip from Portland, OR, is not your typical bicyclist. No Spandex, flashy bike jersey or high-tech trappings. No tent for him, but a hammock and sleeping bag covered with a tarp. No sleek, light  and costly biking shoes, but work boots.

Phillip's bike shoes. No kidding. No need for clip-in pedals.
He carried flip-flops for camp use.

After hearing him speak, I said, "If I couldn't see you, I'd guess you were a 250-pound Harley rider with a heavy cigarette habit."

He smiled and replied in his gravely voice,  "I'm a bike rider with a heavy cigarette habit."

It wasn't long before he rolled one, being super careful to blow smoke away from me.

PK was inside the van cleaning dishes. I cook. He cleans up. This gave me a chance to ask nosy questions without PK giving me "the look." Phillip didn't mind at all. One thing I know from my years as a journalist, people like to be asked questions about themselves.

I learned he rides his bike to jobs on Portland's bike-designated streets. Some good friends of ours happen to live on one of the streets he uses.

"That's the best street in the city for commuting," he said. "I can roll a cigarette and smoke it on the way to work."

He got a BS degree in electrical engineering, he said, but doesn't have a regular job. He's a disabled vet with a head injury.

"I'm not a careerist," he told me. "After the accident, I realized I didn't buy into the nine to five routine." Instead he does contract work and also teaches programming to elementary kids.

"Most of them get it by the time they reach second grade, " he said. "But trying to teach programming to most kindergarteners and first graders doesn't work."

New to biking, his first overnight trip was 50 miles one way. At the end, he and a bunch of other renegade cyclists set up in a campground and raised hell.

"We made a lot of noise and were the worst people there," he said. "We're bike scum. We don't look like most bikers or act like them.  We partied all night, and I got three hours of sleep."

Riding 50 miles back the next day wasn't all that much fun.

We saw Phillip along the road the next day, stopped at the top of a steep hill chugging from his water bottle. I didn't see any smoke so he must not have had time to roll one yet.

Us? We were headed to the northern Oregon coast with home a couple leisurely days south.   Generous and benevolent Mother Nature in summer dress loomed large in our immediate future, and perhaps more randomness. We could only hope. 

PK entering the mosses trail through a nature-built portal.Maybe we'll get
back there sometime and hike to the meadow below Mount Olympus.

More Roadtrek travel posts

Us and Them, Then and Now - traveling with our son and his girlfriend made clear some generational differences. But it was all good.

Chasing the Death Valley Super Bloom, 2016 - no mention of the Roadtrek here, or photos, because this was our first trip with it and I was still getting used to traveling in such a luxury unit after all our years of car camping, and then a pop-up camper.

Loving Death Valley Part 2 - Again, no mention of Roadtrek. I couldn't quite get over all the attention our new-to-us van attracted. We met a couple in Death Valley who had paid someone to find a used Roadtrek for them. They couldn't believe our luck in scoring a decent deal on our own.  I'm over it now!