Today we have a special guest, here to talk to you about funk music...

After a great couple of days in P town, it was time to hit the road again.  Will and I got some breakfast, then I started riding around 1:00 pm.  I ended up riding to Toledo WA that day; about 90 miles but it was pretty flat and I had a bit of a tailwind for most of the day.  I rode past a cool little airport that evening so I pulled into do some exploring.  It was here that I enjoyed that right of passage all of us clipless riders get to expierence at least once-- I came to a nice, slow stop and went to put my foot down, only to find it still quite attached to the pedal.  And down I went, in fully glory!  Fortunatly, no one was there to see it.  I kept riding, and made camp at a state park just past Toledo.

The next day ended up being my most challenging day of the trip so far.  I accidently woke up around 7:00 AM.  Thinking it was 9:00, I got up, packed everything away and hit the road.  As soon as I started riding, it started raining hard.  It was a little over 2 hours in the rain before I made it to Centrailia and by the time I got there, most of my rain gear was soaked through.  It was pretty miserable.  I contimplated stopping for the day in Centralia, but the rain quit, so I headed out.  The weather kept getting better, so I kept riding.  I stopped for a break in Elma and then again in Shelton.  By this time I had rode something like 90 miles and I had 40 more to go if I wanted to get to Bremerton where I could catch the ferry to seattle.  There was still plenty of sunlight and the last ferry was due to leave Bremerton at 11:30PM So I pressed on.  Passed Shelton, I had some amazing views of the Olympic Mountains across Hood canal and I got to watch the sun set over Mason lake, which was pretty incredible.  The last 15 miles were in the dark, but I was able to make it to Bremerton with enough time to get a beer and some hummus before the ferry pulled away.  By the end of the day I had rode 130 miles with a 90 pound bicyle from 7:30am to 10:30pm.  It was epic.

So I rested a couple days in Seattle.  I stayed with my friend, Kevin; he is a music teacher at a school teaching K-8 grade.  I wanted to see him in action so I went with him to work the next day.  It was great!  All the kids call you Mr Jans and the drinking fountains are only 3 feet off the ground.  I got to talk to all of his classes that day about music, and drums and everything.  The high point was definetly giving a lecture on funk music to the 2nd and 3rd graders.  It was pretty hilarious, I played them some good examples of funk music including Parliment and The Crusaders.  They loved it.  Then I tried to teach them the lingo.  'Ok kids, lets all say it together, "Make it funky!"'  "Can you dig it?"  Slap some skin, honky"  It was a lot of fun, and kinda made me wish I had a job teaching.  Summers off? Can't argue with that, I could do a lot of bike touring if I had every summer off.

I spent the rest of my stay with my dear sweet grandmother.  She took me out for some Thai  the first night, and the second I went to a dinner party with some friends of hers- it was alot of fun.  By  the end of my stay, though, I was starting to feel a little sick.  Nothing too bad, I suspect I picked something up from the children. Just a little cold.

Oh yea!  So a funny thing happend to Kevin and I as we were driving after my big ride into town.  Kevin has this kick ass '67 (ish) Chevy painted bright yellow.  We were cruisin down the freeway, feeling good, when we noticed that a cute and possibly drunk girl in the passenger seat of the car next to us was really diggin the truck.  Naturally, I blew her kiss which she must've liked because she proceded to flash her tits at us.  It was a good end to a very long day.