I made strong coffee in my room at the Syvia Hotel this morning. this saved me from buying weaker coffee at breakfast. The French toast was very good, though. I managed to get my bags onto the truck before it left but I didn't manage to grab onto my gruppo in time. They left before I was ready. So Jon Graff and I rode together to the SkyTrain station. We managed to get on the loop train instead of the one to King George Station. No problems, though. We got off of our train and caught the next one which was just behind ours.

We began the rest of our ride in warm, sunny weather. I got ahead of Jon and lost him after the first few miles. We were riding through an urban area and he must have stopped at a traffic light. This was good for me because I wasn't embarassed when I missed a couple of turns and had to improvise. I saw some nice houses, though. The route through White Rock was interesting because of its resort-like setting.

​I reached the border crossing soon. Because the passport control building was on the left side of the road, I had to negotiate my bicycle through several lanes of stop-and-go traffic. Inside the building were two lines of people. One of them was very long and very slow. I was sent to the other line for pedestrains where I was the only one in the line. Still, it took about 10 minutes until I was called to the counter. After checking my passport, the agent said that I could leave and continue my journey.

​Blaine is right across the border. I rode into it and immediately saw some bicycles parked at a restaurant. Because it was lunch time, I stopped there and discovered that the bikes belonged to my gruppo - Roy, Helga, Rose and Pam Kelly. They waited for me to eat my sandwich.

​Riding on, we passed into farm country. along one stretch of road we passed rasberry fields. The aroma of ripening berries was wonderful. The headwinds weren't so wonderful. We stopped at a general store snacks and then carried on to the Fairhaven Village Inn in Bellingham.

Fairhaven is an historic district in Bellingham. It has many old well-kept buildings containg lots of shops and food businesses. We visited a bicycle shop on the main street to get some supplies and to drool over its bikes. My room at the Inn is particularly nice - clean, airy, roomy. I looked out over the outdoor market on the main street.

​After Happy Hour in the conference room, most of us went to dinner at Skylarks Hidden Cafe. I had scampi and a beer. After dinner I stopped at Rocket Donuts and Ice Cream for ice cream.